Mary Brunner

Mary Brunner
Mary Brunner in a 1969 mugshot
Born	Mary Theresa Brunner (1943-12-17) December 17, 1943 (age 73) Eau Claire, Wisconsin
Criminal charge	Armed Robbery, Credit Card Theft, Indecent Exposure
Criminal penalty	Incarcerated at the California Institution for Women
Criminal status	Paroled in 1977
Children	Valentine Michael Manson (son with Charles Manson)
Parent(s)	George and Elsie Brunner

Mary Theresa Brunner (born December 17, 1943) is a former member of the "Manson Family" who was present during the 1969 murder of Gary Allen Hinman, a California musician and UCLA Ph.D. candidate in sociology. Brunner was subsequently arrested for numerous offenses, including credit card theft and armed robbery, and served a prison sentence at the California Institute for Women.

Born and raised in Eau Claire, Wisconsin to George and Elsie Brunner, she moved to California upon graduating from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1965 and took up a job as library assistant at UC Berkeley. She met 33-year-old career criminal Charles Manson, who had been released from Terminal Island prison several weeks prior to their meeting. She let Manson stay at her apartment and, after a period of weeks, the two became lovers, Brunner quit her job, and the two began to drift around California in a van, meeting other young women. During the summer of 1967, Manson impregnated Brunner and on April 15, 1968 she gave birth to a son she named Valentine Michael (nicknamed "Pooh Bear"; Valentine Michael Smith is the name of the protagonist in Robert Heinlein's 1961 novel Stranger In A Strange Land) in a condemned house in Topanga Canyon and was assisted during the birth by several of the young women from the Family. Brunner (like most members of the group) acquired a number of aliases and nicknames, including: "Marioche", "Och", "Mother Mary", "Mary Manson", "Linda Dee Manson" and "Christine Marie Euchts". After arriving in Venice, California, Brunner and Manson met 18-year-old Lynette Fromme and the three began living together in a rented house at 636 Cole Street in San Francisco. Over the course of the following two years, the Family enlarged to include between 20 and 30 individuals living communally; some, like Brunner and Fromme, became ardent followers of Manson, while others drifted in and out of the group. After traveling along the California coast and excursions to Washington, Oregon and Nevada, the ever-growing number of young women and men eventually settled down at Spahn Ranch, an occasional film set operated by an elderly man named George Spahn, near the Los Angeles suburb of Chatsworth. Manson ostensibly based his commune on principles of freedom and love, but he exerted dictatorial control. In addition to having sex with Spahn and others, the female followers were sent to the city on criminal activities such as fraud. Manson also had illegal firearms and played host to a motorcycle gang.