BEFORE WE BEGIN

this chapter is a bit long. The first part will be just about Sharon Tate and her death as she was the most well known victim. The second part will be about Charles Manson and the Manson Family.

[OVERVIEW]

Sharon Marie Tate Polanski was born on January 24 of 1943. In the 60's she played in small television roles before appearing in major movies. She was known as one of Hollywood's most promising newcomers.

On January 20, 1968, Tate married Roman Polanski, her director and co-star in 1967's The Fearless Vampire Killers.

[DEATH & INVESTIGATION]

On August 8, 1969 Tate was just a few weeks from giving birth to the couples first son.

She and two friends were at her home as she complained to them about how her husband hadn't returned him from London yet.

Later in the afternoon her little sister Debra called her asking if she could spend the night. Tate told her not that night and maybe another one.

Tate dined at her favorite restaurant, El Coyote Cafe, with Jay Sebring, Wojciech Frykowski, and Abigail Folger, returning at about 10:30 p.m.

The next morning Tate's housekeeper found the bodies and Tate and her friends. A little after midnight they had been brutally murdered.

Police arrived at the scene to find the body of a young man, later identified as Steven Parent, shot dead in his car, which was in the driveway. Inside the house, the bodies of Tate and Jay Sebring were found in the living room; a long rope tied around each of their necks connected them. On the front lawn lay the bodies of Wojciech Frykowski and Abigail Folger. All of the victims, except Parent, had been stabbed numerous times. The coroner's report for Tate noted that she had been stabbed sixteen times, and that "five of the wounds were in and of themselves fatal".

Police took the only survivor at the address, the property's caretaker William Garretson, in for questioning. Garretson lived in the guest house that was located on the property, but a short distance from the house, and not immediately visible. As the first suspect, Garretson was questioned and submitted to a polygraph test. Garretson stated that Parent had visited him at approximately 11:30 p.m. and left shortly thereafter. Garretson informed police that he had no involvement in the murders and did not know anything that could help the investigation. Police accepted his explanation and he was released.

Polanski was informed of the murders and returned to Los Angeles where police, unable to determine a motive, questioned him about his wife and friends. On Wednesday, August 13, Tate was interred in the Holy Cross Cemetery, Culver City, California, with her son, Paul Richard Polanski (named posthumously for Polanski's and Tate's fathers), in her arms. Sebring's funeral took place later the same day; the funerals were scheduled several hours apart to allow mutual friends to attend both.

Life magazine devoted a lengthy article to the murders and featured photographs of the crime scenes. Polanski was interviewed for the article and allowed himself to be photographed at the entrance of the house, next to the front door with the word "PIG"—written in Tate's blood—still visible. Widely criticized for his actions, he argued that he wanted to know who was responsible and was willing to shock the magazine's readers in the hope that someone would come forward with information.

Polanski later stated that, in the months following the murders, he suspected various friends and associates, and his paranoia subsided only when the killers were arrested. Newspapers claimed that many Hollywood stars were moving out of the city, while others were reported to have installed security systems in their homes.

In September of 1969 members of the Manson Family were arrested on unrelated charges but it ended up giving police a breakthrough in the Tate case.

They explained that the motive for the murders was not the identity of the victims, but rather the house at that address, which had previously been rented to record producer Terry Melcher, an acquaintance of Manson.

[AFTERMATH]

In the early 1980s, Stephen Kay, who had worked for the prosecution in the trial, became alarmed that Manson Family member Leslie Van Houten had gathered 900 signatures on a petition for her parole. He contacted Tate's mother, Doris, who said she was sure she could do better, and the two mounted a publicity campaign, collecting over 350,000 signatures supporting the denial of parole. Van Houten had been seen as the most likely of the killers to be paroled; following Kay's and Tate's efforts, her petition was denied. Doris Tate became a vocal advocate for victims' rights and, in discussing her daughter's murder and meeting other crime victims, assumed the role of counselor, using her profile to encourage public discussion and criticism of the corrections system.

