Video: 'Charles Watson aka: Tex Serial Killer in the Manson Family returned Los Angeles September 11, 1970'

(Tuesday, October 12, 1971, announced at 4:10 p.m. PDT) — Charles “Tex” Watson, 25, was found guilty this afternoon on seven counts of first-degree murder and one count of conspiracy to murder in the first degree by a jury in Los Angeles in the Tate-La Bianca murders.

Watson, whose deterioration from a strapping, handsome high school hero and university fraternity man to a drug-using, skeletal member of a murder cult was detailed during the 10-week trial, accepted the verdict without visible emotion.

As Clerk John Pappas read the long, eight-count verdict in Superior Judge Adolph Alexander’s court, Watson seemed to be listening but not really comprehending the importance of the six-man, six woman jury’s judgment.

Video: 'Inside Charles Manson's crazed cult | 60 Minutes Australia'

Watson was tried separately from cult leader Charles Manson and three of his “Manson Family” followers (Patricia Krenwinkel, Susan Atkins and Leslie Van Houten) because his lawyers had fought extradition from his native Texas, to where he fled after the murder spree.

Manson, Krenwinkel, Atkins and Van Houten were convicted and sentenced to die earlier this year for their involvement in the August 1969 two-night murder spree that claimed the lives of Abigail Folger, Wojciech Frykowski, Steven Parent, actress Sharon Tate Polanski, who was eight months pregnant, Jay Sebring, Leno LaBianca and Rosemary LaBianca.

One week later after Watson’s conviction, the same jury took only two and a half hours to determine that he was sane. On Oct. 21, 1971, Watson was sentenced to death. He arrived on California’s death row on Nov. 17, 1971.

Watson would escape execution when the California Supreme Court’s People v. Anderson decision resulted in the invalidation of all death sentences imposed in California prior to 1972.