Somebody Had to be the First Manson Family Member
The story of midwestern librarian Mary Brunner
Not So Meet-Cute
In the spring of 1967, Mary Theresa Brunner was a 23-year old assistant librarian working at UC Berkeley near San Francisco, the epicenter of the Peace/Love movement. She moved to California from Eau Claire, Wisconsin, two summers before. The eldest of four children born to George and Elsie Brunner, good Midwestern Lutheran folk, Mary was scholarly and quiet. She was walking her poodle in the park the day she met Charles Manson, a 32-year old ex-convict just recently received from a federal penitentiary on check fraud charges. Manson had previously served time for auto theft, and was a sex trafficker who spent his youth in reformatories and detention centers. The day the two encountered each other, Manson pretended to kick her dog and Mary got defensive. But when Charlie grew playful, she let down her guard.
Slim, with strawberry-blonde hair and a square jaw, Mary wore a prim, buttoned-up shirt and nerdy glasses. She was intelligent and kind, though and a short chat between the two softened her heart.
She’d made few friends since moving to California and left behind a fiancé at the University of Wisconsin. Her fiancé, a fellow student, was poised to take a position at the school. Mary could easily have fit…
