Horrible Murders Blamed on Rock Music

[00:00:02]You were just rescued by people getting shot all around me.

[00:00:07]>> I think that I've been blamed for about 36 school shootings.

[00:00:11]>> For decades, when America faced a murder too shocking to explain, someone tried to blame rock music. The killer left behind a baseball cap embroidered with the logo ACC.

[00:00:25]>> One serial killer loved AC/DC. Charles Manson believed the Beatles were sending him secret messages.

[00:00:32]>> Manson told his followers that this would be a bloodbath.

[00:00:35]>> Three teenagers were accused of murder and arrested in part because they listened to Metallica.

[00:00:42]>> 19-year-old Damian Eckles admits he stands out in a crowd. He says he loves heavy metal music. Like >> let's take a closer look at four disturbing stories of horrible murder that people tried to blame on rock music.

[00:01:03]>> [music] [music] >> In 1979, AC/DC released Highway to Hell, the album that made them a huge global phenomenon.

[00:01:23]The last track on the album was a song called [music] Night Prowler.

[00:01:28]Nobody thought much about it. I mean, it wasn't a single and it wasn't particularly controversial. It was just the last track on the album. But 6 years later, one of America's most infamous serial killers would make sure nobody could ever hear that song the same way again.

[00:01:46]Southern California, summer of [music] 1985.

[00:01:51]For more than a year, a man had been [music] breaking into homes in the middle of the night, murdering complete strangers, sexually assaulting women, [music] robbing families, and disappearing before police could get anywhere near him. The attack seemed almost random.

[00:02:08]Elderly couples, young women, rich neighborhoods, poor neighborhoods. The authorities believe that one man who looks like this is [music] responsible for at least 14 recent attacks, including seven murders. They say the same man might be responsible for as many as 30 such incidents.

[00:02:26]>> There was no obvious pattern because the killer wasn't targeting a particular kind of victim. He was targeting vulnerability.

[00:02:35]>> At first, Los Angeles police thought that the murder of a young woman last March was an isolated act of violence.

[00:02:41]But since then, they've come to believe it was connected to a wide-ranging series of assaults by a killer who's become known as the Nightstalker.

[00:02:48]>> Mainstream media gave him a nickname that perfectly captured the panic gripping California, the Nightstalker.

[00:02:57]By the time police finally caught him on August 31st, 1985, it became known his real name was Richard Ramirez, and he had become one of the most feared criminals in America. [music] His face dominated newspaper front pages.

[00:03:15]Television stations interrupted regular programming with updates. People slept with baseball bats under their pillows and gun sales increased.

[00:03:24]>> Enrollment at the Santa Anita firing range is up 150%. For the first time, 35% of the students are female and most are here because of the killer.

[00:03:35]For weeks, everyone was paranoid that any random guy walking at night might be Ramirez.

[00:03:43]>> We have hired uh several additional officers on an overtime basis and put them on the street during the primary hours of darkness.

[00:03:56]>> At one point during this collective paranoia, investigators found a cap believed to belong to the killer. The killer left behind a baseball cap embroidered with the logo ACC.

[00:04:10]>> This on its own didn't prove very much because millions of people loved the band. But Ramirez wasn't just a random fan. As I said earlier, before the media knew his real name, they gave him a nickname, the Nightstalker.

[00:04:27]And by some absurd coincidence, the band whose logo was stamped on a cap that belonged to this serial killer had a song called Night Prowler. And after his arrest, some of his friends apparently confirmed to the police that Ramirez was a huge fan of the band Ramirez. And the question is, did the band AC/DC drive him onto a personal highway to hell? Overnight, AC/DC got yanked into one of the biggest murder stories in the country. The kind of national freakout that suddenly turns a rock band into some crime evidence. News reports and journalists kept insisting on juxtaposing the killer's nickname with a band that had nothing to do with him. And of course, religious groups piled in right behind them, grabbing the moment like it had been gift wrapped, insisting this was proof that rock music was evil.

[00:05:24]>> The Parents Music Resource Center, led by a group of US Senators wives, including Tipper Gore, placed AC/DC at the top of a list of artists they deemed obscene.

[00:05:34]>> The band could not have picked a worse moment to exist. America was already chest deep in what we now call the satanic panic of the8s. That weird [music] national brain melt when an expanding mob of parents, pastors, talk show hosts, and politicians convinced themselves that rock music and horror movies were basically conveyor belts sending young people straight toward violence and devil worship. Heavy metal bands were accused of hiding satanic [music] messages in their music. Even Dungeons and Dragons was blamed for suicides because when it comes to news and media, fear often spreads faster than evidence. Point is, Richard Ramirez alone didn't create that [music] climate. Nor did AC/DC, obviously. But both of them converged in the public perception [music] right at the moment where millions of Americans were looking for more proof that rock music was inherently evil.

