Charles Manson is up for his 12^th parole hearing. Not that it matters: he’s not going anywhere. He says he’s not even attending, though corrections spokeswoman Terry Thornton predicts he might change his mind at the last minute. The only thing that’s really changed about Manson is his looks. Now at 77, Manson is now longer the wild-eyed cultist of 1969, yet the swastika he carved into his brow reminds us the times that went before.

43 years after Manson’s heyday, when he confabulated a sort of cult and persuaded his young and attractive acolytes to murder for him – he was found guilty in seven murders, including the death of actress Sharon Tate – he now still rambles on about his cultic beliefs, but seems rather incoherent and disorganized in thought and behavior.

If he attends this parole hearing, it will be the first he’s showed up to since 1997, when Manson incoherently ranted for hours about his cult and his innocence:

  

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“I’m not saying that I wasn’t involved. I’m saying that I did not break man’s law nor did I break God’s law. Consider that in the judgments that you have for yourselves. Good day. Thank you,” he said in address to the parole board.”

Manson narrowly escaped the death penalty when California Supreme Court outlawed capital punishment for a spell in 1972. He is expected to carry out his days in Corcoran State Prison, where he is protected from himself and a outer hostile world, and has the privilege of going outside into the yard.