Tate–LaBianca murders

The Tate–LaBianca murders were perpetrated by members of the Manson Family in Los Angeles, California who murdered five people on August 9–10, 1969, and two more the following evening.

On the night of August 8–9, four members of the Manson Family invaded the rented home of actress Sharon Tate and film director Roman Polanski at 10050 Cielo Drive in Los Angeles. They murdered Tate, who was 8½ months pregnant, along with three friends and an 18-year-old visitor who was slain as he was leaving the home. Polanski was not present on the night of the murders, as he was working on a film in Europe.

The murders were committed by Tex Watson, Susan Atkins, and Patricia Krenwinkel under the direction of Charles Manson. Watson drove Atkins, Krenwinkel, and Linda Kasabian from Spahn Ranch to the residence on Cielo Drive. Manson was a would-be musician who had tried to get a recording contract with record producer Terry Melcher, who was a previous renter of the house with musician Mark Lindsay and Melcher’s girlfriend Candice Bergen. Melcher had snubbed Manson, leaving him disgruntled.

Manson was allegedly displeased with the panic of the murder victims, so he took the four murderers plus Leslie Van Houten and Steve “Clem” Grogan on a drive the following night “to show them how to do it”.^{:176–184, 258–269} He considered a number of murders and attempted one over the course of the next few hours,^:258–269 then he ordered Kasabian to drive the group to 3301 Waverly Drive. This was the home of supermarket executive Leno LaBianca and his wife Rosemary, co-owner of a dress shop.^{:22–25, 42–48} The house was located in the Los Feliz section of Los Angeles next door to a house at which Manson and Family members had attended a party the previous year.^{:176–184, 204–210} Manson left his followers there who proceeded to murder both Leno and Rosemary LaBianca in the early morning hours of August 10.

Tate murders

Tate murders
Location	10050 Cielo Drive Los Angeles, California
Coordinates	34°05′38″N 118°25′57″WCoordinates: 34°05′38″N 118°25′57″W
Date	August 8–9, 1969 (51 years, 7 months ago)
Target	Home invasion
Attack type	Serial killing, stabbing
Weapons	.22 caliber Hi-Standard “Buntline Special” revolver, clasp-type Buck knives
Deaths	6
Victims	Abigail Folger Wojciech Frykowski Steven Parent Jay Sebring Sharon Tate Paul Richard Polanski (Fetus)
Perpetrators	Susan Atkins Patricia Krenwinkel Charles “Tex” Watson

On the night of August 8, 1969, Tex Watson took Susan Atkins, Linda Kasabian, and Patricia Krenwinkel to “that house where Melcher used to live”, as Manson had instructed him, to “totally destroy” everyone in it, and to do it “as gruesome as you can”.^:463–468 Manson told the women to do as Watson instructed them.^{:176–184, 258–269} Krenwinkel was one of the early Family members and had met Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys when he picked her up hitchhiking.^:250–253

The occupants of the house at 10050 Cielo Drive that evening were movie actress Sharon Tate, who was 8½ months pregnant and the wife of film director Roman Polanski; her friend and former lover Jay Sebring, a noted hairstylist; Polanski’s friend and aspiring screenwriter Wojciech Frykowski; and Frykowski’s girlfriend Abigail Folger, heiress to the Folgers coffee fortune and daughter of Peter Folger.^:28–38 Polanski was in Europe working on a film project. Music producer Quincy Jones was a friend of Sebring; he had planned to join him that evening but did not go. Sebring had invited Steve McQueen to the party at Tate’s house on the night of the murders; McQueen said that he invited his girlfriend to come along but she suggested an intimate night at home. This specific house was chosen because both Watson and Manson had been there on at least one other occasion, and Watson was familiar with the layout.

The murder team arrived at Cielo Drive just past midnight on August 9, 1969. Watson climbed a telephone pole near the entrance gate and cut the phone line to the house. The murderers backed their car to the bottom of the hill that led to the estate and walked back up to the house. They thought that the gate might be electrified or equipped with an alarm, so they climbed a brushy embankment to the right of the gate and entered the grounds.^:176–184 Headlights approached them from within the angled property, and Watson ordered the women to lie in the bushes. He stepped out and ordered the approaching driver to halt. Steven Parent had been visiting the property’s caretaker William Garretson, who lived in the guest house. Watson leveled a .22-caliber revolver at Parent, and the frightened youth begged him not to hurt him, claiming that he would not say anything. Watson lunged at Parent with a knife, giving him a defensive slash wound on the palm of his hand that severed tendons and tore the boy’s watch off his wrist, then he shot him four times in the chest and abdomen, killing him. Watson ordered the women to help push the car farther up the driveway.^:22–25

