Mary Brunner Criminal

Mary Theresa Brunner (born December 17, 1943) is a former member of the Manson Family. Manson was a paroled career criminal when he met Brunner, who was the first of a number of vulnerable young women that he became a guru to as leader of a hippie-style commune. He attempted to become a recording artist. In March 1969 Manson was rebuffed when he went to a producer's residence, which was by then being rented by Sharon Tate and others. The next month he shot a black man over a drugs dispute. Paranoid about Black Panthers exacting vengeance, Manson brought a motorcycle gang to the commune. Brunner and Bobby Beausoleil were sent to the home of acquaintance Gary Hinman, a UCLA Ph.D. candidate in sociology and musician. He was held captive and murdered. Brunner later testified that Beausoleil killed Hinman, because he would not join Manson's pop group.On August 6, 1969 Beausoleil was arrested in possession of Hinman's car. Days later Brunner was arrested for credit card fraud. That evening Manson ordered the deaths of Tate and her housemates. The following evening he went out with and supervised several followers when they killed a couple at their isolated residence, which Manson had noticed while at a party with an acquaintance with links to music industry. He also sent followers to on an abortive mission to kill an actor who one of the Family women had slept with. On August 16, 1969 the commune was raided by police investigating thefts, a man Manson suspected of informing was killed soon after. Subsequently the bike gang told police that Manson was connected to the Tate killings. Manson and other 'Family' members were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. Prior to 2011, very few with any conviction on a charge of murder were able to obtain parole in California, but in 1985 Clem Grogan was released. The female 'Family' members convicted of murder became the longest serving women inmates in the state.With the benefit of a more capable attorney than some other Manson Family women had, Brunner obtained witness immunity for the Hinman murder trial. When questioned by Beausoleil, she contradicted her prior testimony for the prosecution (which she claimed had been “coerced”) and denied he had killed Hinman. She was then arraigned for Hinman's murder and held without bail, with the prospect of the evidence she had given as a witness under an immunity agreement being used to convict her. Brunner's lawyer was successful in having the charges dismissed; courts ruled that she had been of sufficient assistance to the prosecution under their deal that it could not be abrogated. In 1971, Brunner was shot and captured while she, Catherine Share and male Manson associates were robbing a gun shop, supposedly in furtherance of a scheme to free Manson. She was sent to the California Institution for Women secure unit, joining three Manson followers convicted during the Tate-LaBianca trial. Brunner was paroled in in the mid-seventies, and has avoided further public attention.