For the rest of her life, she strongly campaigned against the parole of each of the Manson killers, and worked closely with other victims of violent crime. Several times, she confronted Charles Manson at parole hearings, explaining, "I feel that Sharon has to be represented in that hearing room. If they're (the killers) pleading for their lives, then I have to be there representing her." She addressed Tex Watson directly during her victim impact statement in 1984: "What mercy, sir, did you show my daughter when she was begging for her life? What mercy did you show my daughter when she said, 'Give me two weeks to have my baby and then you can kill me'? ... When will Sharon come up for parole? Will these seven victims and possibly more walk out of their graves if you get paroled? You cannot be trusted."

Roman Polanski gave away all of his possessions after the murders, unable to bear any reminders of the period that he called "the happiest I ever was in my life." He remained in Los Angeles until the killers were arrested. After, he fled to Europe to evade criminal charges of raping a 13-year-old girl.

He tried to explain his anguish after the murder of his wife and unborn son in his 1984 autobiography Roman by Polanski, saying "Since Sharon's death, and despite appearances to the contrary, my enjoyment of life has been incomplete. In moments of unbearable personal tragedy some people find solace in religion. In my case the opposite happened. Any religious faith I had was shattered by Sharon's murder. It reinforced my faith in the absurd."

In July 2005, Polanski successfully sued Vanity Fair magazine for libel after it alleged that he had tried to seduce a woman on his way to Tate's funeral. Among the witnesses who testified on his behalf were Debra Tate and Mia Farrow. Describing Polanski immediately after Tate's death, Farrow testified, "Of this I can be sure—of his frame of mind when we were there, of what we talked about, of his utter sense of loss, of despair and bewilderment and shock and love—a love that he had lost." At the conclusion of the case, Polanski read a statement, saying in part, "The memory of my late wife Sharon Tate was at the forefront of my mind in bringing this action."

[MANSON FAMILY]

The Manson Family was a cult created in the late 1960's and lead by Charles Manson. The group consisted of almost 100 followers who was drawn to Charles and his lifestyle. Most of the group members were young women from middle-class backgrounds.

[CHARLES MANSON]

Charles was in prison for petty crimes but was released in 1967. Manson received permission to move to San Francisco, where, with the help of a prison acquaintance, he moved into an apartment in Berkeley. In prison, bank robber Alvin Karpis had taught him to play the steel guitar. Living mostly by begging, he soon got to know Mary Brunner, a 23-year-old graduate of the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Brunner was working as a library assistant at the University of California, Berkeley, and Manson moved in with her. According to a second-hand account, he overcame her resistance to his bringing other women in to live with them. Before long, they were sharing Brunner's residence with 18 other women.

Vincent Bugliosi said in his book Helter Skelter that Manson appeared to have borrowed philosophically from the Process Church of the Final Judgment, whose members believed Satan would become reconciled to Christ, and they would come together at the end of the world to judge humanity. He soon had the first of his groups of followers, which have been called the Manson Family, most of them female.

Manson taught his followers that they were the reincarnation of the original Christians, and that the Romans were the establishment. He strongly implied that he was Christ; he often told a story envisioning himself on the cross with the nails in his feet and hands. Sometime around 1967, he began using the alias "Charles Willis Manson." He often said it very slowly ("Charles's Will Is Man's Son")—implying that his will was the same as that of the Son of Man.

In 1967 Brunner had become pregnant by Manson and, on April 15, 1968, gave birth to a son she named Valentine Michael in a condemned house in Topanga Canyon, assisted during the birth by several of the young women from the Family. Brunner acquired a number of aliases and nicknames, including: "Marioche", "Och", "Mother Mary", "Mary Manson", "Linda Dee Manson" and "Christine Marie Euchts".

Actor Al Lewis, who had Manson babysit his children on a couple of occasions, described him as "a nice guy when I knew him". Through Phil Kaufman, Manson got an introduction to young Universal Studios producer Gary Stromberg, then working on a film adaptation of the life of Jesus set in modern America with a black Jesus and southern redneck "Romans". Stromberg thought Manson made interesting suggestions about what Jesus might do in a situation, seeming strangely attuned to the role; to illustrate the place of women he had one of his women kiss his feet, but then kissed hers in return. At the beach one day, Stromberg watched while Manson preached against a materialistic outlook only to be questioned about his well-furnished bus. Nonchalant, he tossed the bus keys to the doubter who promptly drove it away while Manson watched apparently unconcerned. According to Stromberg, Manson had a dynamic personality with an ability to read a person's weaknesses and "play" them.