Watson next cut the screen of a window, then told Kasabian to keep watch down by the gate; she walked over to Parent’s car and waited.^{:258–269:176–184} Watson removed the screen, entered through the window, and let Atkins and Krenwinkel in through the front door.^:176–184 He whispered to Atkins and awoke Frykowski who was sleeping on the living room couch. Watson kicked him in the head, and Frykowski asked him who he was and what he was doing there. Watson replied, “I’m the devil, and I’m here to do the devil’s business.”^:176–184

On Watson’s direction, Atkins found the house’s three other occupants with Krenwinkel’s help^{:176–184, 297–300} and forced them to the living room. Watson began to tie Tate and Sebring together by their necks with rope which he had brought, and he slung it over one of the living room’s ceiling beams. Sebring protested the murderers’ rough treatment of the pregnant Tate, so Watson shot him. Folger was taken momentarily back to her bedroom for her purse, and she gave the murderers $70. Watson then stabbed Sebring seven times.^:28–38

Frykowski’s hands had been bound with a towel, but he freed himself and began struggling with Atkins, who stabbed at his legs with a knife. He fought his way out the front door and onto the porch, but Watson caught up with him, struck him over the head with the gun multiple times, stabbed him repeatedly, and shot him twice.

Kasabian had heard “horrifying sounds” and moved toward the house from her position in the driveway. She told Atkins that someone was coming in an attempt to stop the murders.^:258–269 Inside the house, Folger escaped from Krenwinkel and fled out a bedroom door to the pool area.^{:341–344, 356–361} Krenwinkel pursued her and caught her on the front lawn where she stabbed her and tackled her to the ground. Watson then helped finish her off; her assailants stabbed her a total of 28 times.^:28–38 Frykowski struggled across the lawn, but Watson murdered him with a final flurry of stabbing. Frykowski suffered 51 stab wounds, and had also been struck 13 times in the head with the butt of Watson’s gun, which bent the barrel and broke off one side of the gun grip, which was recovered at the scene.^{:28–38, 258–269} In the house, Tate pleaded to be allowed to live long enough to give birth, and offered herself as a hostage in an attempt to save the life of her unborn child, but both Atkins and Watson stabbed Tate 16 times, killing her.^:28–38 Manson had told the women to “leave a sign—something witchy”, so Atkins wrote “pig” on the front door in Tate’s blood.^{:84–90, 176–184}

LaBianca murders

Manson took the four murderers plus Leslie Van Houten and Steve “Clem” Grogan for a drive the following night. He was displeased with the panic and flight of the victims in the previous night’s murders, and he was taking those six followers out “to show them how to do it”.^{:176–184, 258–269} He considered a number of murders during the next few hours’ ride and attempted one,^:258–269 then told Kasabian to drive to 3301 Waverly Drive. This was the home of supermarket executive Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, co-owner of a dress shop,^{:22–25, 42–48} located in the Los Feliz section of Los Angeles next door to a house where Manson and Family members had attended a party the previous year.^{:176–184, 204–210}

According to Atkins and Kasabian, Manson disappeared up the driveway and returned to say that he had tied up the house’s occupants. He then sent Watson up with Krenwinkel and Van Houten.^{:176–184, 258–269} Watson states in his autobiography that Manson went up alone, then returned to take him up to the house with him. Manson pointed out a sleeping man through a window, and the two entered through the unlocked back door. Watson added at trial that he “went along with” the women’s account because it made him “look that much less responsible.” As Watson related it, Manson roused the sleeping Leno LaBianca from the couch at gunpoint and had Watson bind his hands with a leather thong. Rosemary was brought into the living room from the bedroom, and Watson followed Manson’s instructions to cover the couple’s heads with pillowcases which he bound in place with lamp cords. Manson left, sending Krenwinkel and Van Houten into the house with instructions that the couple should be killed.^{:176–184, 258–269}

