A silver lining of beloved stars passing on is we often hear stories about them we’d never heard before. Usually these stories are about meeting fans and being great people — this one is quite a bit different…

Angela Lansbury is known best either for being one of the queens of the cozy mystery on the longrunning Murder, She Wrote or for being a golden-voiced Disney staple in movies like Bedknobs and Broomsticks and Beauty and the Beast. Neither of these public images would lead you to believe she ever had anything to do with the most notorious murders of the 20th century, and yet… After her passing this week a tweet went viral revealing just that!

Photos: Stars We Lost In 2020

A writer named Christopher Moloney shared:

“Angela Lansbury told a story about her daughter falling under the spell of a Hollywood deadbeat. He would pick the girl up from school and get her to steal money and food from her parents for him. Worried, Lansbury moved the entire family to Ireland. The guy was Charles Manson.”

Angela Lansbury told a story about her daughter falling under the spell of a Hollywood deadbeat. He would pick the girl up from school and get her to steal money and food from her parents for him. Worried, Lansbury moved the entire family to Ireland. The guy was Charles Manson.

— Christopher Moloney (@Moloknee) October 11, 2022

Wait, WHAT?!?

The craziest thing about this story is that it’s 100% true.

Lansbury did indeed reveal in a 2014 interview with DailyMail.com that she and her family had a run-in with Charles Manson — something which got more terrifying after their escape!

She and husband Peter Shaw were living in the hills near Malibu in the 1960s when their teenage children, Anthony and Deidre, fell into some scary habits — Deidre with some scarier people! The actress recalled:

“It started with cannabis but moved on to heroin. There were factions up in the hills above Malibu that were dedicated to deadly pursuits. It pains me to say it but, at one stage, Deidre was in with a crowd led by Charles Manson. She was one of many youngsters who knew him – and they were fascinated. He was an extraordinary character, charismatic in many ways, no question about it.”

Angela took drastic measures most parents wouldn’t have. She moved the entire family away. And not just houses, she moved CONTINENTS!

“I said to Peter, ‘We have to leave.’ So we upped sticks and moved the family to a house I found in County Cork. I was drawn to Ireland because it was the birthplace of my mother and it was also somewhere my children wouldn’t be exposed to any more bad influences. I still have a house there which I try and visit at least once a year. So I refused all work for a year and simply kept house. I bought Elizabeth David’s books and learnt how to cook properly. It was a wonderful time in my life.”

Obviously most folks don’t have the luxury of quitting work for a whole year. But even those who do rarely give it all up just to protect their kids. And Angela’s sacrifice paid off. She explained:

“Anthony pulled right out of his bad habits quite quickly. It took Deidre (now aged 60) a little longer but she finally got married and she and her husband now live in Los Angeles, where they run their own Italian restaurant.”

Amazing. Deidre could have ended up in prison along with Manson’s other followers, who in 1969 were talked into killing seven people. They were in their teens and early 20s, too. Thankfully for her sake, her mother was the incomparable Angela Lansbury. #RIP

[Image via FayesVision/WENN.]