Sophia Maddox, a descendant of one of America’s most notorious murderers, has spoken about the lasting effect the revelation has had on her life after learning she was his granddaughter.
Maddox’s world shifted in 2022 following what at first seemed like an ordinary trip to New York City.
After flying home, the now-26-year-old came down with COVID. While that experience was familiar to many people during the pandemic years, it unexpectedly became the trigger for a discovery that would alter how she understood her family forever: her biological grandfather was Charles Manson, the cult leader whose followers were convicted in the 1969 Tate-LaBianca murders in Los Angeles.
Manson died in prison in 2017, but the crimes remain among the most infamous in modern American history and have continued to be revisited in books, films and documentaries. The latest is My Grandfather Charles Manson, which premieres Wednesday, July 22, 2026 on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+ in the U.S., with Disney+ carrying the title internationally.
The case has remained a powerful part of pop culture for decades, even inspiring Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, which revisits the horrifying events surrounding the murders, including the killing of actor and model Sharon Tate.
Discussing how the truth emerged, Maddox said, via People, that it all began with a single test.
“I caught COVID on the plane ride home,” she revealed, noting that she had requested her father, Daniel Arguelles, to take her to get a test done.
During a phone call about that appointment, her father shared something that he himself had only just uncovered.
“It just popped up. He said, ‘I think I found out who my dad is. And if it’s true, it’s really dark,’” Maddox explained.
Arguelles had been raised by his mother and stepfather and grew up without knowing the identity of his biological father. In 2015, he submitted his DNA to a genealogy website in the hope of finding answers.
A year later, he matched with another person connected to the same man.
Still, it was not until that phone conversation that the name was finally spoken aloud.
That man was Charles Manson, who orchestrated two nights of violence in Los Angeles that left Tate, who was heavily pregnant, hairdresser Jay Sebring, heiress Abigail Folger, Wojciech Frykowski, Steven Parent, and business owners Leno and Rosemary LaBianca dead.
“My stomach turned into the most knots I’ve ever felt in my life,” Maddox said of the news. “I just bent over and sobbed.”
The documentary, available on Hulu and on Disney+ in other parts of the world, follows Maddox as she processes the revelation. It documents her effort to understand the truth by speaking with former members of Manson’s so-called family, some of whom were connected to the chain of events that led to the killings.
According to the film, Maddox’s grandmother, Darlene, had a brief relationship with a man she knew as Charlie Dear after meeting him at a bus station when she was 17.
She reportedly kept that secret to herself and died in 2020, having realized who Manson was and how he was connected to her son.
Two years later, Arguelles was matched with Michael Brunner, one of Manson’s three other known sons.
Maddox said of the news: “The biggest gift I gave myself was finding my family’s truth, not just inheriting the sensational ones.”
While Manson himself has been dead for years, the documentary arrives amid continued public fascination with the women, children and descendants left behind in the wake of the murders. It also adds to a long-running wave of true-crime projects that revisit not only the crimes themselves, but the family histories and personal fallout that followed.