The Son of Charles Manson

For much of his life, Matthew Roberts has suffered from night terrors from a young age, sometimes he wakes up covered in spiders and some dreams are so horrific he won't even describe them. He's an aspiring singer/songwriter and at the moment he works as a DJ. People often think they've met Matthew before, there's something familiar about the face, especially around the eyes.

He was adopted by a conservative couple a few days after his birth in Chicago in March 1968. He grew up in Rockford, Illonois and had a normal chilhood. He was involved in football, played drums in a band and went to church every Sunday. After graduating from high school, he moved to Los Angeles and enrolled in the Musicians Institute in Hollywood, fell in love and started thinking about finding his biological parents.

In 1999 he contacted an adoption search agency who found his mother. She was living in a cabin in Wisconsin with no phone, no car and no prospects. The adoption people warned him before the meeting, saying "Your mother is a bit off". At first he thought she was just an eccentric old hippie who had a strange way of talking. Then she told him that her own mother suffered from Munchausen syndrome, where a parent slowly poisons their own child while pretending it's a legitimate illness. After telling him this, she sent him a mystery juice in the mail that had 'things floating in it' - needless to say he didn't drink it.

She told him he was conceived during a hippie orgy in San Francisco in 1967 and while under the influence of LSD she had sex with four men. While pregnant, she continued to use LSD which could explain where those night terrors came from. In 1999 Matthew finally sent her a photo of himself when he was about 30 years old and she recognised the similarity immediately - he was the son of Charles Manson. Since he found out, he's become very ambitious and plans to make money on the name by starting a 'son of Manson' reality show. "Superstardom would be kind of cool" he says.

He's been spending a lot of time supporting his adoptive parents in Chicago as they struggle with old age ill health. They ignore the Manson tale altogether and won't speak about it. He is no longer in touch with his biological mother, her letters became demented and hostile.

In 2002 Matthew wrote to Manson in prison and he responded immediately. In one of his letters he talks about the song he wrote for his son before he was born and as Matthew reads the words, he is obviously moved by them and says "This is a beautiful song, it's really nice poetry and this to me shows some real, you know, love".

But despite the striking resemblance, without a DNA test, it's just another story.

Update 28/4/2012.  DNA testing has just come back - he is not the son of Charles Manson.