[00:06:38]>> On August 31st, the Nightstalker was finally arrested. The press reported that Richard Ramirez, a confessed Satanist, was inspired by AC/DC.

[00:06:47]Suddenly, urban legends surfaced claiming AC/DC supposedly stood for antirist devil's [music] child. And needless to say, the album title Highway to Hell just added more quote [music] unquote evidence to this rumors.

[00:07:05]The interesting part is that Night Prowler wasn't a song about murder. The band repeatedly explained [music] that the song was about a young man sneaking into his girlfriend's bedroom [music] after dark.

[00:07:18]And before some bigot points it out in the comments, yes, it's also true the lyrics deliberately lean into suspense [music] and menace.

[00:07:28]But there has never been any shred of credible evidence that the band ever intended it as a celebration of violence. [music] But people and the media didn't give a [ __ ] They already decided that Ramirez went on a murder spree after listening to that song.

[00:07:48]Thing is, even if AC/DC had written a song about murder, this doesn't change the fact that Ramirez was already an extraordinarily violent man, regardless of what music or movies or food for that matter he liked. [music] Not only did Ramirez leave behind victims and senseless pain, but he permanently changed the meaning of someone [music] else's art. Before 1985, Night Prowler was just the final track on a hit album. After 1985, it became almost impossible to hear those two words without thinking about a serial killer.

[00:08:31]But if Richard Ramirez got associated almost by a random coincidence with a song that was never intended [music] to celebrate violence, the next story is even stranger. Because the next killer became convinced that one of the biggest bands in the world had been writing songs specifically for him.

[00:09:05]By the late 1960s, the Beatles had become something the world had never seen before. To say they were the biggest band on Earth would be almost insulting. For millions of people, they had become some sort of a psychosexual obsession.

[00:09:22]They No one had ever experienced anything like that before. And if you get all these girls together and they're seeing these guys who they're seeing on television and they're seeing on the Ed Sullivan show and they're they're seeing them everywhere and they're see they're in the newspapers and the magazines and they see these guys and the the sounds they make are so good and the way they sing and play music together is so magical and it's so unprecedented and it's a new kind of sound and they're just special and these girls just can't help it. THEY'RE LIKE ME.

[00:09:52]>> YEAH. CRYING. YOU KNOW, WHEN you >> But with that obsession came something else.

[00:09:59]>> People started looking for some hidden meaning in [music] everything they did.

[00:10:04]Fans played records backwards, searching for secret messages and studied album covers like detective boards. Most of those theories were [music] harmless.

[00:10:15]one wasn't because somewhere in California, a failed musician named Charles Manson was listening to the exact same [music] songs and becoming convinced the Beatles were speaking directly to him. [music] Manson was a problematic young man who had spent much of his life in and out of prisons and reform schools.

[00:10:39]>> [music] >> In 1967, he walked into California [music] at exactly the right moment. The summer of love had turned San Francisco into a magnet for young people. Thousands had hitchhiked across America, leaving home to reject their parents' values and experiment with drugs, [music] free love, and communal living. Sleeping on strangers floors, joining communes, and following self-proclaimed spiritual teachers wasn't unusual. It was part of the culture.

[00:11:13]Manson quickly figured out how to fit into that world. He played guitar, sang songs, handed out LSD, and spoke with complete confidence about life, religion, and the future. One by one, mostly young women began following him as if he was some guru. He wasn't famous, but he was charismatic. And for young people who were lonely, high, and searching for meaning, that could be enough.

[00:11:43]The group grew into a small commune that moved between campsites, rented houses, and eventually the old Spawn Ranch outside Los [music] Angeles. Two years ago, the hippie commune led by Charles Manson moved it into this old Wild West film set just outside Los Angeles. And it was here that they were living on the night the alleged murders took place.

[00:12:06]The press would later call them the Manson family. Inside the group, Manson [music] gradually became more than just a guru. His followers seem to have been brainwashed into eventually believing he was the literal [music] second coming of Jesus Christ. It got so serious his [music] followers would do literally anything he'd ask of them.

[00:12:30]Then in November of 1968, the Beatles released the White Album. One of its tracks was Helter Skelter, a loud, chaotic song inspired by an amusement park slide in Britain.

[00:12:45]Paul McCartney later explained that he wanted to write the loudest rock song the Beatles had ever recorded. It wasn't [music] about politics. It wasn't about race. And it certainly wasn't about murder. And yet somehow Charles Manson heard all of those things in that song.

