Robert Trujillo, renowned bassist of the legendary heavy metal band METALLICA, has a unique and compelling story from his early years that not many are aware of. Long before he became an iconic figure in the world of music, Trujillo’s family found themselves in a chilling and potentially dangerous encounter involving the infamous Charles Manson and his followers. In this article, we delve into the details of this remarkable and harrowing event and how it shaped Trujillo’s perspective on life.
A Dark Chapter in American History
The Manson Family, a cult led by the charismatic but deranged Charles Manson, is infamous for its brutal and horrific crimes during the late 1960s. In 1969, they committed a series of gruesome murders, including the Tate-LaBianca murders, which sent shockwaves through American society. Charles Manson and several of his followers were arrested, tried, and convicted for their heinous acts.
Trujillo, who was only six years old at the time of the above-mentioned incident, said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET):”Charlie Manson just had gotten arrested. [I am] in Hawthorne, California. I’m staying at my grandma’s house. My cousin Greg and my cousin Roman — Greg‘s a couple of years younger than me and Roman‘s my age — and my dad, we were… For some reason, my grandparents were out at an event or something and weren’t in the house. The gun shop, the army surplus shop around the corner on Hawthorne Boulevard, was robbed. And basically, the Manson family had this grand scheme. You can check it out on the Internet. They were gonna rob the gun store and get their ammo and everything, and they were gonna go to [the Los Angeles airport] LAX, and the plan was hijack a 747 and demand that Charlie gets sent to them, and they’re gonna take this plane to God knows where. This is what they were thinking. Obviously, the plan didn’t work. Cops show up. There’s a shootout. We’re hearing gunshots, the whole deal. All of a sudden you get the ghetto birds, and they’re flying around. They’re talking through their kind of intercom, whatever they got going up there: ‘Everybody, take cover,’ whatever. And so my dad turns off all the lights. We’re hiding in the shower. And it was really eerie. It was kinda like that scene in ‘Close Encounters’ where you see the light come through the windows.”
He continued: “So, basically between the ghetto birds, the helicopters and the cops shining these bright flashlights, my dad at one point opened the door to see what was going on, and they were, like, ‘Get the fuck back in the house now!’ Like that. So, one of the Manson members went to the carport, because it was an apartment complex — one of those kind of Hawthorne-style seven-unit places. Not huge. And he was hiding back there in the carport. So, of course, they surrounded our place. And my grandparents, they owned the unit. So, they had the larger unit. And, yeah, the dude was hiding back there. And luckily, there was a laundry room that kind of separated the unit that we were in. So he would have gone into the window of the laundry room, which could have been the window of the house and taken hostage.”
Trujillo added: “And so they arrested about three of them… But the plan was that they were gonna hijack a plane at LAX and they were gonna get Charliereleased and take hostages and they were gonna fly to — I don’t know — Mexico or something.”
Arrested for the robbery were Mary Brunner, Catherine Share, Lawrence Edward Bailey, Dennis Rice and Kenneth Como. A sixth suspect, Charles Lovett, was later taken into custody.
The firearm heist was reportedly foiled by a silent alarm, followed by police cars and a shootout leaving Brunner, Share and Bailey with gunshot wounds.
