The Tate–LaBianca murders werea series of murders perpetrated by members of the Manson Familyduring August 8–10, 1969, in Los Angeles, California, UnitedStates, under the direction of Tex Watson and Charles Manson. Theperpetrators killed five people on the night of August 8–9:pregnant actress Sharon Tate (whose unborn child died as a result)and her companions Jay Sebring, Abigail Folger, Wojciech Frykowski,and Steven Parent. The following evening, the Family also murderedsupermarket executive Leno LaBianca and his wife Rosemary, at theirhome in the Los Feliz section of Los Angeles.

On the night of August 8–9, fourmembers of the Manson Family: Watson, Susan Atkins, PatriciaKrenwinkel, and Linda Kasabian, drove from Spahn Ranch to 10050 CieloDrive in Benedict Canyon, the home of Sharon Tate and her husband,film director Roman Polanski. The group murdered Tate, who was 8½months pregnant; guests Jay Sebring, a celebrity hairdresser; AbigailFolger, a coffee heiress; her boyfriend Wojciech Frykowski, anaspiring screenwriter; and Steven Parent, an 18-year-old visitor.Polanski was working in Europe on a film. Manson was a cult leaderand aspiring musician who had tried to get a contract with recordproducer Terry Melcher, who had previously rented the house.

The following night, those four women,in addition to Manson, Leslie Van Houten and Steve "Clem"Grogan, committed two more murders. Manson had allegedly said hewould "show them how to do it". After theyconsidered various options, Kasabian drove the group to 3301 WaverlyDrive in the Los Feliz neighborhood, the home of the LaBiancas.Manson left with Atkins, Grogan, and Kasabian. Watson, Krenwinkel,and Van Houten killed the couple in the early morning hours of August10.

Tate murders

On the night of August 8, 1969, TexWatson took Susan Atkins, Linda Kasabian, and Patricia Krenwinkel to10050 Cielo Drive in Benedict Canyon, Los Angeles, California. Watsonclaims Charles Manson had instructed him (Watson) go to the house and"totally destroy" everyone in it, and to do it "asgruesome as you can". Manson told the women to do as Watsoninstructed them.

The occupants of the house at CieloDrive that evening were movie actress Sharon Tate, who was 8½ monthspregnant and the wife of film director Roman Polanski; her friend andformer lover Jay Sebring, a noted celebrity hairstylist; Polanski'sfriend Wojciech Frykowski; and Frykowski's girlfriend Abigail Folger,heiress to the Folgers coffee fortune and daughter of Peter Folger. Also present on the property were William Garretson, the caretaker,and his friend Steven Parent. Polanski was in Europe working on afilm. Music producer Quincy Jones was a friend of Sebring who hadplanned to join him that evening but did not go.

Watson and the three women arrived atCielo Drive just past midnight on August 9, 1969. Watson climbed atelephone pole near the entrance gate and cut the phone line to thehouse. The group backed their car to the bottom of the hill that ledto the estate and walked back up to the house. They thought that thegate might be electrified or equipped with an alarm, so they climbeda brushy embankment to the right of the gate and entered the grounds.Headlights approached them from within the property, and Watsonordered the women to lie in the bushes. He stepped out and orderedthe approaching driver to halt. Steven Parent had been visiting theproperty's caretaker, William Garretson, who lived in the guesthouse. Watson leveled a .22 caliber revolver at Parent, who beggedhim not to hurt him, claiming that he would not say anything. Watsonlunged at Parent with a knife, giving him a defensive slash wound onthe palm of his hand that severed tendons and tore the boy's watchoff his wrist, then shot him four times in the chest and abdomen,killing him in the front seat of his white 1965 AMC Ambassador coupe.Watson ordered the women to help push the car farther up thedriveway.

Watson next cut the screen of a window,then told Kasabian to keep watch down by the gate; she walked over toParent's car and waited. Watson removed the screen, entered throughthe window, and let Atkins and Krenwinkel in through the front door. He whispered to Atkins and awoke Frykowski, who was sleeping on theliving room couch. Watson kicked him in the head, and Frykowski askedhim who he was and what he was doing there. Watson replied, "I'mthe devil, and I'm here to do the devil's business."

On Watson's direction, Atkins found thehouse's three other occupants with Krenwinkel's help  and forcedthem to the living room. Watson began to tie Tate and Sebringtogether by their necks with rope which he had brought, then slung itover one of the living room's ceiling beams. Sebring protested themurderers' rough treatment of the pregnant Tate, so Watson shot him.Folger was taken momentarily back to her bedroom for her purse, andshe gave the murderers $70. Watson then stabbed Sebring seven times.

Frykowski's hands had been bound with atowel, but he freed himself and began struggling with Atkins, whostabbed at his legs with a knife. He fought his way out the frontdoor and onto the porch, but Watson caught up with him, struck himover the head with the gun multiple times, stabbed him repeatedly,and shot him twice.