[00:13:06]Over the following months he became convinced the Beatles were secretly speaking directly to him. [music] In his mind, the album was filled with secret messages about some brutal race war that would soon unfold between black and white Americans. [music] Manson convinced himself the Beatles knew it was coming and had [music] written an entire album just to warn him because they had [music] decided it was their mission to prepare him for what would happen next.

[00:13:39]There's another song in that same album called Blackbirds talking about blackbirds fixing their wings and rising up. Charles Manson said the blackbird uh meant the black man.

[00:13:50]>> And his delusion went even further. He convinced himself that after black Americans overthrew white society, they would for some reason ask him [music] of all people to be their leader. Manson told his followers that this would be a bloodbath in the streets of every American city. Manson foresaw that the black man would win this war. But later on he said the black man because of inexperience would simply not be able to handle the reigns of power. So he would have to look around at those white people who had survived who had escaped from Helter Skelter. In other words, turn over the reigns of power to Charles Manson and his family.

[00:14:27]>> There was just one problem. The race war wasn't happening. So Manson decided to start it himself. He believed that if his followers carried out a series of brutal murders and made them look as though they had been committed by black people, white America would retaliate.

[00:14:48]The violence would spiral out of control [music] and the apocalypse he called helter skelter would finally [music] begin.

[00:14:59]On the night of August 8th, 1969, members of the Manson family entered the Los Angeles home of actress Sharon Tate, who was 8 and 12 months pregnant.

[00:15:14]Five people were murdered inside that house. That was a party house. Everybody went in and out of there. It kind of represented the elite of of of movies, music, Hollywood, you know, white people. So that would have been a very high-profile >> place to hit >> target. Yeah.

[00:15:32]>> Because all the people in that community in the Hollywood community would then also be aware that that was a spot that they had been to. All these high-profile people had been there.

[00:15:43]>> The following night they killed Leno and Rosemary Leiana in their own home. And at both crime scenes, messages were written in blood on the walls. One of them read Helter Skelter, unmistakably referring to the Beatle song that had become the [music] foundation of Manson's fantasy.

[00:16:04]The Beatles had apparently inspired one of America's most cruel murder spre. And I came to this conclusion that Helter Skelter, as far out and as unbelievable and as bizarre as it is, was one of the prime motives for these murders. Now, keep in mind the prosecution does not have the burden of proving >> except the Beatles [music] didn't transform an ordinary man into a killer.

[00:16:28]Manson was already deeply manipulative and [music] detached from reality.

[00:16:34]The music didn't plant his beliefs.

[00:16:36][music] It became a canvas onto which he projected his own delusions. In other words, he wasn't listening to the Beatles. He was listening to himself.

[00:16:48]Paul McCartney has repeatedly explained what helter [music] skelter actually meant and it had nothing to do with some race wars between [music] Americans.

[00:16:58]But once again, some of America's most shocking murders had somehow become linked to a rock song.

[00:17:06]To this day, it's difficult to hear the words Helter [music] Skelter without thinking about Charles Manson, >> biggest boogeyman in United States history. I don't know forever, but at least until the 70s became Charlie Manson.

[00:17:21]>> Just like [music] Richard Ramirez had permanently changed the meaning of night prowler, [music] Manson hijacked another piece of music and made it part of a crime scene.

[00:17:36]And the next story takes that idea one step further.

[00:17:51]On May 5th, 1993, three 8-year-old boys were [music] reported missing in West Memphis, Arkansas.

[00:18:01]They had been riding their bikes together that afternoon, [music] something they had done countless times before, but this time [music] they never returned home. Their families, the cops, [music] and soon the entire community spent the night searching, but their bodies would be discovered only [music] the next day in a wooded drainage ditch known as Robin Hood Hills. The bodies of three young boys were pulled from a drainage ditch in the Robin Hood Hills of [music] West Memphis. Stevie Branch, Michael Moore, and Christopher Buyers had been beaten, their hands bound by their own shoelaces.

[00:18:39]The scene was deeply disturbing. The condition of their bodies made it immediately clear this was no accident.

[00:18:46]Someone had deliberately killed three young boys.

[00:18:51]Before investigators had any clue about who committed the crime, rumors began to spread and people were already whispering about a specific individual, a teenager named Damian Eckles. He had long hair and wore heavy metal bands, t-shirts, and while in another town he might have just been a random teenager, in West Memphis, in the middle of a child murder investigation, that was enough for many to see him as a potential murderer.

