Former cult leader and serial murder convict Charles Manson died at a hospital in California’s Bakersfield city on Sunday, celebrity news website TMZ reported. Manson’s sister Debra said prison officials told her he died at 8.13 pm. He was 83.

Manson was the mastermind of the 1969 serial murders of actor Sharon Tate and six others in California. In 1971, he was convicted of conspiracy to commit the murders and served multiple life sentences since, according to TMZ.

Manson, prior to the murders, had become a cult leader who believed that an apocalyptic race war called “Helter Skelter” was imminent. He even recruited a few dozen followers from San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district, many of them young women and runaways, the Hollywood Reporter said.

On August 9, 1969, Manson sent his devotees to Sharon Tate’s rented home in Beverly Hills. They believed that the race war would be initiated if she and others were murdered. Tate, who was nearly nine-months pregnant, was stabbed 16 times. Coffee heiress Abigail Folger, celebrity hairstylist Jay Sebring and two others also were stabbed to death. On August 10, Manson’s followers went to the house of grocer Leno LaBianca and his wife Rosemary, and killed them too.