Trying to co-opt an influential individual from a motorcycle gang by granting him access to "Family" women, Manson claimed to be sexually pathetic and convinced the biker that his outsized endowment was all that kept the "Family" females at Spahn ranch. On one occasion, the enraged father of a runaway girl who had joined the "Family" pointed a shotgun at Manson and told him he was about to die. Manson quietly invited him in.

[MURDERS]

The events that would culminate in the murders were set in motion in late spring 1968, when Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys picked up two hitchhiking Manson women, Patricia Krenwinkel and Ella Jo Bailey, and brought them to his Pacific Palisades house for a few hours.

Returning home in the early hours of the following morning from a night recording session, Wilson was greeted in the driveway of his own residence by Manson, who emerged from the house. Uncomfortable, Wilson asked the stranger whether he intended to hurt him. Assuring him he had no such intent, Manson began kissing Wilson's feet. Inside the house, Wilson discovered 12 strangers, mostly women.

Over the next few months, as the number of women in Wilson's house doubled, the Family members who made themselves part of his Sunset Boulevard household cost him approximately $100,000. This included a large medical bill for treatment of their gonorrhea and $21,000 for the accidental destruction of his uninsured car, which they borrowed. Wilson would sing and talk with Manson, while the women were treated as servants to them both.

Wilson paid for studio time to record songs written and performed by Manson. Wilson introduced Manson to entertainment business acquaintances. These included Gregg Jakobson, Terry Melcher and Rudi Altobelli (the last of whom owned the house he would soon rent to actress Sharon Tate and her husband Roman Polanski).

Manson established a base for the group at Spahn's Movie Ranch, not far from Topanga Canyon Boulevard, in August 1968, after Wilson's manager evicted the Family. The entire Family then relocated to the ranch. The ranch had been a television and movie set for Western productions. However, by the late 1960s, the buildings had deteriorated and the ranch was earning money primarily by selling horseback rides.

Family members did helpful work around the grounds. Also, Manson ordered the Family's women, including Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, to occasionally have sex with the nearly blind, 80-year-old owner, George Spahn. The women also acted as seeing-eye guides for Spahn. In exchange, Spahn allowed Manson and his group to live at the ranch for free. Squeaky acquired her nickname because she often squeaked when Spahn pinched her thigh.

Charles Watson soon joined the group at Spahn's ranch. Watson, a small-town Texan who had quit college and moved to California, met Manson at Dennis Wilson's house. Watson gave Wilson a ride while Wilson was hitchhiking after his car was wrecked.

Spahn nicknamed Watson "Tex" because of his pronounced Texan drawl.

[CROWE SHOOTING]

On May 18, 1969, Terry Melcher visited Spahn Ranch to hear Manson and the women sing. Melcher arranged a subsequent visit, not long thereafter, during which he brought a friend who possessed a mobile recording unit, but Melcher did not record the group.

By June, Manson was telling the Family they might have to show blacks how to start "Helter Skelter". When Manson tasked Watson with obtaining money, supposedly intended to help the Family prepare for the conflict, Watson defrauded a black drug dealer named Bernard "Lotsapoppa" Crowe. Crowe responded with a threat to wipe out everyone at Spahn Ranch. Manson countered on July 1, 1969, by shooting Crowe at his Hollywood apartment.

Manson's belief that he had killed Crowe was seemingly confirmed by a news report of the discovery of the dumped body of a Black Panther in Los Angeles. Although Crowe was not a member of the Black Panthers, Manson concluded he had been and expected retaliation from the Panthers. He turned Spahn Ranch into a defensive camp, with night patrols of armed guards. "If we'd needed any more proof that Helter Skelter was coming down very soon, this was it," Tex Watson would later write. "Blackie was trying to get at the chosen ones."

[HINMAN MURDER]

Gary Allen Hinman was a music teacher and PhD student at UCLA. He had been described as a "kind, gentle soul" who would often open his house up to those needing a place to stay. At some point in the late 1960s, he befriended members of the Manson Family, with some staying at his home on occasion.