[00:19:22]>> Why, if you were targeted, why do you think they targeted you? Why pick on you, Damian Eckles? You're apparently minding your own business. I think a lot of it was due to this was during a time when um you know people are starting to forget it now but during the late 80s early 90s you had a phenomenon in the United States called satanic panic.

[00:19:39]>> Within weeks he was arrested [music] with two friends Jesse Miss Kelly Jr.

[00:19:43]and Jason Baldwin.

[00:19:45]>> 18-year-old Damen Eckles, 16-year-old Jason Baldwin, and 17-year-old Jesse Misss Kelly were served up as suspects.

[00:19:54]>> There was just one problem. There were no fingerprints and no DNA linking them to the murders. [music] >> There was no DNA evidence, just to be clear with everybody. No DNA evidence.

[00:20:04]There's no witnesses to connect Damian to the crime. Many have called this a real life witch hunt.

[00:20:10]>> Still, after hours of police questioning, 17-year-old Jesse Mskelli said he was involved in the murders.

[00:20:18]>> Miss Kelly told police he watched 18-year-old Damen Eckles and 16-year-old Jason Baldwin ized the children with a club and a knife. The report says Miss Kelly told police Eckles and Baldwin raped one of the boys and mutilated another as part of a cult ritual.

[00:20:38]>> But problems showed up right away. Parts of what he said didn't match the timeline or important details of the crime. To many, it seemed like this confession had been coerced out of him.

[00:20:53]This kid's telling me he's there, but he can't get the story right. And it's like, if you saw something like this happen, you would remember it cuz it would be so traumatic of an event, you would remember every detail.

[00:21:07]But even so, he presented [music] a confession and that confession became the nail in the coffin. The jury convicted all three. Jesse [music] Mskelli received life in prison plus additional years. Jason Baldwin was sentenced to [music] life without parole and Damen Eckles was sentenced to death.

[00:21:29]>> 19-year-old Damen Eckles admits he stands out in a crowd. He says he loves heavy metal music likes.

[00:21:39]>> For most people, that was the end of the story. [music] Three teenagers who listened to heavy metal had committed another atrocious crime and now justice was served. [music] But over the years, journalists, filmmakers, and defense lawyers started pulling the investigation [music] apart piece by piece. They questioned the confession. They questioned the forensic evidence. [music] And as DNA testing improved, new analyses still [music] failed to link the three teenagers at the crime scene. They were called the West Memphis 3. Convicted of murdering three Cub Scouts in West Memphis, Arkansas in 1993. despite any physical evidence linking them to the crime.

[00:22:22]As this was happening, Metallica watched with growing concern.

[00:22:28]For years, people had claimed heavy metal created killers. Now, Metallica saw three men spending decades behind bars, mostly because of their love for heavy metal.

[00:22:40]So they offer public support to the three guys and also license their music for documentaries about their story. It was a remarkable reversal. Instead of defending itself against accusations, Metallica was now helping defend people that had been judged, at least in part, because of their love for heavy metal.

[00:23:04]The campaign lasted for years. Lawyers kept fighting to reopen the case. And then in 2011, something remarkable happened. After spending 18 years behind bars, these three guys walked out of prison. In 2011, 18 years after their convictions, [music] the West Memphis 3 were released from prison on an Alfred plea. That's a guilty plea where the defendants maintain their innocence.

[00:23:33]Prosecutors [music] offered a deal that let the three men keep claiming innocence and still walk free.

[00:23:41]But to this day, no one seems to know who's responsible for these murders.

[00:23:48]Whether you believe the West [music] Memphis 3 were guilty or innocent, one part of the story is impossible to justify.

[00:23:56]For years, America was afraid that rock music could [ __ ] with your brain and turn you into a killer.

[00:24:04]But in West Memphis, simply listening to Metallica made you automatically the [music] primary suspect in a disturbing murder case.

[00:24:20][music] >> [music] >> We're getting shot all around me.

[00:24:29]>> On April 20th, 1999, two teenagers turned an ordinary school day into a nightmare.

[00:24:36]>> They wore black trench coats, combat boots, and some wore Nazi crosses. They hated jocks, loved the internet, and [music] were fascinated by World War II.

[00:24:44]Eric Harris and Dylan Clebold walked into Coline High School in Colorado armed with a pump-action shotgun, a semi-automatic handgun, a sawnoff shotgun, and a carbine [music] 9 mm rifle.

[00:25:02]>> And at exactly 11:19, they opened fire.

[00:25:06]>> 901. Yes, this is at Mike High School.

[00:25:10]We have shots fired.

[00:25:15]Okay.

[00:25:15]>> Is in a black coat.

[00:25:20]>> 15 lives were lost, including their own, and more than two dozen others were injured in one of the darkest [music] days in US history.

