Charles “Tex” Watson has lodged a series of complaints with Wikipedia, concerning “errors” about his biographical information. In 1969, Watson was one of four members of Charles Manson’s “family” who broke into the home of Terry Melcher and committed mass murder.
- Charles Manson’s accomplice Tex Watson mailed Wikipedia a handwritten letter demanding edits be done to his page
- The letter came from Mule State Creek Prison in California
- Watson is serving life in prison after being convicted in seven counts of murder and one count of conspiracy to commit murder in 1971
- It is said that Watson printed out a copy of his Wikipedia page and annotated it, marking out what he said were inaccuracies
- He then mailed the letter to Wikipedia, which reveled that most of the edits he was demanding were uninteresting
- He also asked that his early life section be redone to include information about his former jobs working at an opinion packing plant
- He asked his nickname ‘Mad Charlie’ be removed from the info box and replaced with his real name ‘Charles Watson’
- Watson also asked for an entire paragraph relating to a citizen signature drive to oppose parole following the vacated death sentence which became life in prison deleted, he noted that the section is “unsupported by citations”
- William Beutler said in an article on The Wikipedian: “It does seem that Watson has done at least a bit of research into how Wikipedia works: he understands there should be citations, and knows he can lobby for the removal of united material – although it seems more likely someone will just find a news story about the signature drive than remove this detail”