Manson was under the impression that Hinman had considerable stocks and bonds and owned his property. Believing that he was wealthy, Manson sent Family member Bobby Beausoleil along with Mary Brunner and Susan Atkins to Hinman's home on July 25, 1969, to convince Gary to join the Family, which included turning over the assets Manson thought Hinman had inherited. The three held the uncooperative Hinman hostage for two days, during which Manson showed up with a sword to slash his ear. After that, Beausoleil stabbed Hinman to death, ostensibly on Manson's instruction. Before leaving the Topanga Canyon residence, Beausoleil, or one of the women, used Hinman's blood to write "Political piggy" on the wall and to draw a panther paw, a Black Panther symbol.

In magazine interviews of 1981 and 1998–1999, Beausoleil would say he went to Hinman's to recover money paid to Hinman for drugs that had supposedly been bad; he added that Brunner and Atkins, unaware of his intent, went along idly, merely to visit Hinman. On the other hand, Atkins, in her 1977 autobiography, wrote that Manson directly told Beausoleil, Brunner, and her to go to Hinman's and get the supposed inheritance of $21,000. She said Manson had told her privately, two days earlier, that, if she wanted to "do something important", she could kill Hinman and get his money. Beausoleil was arrested on August 6, 1969, after he had been caught driving Hinman's car. Police found the murder weapon in the tire well. Two days later, Manson told Family members at Spahn Ranch, "Now is the time for Helter Skelter."

[LENO AND ROSEMARY MURDERS]

The next night of August 9, 1969, six Family members—Leslie Van Houten, Steve "Clem" Grogan, and the four from the previous night—drove out on Manson's orders. Displeased by the panic of the victims at Cielo Drive, Manson accompanied the six, "to show them how to do it." After a few hours' ride, in which he considered a number of murders and even attempted one of them, Manson gave Kasabian directions that brought the group to 3301 Waverly Drive. This was the home of supermarket executive Leno LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary, a dress shop co-owner.

Manson roused the sleeping Leno LaBianca from the couch at gunpoint and had Watson bind his hands with a leather thong. After Rosemary was brought briefly into the living room from the bedroom, Watson followed Manson's instructions to cover the couple's heads with pillowcases. He bound them in place with lamp cords. Manson left, sending Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten into the house with instructions that the couple be killed.

Before leaving Spahn Ranch, Watson had complained to Manson of the inadequacy of the previous night's weapons. Now, sending the women from the kitchen to the bedroom to which Rosemary LaBianca had been returned, he went to the living room and began stabbing Leno LaBianca with a chrome-plated bayonet. The first thrust went into the man's throat.

Sounds of a scuffle in the bedroom drew Watson there to discover Mrs. LaBianca keeping the women at bay by swinging the lamp tied to her neck. After subduing her with several stabs of the bayonet, he returned to the living room and resumed attacking Leno, whom he stabbed a total of 12 times with the bayonet. When he had finished, Watson carved "WAR" on the man's exposed abdomen.

Returning to the bedroom, Watson found Krenwinkel stabbing Rosemary LaBianca with a knife from the LaBianca kitchen. Heeding Manson's instruction to make sure each of the women played a part, Watson told Van Houten to stab Mrs. LaBianca too. She did, stabbing her approximately 16 times in the back and the exposed buttocks. At trial, Van Houten would claim, uncertainly, that Rosemary LaBianca was dead when she stabbed her. Evidence showed that many of Mrs. LaBianca's 41 stab wounds had, in fact, been inflicted post-mortem.

While Watson cleaned off the bayonet and showered, 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.

Meanwhile, hoping for a double crime, Manson had gone on to direct Kasabian to drive to the Venice home of an actor acquaintance of hers, another "piggy". Depositing the other three Family members who had departed Spahn with him that evening at the man's apartment building, Manson drove back to Spahn Ranch, leaving them and the LaBianca killers to hitchhike home. Kasabian thwarted this murder by deliberately knocking on the wrong apartment door and waking a stranger. As the group abandoned the murder plan and left, Atkins defecated in the stairwell.