[00:25:29]>> They said the gunman went from one area of the school to another, shooting students as they went.

[00:25:34]>> The attack was planned with chilling [music] precision. The killers planted 99 explosive devices around the school, aiming to create chaos and delay emergency responders from saving lives.

[00:25:46]The two gunmen who went on the rampage booby trapped the building and even themselves. Among the explosives found, a [music] bomb set to detonate the gas tank in a car believed to belong to one of the gunmen. Police continue [music] their search of the building as well as cars and book bags left behind by students. The response to Coline was as messy as it was predictable. The NRA returned to one of its long-standing arguments that guns don't kill people, but people kill people, [music] emphasizing individual responsibility over the role of the weapon itself. But America's outrage machine [music] needed a scapegoat. And it found one in Brian Warner, known to the world as Marilyn Manson. Because why tackle complex social [music] issues when it's so much easier to just blame a rock star in makeup?

[00:26:37]>> I definitely [music] can see why they would pick me because I think it's easy to throw my face on a TV because I'm in the end of a poster boy for fear because I represent what everyone's afraid of because I do and say what I want.

[00:26:56]But in 1999, Marilyn Manson wasn't just a rock star. He was America's favorite [music] boogeyman.

[00:27:04]>> When Coline happened though, you know you're going to be somehow involved.

[00:27:09]Before they were showing anything, they said [music] a gang of kids wearing Marilyn Manson t-shirts shot up a school or something live on Fox and I was saying, "Oh, this is why, you know." So now I think that I've been blamed for about 36 school shootings. After Coline, the media went into a frenzy, pinning the blame on Marilyn Manson.

[00:27:30]>> He takes shots at Christians by portraying evangelists as fascists and tossing a torn up Bible into the crowd.

[00:27:39]Headlines claimed the killers were diehard fans of his music, while wild rumors spread about Manson burning Bibles on stage and eating dog poop. are huge Marilyn Manson fans. Accused murderers have said Marilyn Manson's music touches something dark in them.

[00:27:59]>> Manson denies it, but there is no denying that he is [music] a strange and some say disturbing force in the pop world.

[00:28:05]>> On Fox News, Bill O'Reilly branded Manson one of the most corrupting influences in US [music] history.

[00:28:12]>> Never before in the history of this country have so many corrupting influences descended upon children at one time. [music] and that most children don't understand what you're doing and why you're using the F-word and why you're acting bizarre. And this can be very, very troubling to children who don't have direction, who don't have responsible parents. The mediaounded Manson like vultures, treating him as if his music had pulled the trigger instead of addressing the deeper issues at play.

[00:28:39][music] >> If you were to talk directly to the to the kids at Coline or the people in that community, what what would what would you say to them if they were here right now?

[00:28:47]>> I wouldn't say a single word to them. I would listen to what they have to say.

[00:28:50]And that's what no one did. When you have things like Coline and you have these kids that are angry and they have something to say, no one's listening, the media sends a message that if you do something loud enough and it gets our attention, then you will be famous for it. Those kids ended up on the cover of Time magazine. The media gave them exactly what they wanted. And that's why I never did any interviews when that happened when I was getting blamed for it because [music] I felt that I would be contributing to what I found to be uh reprehensible.

[00:29:18]>> Surprise, surprise. It later came out that neither Dylan Clebold nor Eric Harris even liked Manson's [music] music.

[00:29:27]>> The kids weren't even fans of me. I think they probably thought that I was [music] too much of a [ __ ] cuz I was wearing lipstick. I don't really know. I don't know what's going on with them.

[00:29:34]>> Well, you must have got a bad rap from that. Yeah, it kind of put my whole career on hold.

[00:29:39]>> Looking back, what's remarkable isn't that Richard Ramirez liked AC/DC or that Charles Manson twisted the Beatles into some unhinged prophecy, or that three teenagers in Arkansas got in trouble for listening to Metallica, or even that Marilyn Manson became a scapegoat after Coline.

[00:30:03]It's that every time the country was confronted with violence so shocking it struggled to understand it, someone eventually tried to pin [music] it on rock music.

[00:30:15]When something truly horrifying happens, we desperately search for an explanation that makes the world feel safe and predictable again. For most people, blaming music and rock stars [music] is far more comforting than accepting that some people are violent and cruel, and that evil acts can be random. Even every one of these tragedies left behind questions that were uncomfortable, complicated, and in some cases impossible to answer.

[00:30:47]But blaming music or art in general or video games or even social media for that matter has never solved any of them.

[00:30:57][music] [music] [music] >> [bell] [music] [bell]