Watson had complained to Manson earlier of the inadequacy of the previous night’s weapons.^:258–269 He sent the women from the kitchen to the bedroom, where Rosemary LaBianca had been returned, while he went to the living room and began stabbing Leno LaBianca with a chrome-plated bayonet. The first thrust went into his throat. Watson heard a scuffle in the bedroom and went in there to discover Rosemary LaBianca keeping the women at bay by swinging the lamp tied to her neck. He stabbed her several times with the bayonet, then returned to the living room and resumed attacking Leno, whom he stabbed a total of 12 times. He then carved the word “WAR” into his abdomen. He then returned to the bedroom and found Krenwinkel stabbing Rosemary LaBianca with a knife from the LaBianca kitchen. Manson had instructed Watson to ensure that each of the women played a part, so he told Van Houten to join in stabbing her. She did, stabbing her approximately 16 times in the back and the exposed buttocks.^{:204–210, 297–300, 341–344} Van Houten claimed at trial^:433 that Rosemary LaBianca was dead when she stabbed her. Evidence showed that many of the 41 stab wounds had, in fact, been inflicted post-mortem.^{:44, 206, 297, 341–42, 380, 404, 406–07, 433} Watson then cleaned off the bayonet and showered, while Krenwinkel wrote “Rise” and “Death to pigs” on the walls and “Healter Skelter” on the refrigerator door, all in LaBianca’s blood. She gave Leno LaBianca 14 puncture wounds with an ivory-handled, two-tined carving fork, which she left jutting out of his stomach. She also planted a steak knife in his throat.^{:176–184, 258–269}

Meanwhile, Manson drove the other three Family members who had departed Spahn with him that evening to the Venice home of an actor. He left them there and drove back to Spahn Ranch, leaving them and the LaBianca killers to hitchhike home.^{:176–184, 258–269} Manson wanted his followers to murder the actor in his apartment, but Kasabian thwarted this murder by deliberately knocking on the wrong apartment door and waking a stranger. The group abandoned the murder plan and left, but Atkins defecated in the stairwell on the way out.^:270–273

Investigation

In initial confessions to cellmates of hers at Sybil Brand Institute, Atkins said she killed Tate.^:84–90 In later statements to her attorney, to prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi, and before a grand jury, Atkins indicated Tate had been stabbed by Tex Watson.^{:163–74, 176–84}

In his 1978 autobiography, Watson said that he had stabbed Tate and that Atkins had never touched her. Since he was aware that the prosecutor, Bugliosi, and the jury, that had tried the other Tate–LaBianca defendants, were convinced Atkins had stabbed Tate, he falsely testified that he did not stab her.

Helter Skelter

After leaving the DA’s office, prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi, jointly with Curt Gentry, wrote a book about the Manson trial called Helter Skelter (1974). The book won an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for the best true crime book of the year. The book was twice adapted as a television film, first in 1976, then later in 2004. As of 2015, Helter Skelter was the best-selling true crime book in publishing history, with more than seven million copies sold.

Aftermath

The five perpetrators – Atkins, Krenwinkel, Manson, Van Houten, and Watson – were each tried and convicted for their roles in the Tate–LaBianca murders. Originally, each defendant received a death sentence. However, in 1972, the Supreme Court of California ruled in People v. Anderson that the state’s then-current death penalty laws were unconstitutional. As a result, the Anderson decision spared the lives of 107 death row inmates in California, including Charles Manson and his four “family members”. Subsequently, the death sentences for each of the five perpetrators convicted in the Tate–LaBianca murders were commuted to life in prison, which – by law – included the possibility of parole.

• Susan Atkins (1948–2009): Atkins remained in prison until her death from brain cancer at age 61 in 2009. At the time of her death, she was California’s longest-serving female inmate. Atkins had been denied parole 14 times, and her request for compassionate release had also been denied.
• Patricia Krenwinkel (born 1947): Imprisoned in 1971, Krenwinkel remains incarcerated. Following the 2009 death of fellow Manson gang member, Susan Atkins, Krenwinkel is now the longest-incarcerated female inmate in the California penal system. She has been denied parole 14 times, most recently in 2017.
• Charles Manson (1934–2017): Manson remained imprisoned until his death from cardiac arrest resulting from respiratory failure and colon cancer on November 19, 2017. He was just a few days past his 83rd birthday, and had spent all but 13 years of his life in some sort of supervised setting (either prison, reformatory or boys’ home). While in prison, Manson had been denied parole 12 times. After 1997, he refused to attend any of his parole hearings.
• Leslie Van Houten (born 1949): Upon her conviction and death sentence in 1971, at the age of 21, Van Houten became the youngest woman ever put on California’s death row, as well as the youngest member of the Manson “Family” convicted of murder. (Her original conviction and death sentence was overturned on appeal. She was later retried and sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole.) Currently incarcerated, Van Houten has been denied parole 22 times, most recently in 2019. At her three most recent parole hearings, Van Houten was approved for parole by the board, but in each case the board’s decision was overturned by California’s governor (first Jerry Brown, most recently by Gavin Newsom).
• Charles “Tex” Watson (born 1945): Watson remains incarcerated. He has been denied parole 17 times, most recently in 2016. While imprisoned, Watson claims that he became a born-again Christian.