[TRIAL]

The trial began June 15, 1970. The prosecution's main witness was Kasabian, who, along with Manson, Atkins, and Krenwinkel, had been charged with seven counts of murder and one of conspiracy. Since Kasabian, by all accounts, had not participated in the killings, she was granted immunity in exchange for testimony that detailed the nights of the crimes. Originally, a deal had been made with Atkins in which the prosecution agreed not to seek the death penalty against her in exchange for her grand jury testimony on which the indictments were secured; once Atkins repudiated that testimony, the deal was withdrawn. Because Van Houten had participated only in the LaBianca killings, she was charged with two counts of murder and one of conspiracy.

Originally, Judge William Keene had reluctantly granted Manson permission to act as his own attorney. Because of Manson's conduct, including violations of a gag order and submission of "outlandish" and "nonsensical" pretrial motions, the permission was withdrawn before the trial's start. Manson filed an affidavit of prejudice against Keene, who was replaced by Judge Charles H. Older. On Friday, July 24, the first day of testimony, Manson appeared in court with an X carved into his forehead. He issued a statement that he was "considered inadequate and incompetent to speak or defend [him]self"—and had "X'd [him]self from [the establishment's] world."

Over the following weekend, the female defendants duplicated the mark on their own foreheads, as did most Family members within another day or so. Years later, Manson carved the X into a swastika.

The prosecution argued the triggering of "Helter Skelter" was Manson's main motive. The crime scene's bloody White Album references (pig, rise, helter skelter) were correlated with testimony about Manson predictions that the murders blacks would commit at the outset of Helter Skelter would involve the writing of "pigs" on walls in victims' blood.

Testimony that Manson had said "now is the time for Helter Skelter" was supplemented with Kasabian's testimony that, on the night of the LaBianca murders, Manson considered discarding Rosemary LaBianca's wallet on the street of a black neighborhood. Having obtained the wallet in the LaBianca house, he "wanted a black person to pick it up and use the credit cards so that the people, The Establishment, would think it was some sort of an organized group that killed these people." On his direction, Kasabian had hidden it in the women's restroom of a service station near a black area. "I want to show blackie how to do it," Manson had said as the Family members drove away after leaving the LaBianca house.

During the trial, Family members loitered near the entrances and corridors of the courthouse. To keep them out of the courtroom proper, the prosecution subpoenaed them as prospective witnesses, who would not be able to enter while others were testifying. When the group established itself in vigil on the sidewalk, some members wore sheathed hunting knives that, although in plain view, were carried legally. Each of them was also identifiable by the X on his or her forehead.

Some Family members attempted to dissuade witnesses from testifying. Prosecution witnesses Paul Watkins and Juan Flynn were both threatened; Watkins was badly burned in a suspicious fire in his van.  Former Family member Barbara Hoyt, who had overheard Susan Atkins describing the Tate murders to Family member Ruth Ann Moorehouse, agreed to accompany the latter to Hawaii. There, Moorehouse allegedly gave her a hamburger spiked with several doses of LSD. Found sprawled on a Honolulu curb in a drugged semi-stupor, Hoyt was taken to the hospital, where she did her best to identify herself as a witness in the Tate–LaBianca murder trial. Before the incident, Hoyt had been a reluctant witness; after the attempt to silence her, her reticence disappeared

On August 4, despite precautions taken by the court, Manson flashed the jury a Los Angeles Times front page whose headline was "Manson Guilty, Nixon Declares". This was a reference to a statement made the previous day when U.S. President Richard Nixon had decried what he saw as the media's glamorization of Manson. Voir dired by Judge Charles Older, the jurors contended that the headline had not influenced them. The next day, the female defendants stood up and said in unison that, in light of Nixon's remark, there was no point in going on with the trial.

On October 5, Manson was denied the court's permission to question a prosecution witness whom defense attorneys had declined to cross-examine. Leaping over the defense table, Manson attempted to attack the judge. Wrestled to the ground by bailiffs, he was removed from the courtroom with the female defendants, who had subsequently risen and begun chanting in Latin. Thereafter, Older allegedly began wearing a revolver under his robes.

[NOTE]

I've had this done since April 20, but I've been forgetting to publish it sksksks.