Discovering Charles Manson was her grandfather plunged her into crisis: 'I come from a murderer'

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Set us as preferred Sophia Maddox knew nothing about Charles Manson when she was listening to the Beatles’ double album known as the White Album, 10 years ago when she was a teen.She loved the group but couldn’t understand the meaning of the song “Helter Skelter.”“I Googled it and the first thing that came up was Charles Manson,” she recalled after reading that Manson had interpreted the song as his vision of a race war.

“I remember thinking, ‘That doesn’t make sense.How do you get that from that song?’ He just felt distant.”She gained more context years later after seeing Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time ...

In Hollywood,” learning that Manson was the devious mastermind behind the brutal murders of actor Sharon Tate and several others, which horrified the nation in 1969.About 10 years after first reading about Manson, she made a discovery that chilled her to her core: She was not only related to Manson — she was his granddaughter.That devastating revelation and its overwhelming emotional impact is the focus of “My Grandfather Charles Manson,” which premieres Wednesday on Hulu and Disney+.

Directed by Maddox and Alexandra Orton (“Out There: Crimes of the Paranormal”), the film is a sharply personal standout in the massive Manson canon, which is already populated by multiple films and books, both fiction and nonfiction.“I come from a murderer,” Maddox tearfully declares to a therapist in the opening minutes of the film.“Who the f— would accept me?” Later she laments how the revelation brought her to a low point in her life: “How could my blood do something so atrocious? How could my blood be the cause of other people’s bloodshed?”Confronting her intense fears about having blood ties to one of history’s most notorious criminals, Maddox embarks on an exploration into...