'It's like finding out that Hitler is your father'

Charles Manson. Photo / Wikimedia Commons

A US man who discovered that his biological father is convicted murderer Charles Manson said it was like "finding out Adolf Hitler is your father".

Matthew Roberts, a 41-year-old Los Angeles DJ, grew up in Illinois but only found out he was adopted at the age of 10.

When he tracked down his birth mother, Terry, she told him she had been raped by Manson during a drug-fuelled orgy in 1968 after joining his cult.

"I didn't want to believe it. I was frightened and angry. It's like finding out that Adolf Hitler is your father," Roberts told The Sun.

Roberts said the discovery sent him him into a depression, but a few years later he made contact with Manson and the pair began exchanging letters.

"He sends me weird stuff and always signs it with his swastika," he said.

"He's my biological father - I can't help but have some kind of emotional connection. That's the hardest thing of all - feeling love for a monster who raped my mother.

"I don't want to love him, but I don't want to hate him either."

Manson, now 75, is serving a life sentence in California's Corcoran State Prison for the nine murders committed by his "family of followers" in 1969.

- NZHERALD STAFF