Kasabian had heard "horrifyingsounds" and moved toward the house from her position in thedriveway. She told Atkins that someone was coming in an attempt tostop the murders. Inside the house, Folger escaped from Krenwinkeland fled out a bedroom door to the pool area.  Krenwinkel pursuedher and caught her on the front lawn where she stabbed her andtackled her to the ground. Watson then helped finish her off; herassailants stabbed her a total of 28 times. Frykowski struggledacross the lawn, but Watson continued to stab him, killing him.Frykowski suffered 51 stab wounds, and had also been struck 13 timesin the head with the butt of Watson's gun, which bent the barrel andbroke off one side of the gun grip, which was recovered at the scene.In the house, Tate pleaded to be allowed to live long enough to givebirth, and offered herself as a hostage in an attempt to save thelife of her unborn child, but both Atkins and Watson stabbed Tate 16times, killing her. According to Watson, Manson had told the women to"leave a sign—something witchy". Atkins wrote"pig" on the front door in Tate's blood. Atkinsclaims she did this to copycat the murder scene of Gary Hinman inorder to get Manson Family member Bobby Beausoleil out of jail, whowas in custody for the murder.  Beausoleil wrote "politicalpiggy" in Hinman's blood on his wall after stabbing him todeath.

LaBianca murders

The four murderers plus Manson, LeslieVan Houten and Clem Grogan went for a drive the following night.Manson was allegedly displeased with the panic and flight of thevictims in the previous night's murders. He told Kasabian to drive toa house at 3301 Waverly Drive in the Los Feliz section of LosAngeles. Located next door to a home where Manson and Family membershad attended a party the previous year,  it belonged to supermarketexecutive Leno LaBianca and his wife Rosemary, co-owner of a dressshop.

According to Atkins and Kasabian,Manson disappeared up the driveway and returned to say that he hadtied up the house's occupants. Then Watson, Krenwinkel, and VanHouten went in. Watson claims in his autobiography that Manson wentup alone, then returned to take him up to the house with him. Mansonpointed out a sleeping man through a window, and the two enteredthrough the unlocked back door. Watson claims Manson roused thesleeping Leno LaBianca from the couch at gunpoint and had Watson bindhis hands with a leather thong. Rosemary was brought into the livingroom from the bedroom, and Watson covered the couple's heads withpillowcases which he bound in place with lamp cords. Manson left, andKrenwinkel and Van Houten entered the house.

Watson had complained to Manson earlierof the inadequacy of the previous night's weapons. Watson sent thewomen from the kitchen to the bedroom, where Rosemary LaBianca hadbeen returned, while he went to the living room and began stabbingLeno LaBianca with a chrome-plated bayonet. The first thrust wentinto his throat. Watson heard a scuffle in the bedroom and went inthere to discover Rosemary LaBianca keeping the women at bay byswinging the lamp tied to her neck. He stabbed her several times withthe bayonet, then returned to the living room and resumed attackingLeno, whom he stabbed a total of 12 times. He then carved the word"WAR" into his abdomen. Watson returned to thebedroom and found Krenwinkel stabbing Rosemary with a knife from thekitchen. Van Houten stabbed her approximately 16 times in the backand the exposed buttocks. Van Houten claimed at trial  thatRosemary LaBianca was already dead during the stabbing. Evidenceshowed that many of the 41 stab wounds had, in fact, been inflictedpost-mortem. Watson then cleaned off the bayonet and showered, whileKrenwinkel wrote "Rise" and "Death to pigs"on the walls and "Healter [sic] Skelter" on therefrigerator door, all in LaBianca's blood. She gave Leno LaBianca 14puncture wounds with an ivory-handled, two-tined carving fork, whichshe left jutting out of his stomach. She also planted a steak knifein his throat.

Meanwhile, Manson drove the other threeFamily members who had departed Spahn with him that evening to theVenice home of the Lebanese actor Saladin Nader. Manson left themthere and drove back to Spahn Ranch, leaving them and the LaBiancakillers to hitchhike home.  According to Kasabian, Manson wantedhis followers to murder Nader in his apartment, but Kasabian claimsshe thwarted this murder by deliberately knocking on the wrongapartment door and waking a stranger. The group abandoned the murderplan and left, but Atkins defecated in the stairwell on the way out.

Investigation, trial and sentencing

In initial confessions to cellmates atSybil Brand Institute, Atkins said she killed Tate. In laterstatements to her attorney, to prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi, andbefore a grand jury, Atkins indicated Tate had been stabbed by TexWatson.

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

The five perpetrators – Atkins,Krenwinkel, Manson, Van Houten, and Watson – were each tried andconvicted for their roles in the Tate–LaBianca murders. Originally,each defendant received a death sentence. However, in 1972, theSupreme Court of California ruled in People v. Anderson thatthe state's then-current death penalty laws were unconstitutional. Asa result, the Anderson decision spared the lives of 107 death rowinmates in California, including Charles Manson and his four "familymembers". Subsequently, the death sentences for each of thefive perpetrators convicted in the Tate–LaBianca murders werecommuted to life in prison, which – by law – included thepossibility of parole.

Susan Atkins (1948–2009): Atkinsremained in prison until her death from brain cancer at age 61 in2009. At the time of her death, she was California's longest-servingfemale inmate. Atkins had been denied parole 14 times, and herrequest for compassionate release had also been denied.

Patricia Krenwinkel (born 1947):Imprisoned in 1971, Krenwinkel remains incarcerated. Following the2009 death of fellow Manson gang member, Susan Atkins, Krenwinkel isnow the longest-incarcerated female inmate in the California penalsystem. She has been denied parole 14 times, most recently in 2017.Following revisions to California parole laws and policy changes bythe sitting Los Angeles DA, a parole panel recommended her releasefor the first time in May 2022; however, this parole recommendationwas overturned by California governor Gavin Newsom (who had similarlypreviously overturned the parole recommendation for Manson familymember Leslie Van Houten).

Charles Manson (1934–2017):Manson remained imprisoned until his death from cardiac arrestresulting from respiratory failure and colon cancer[16] on November19, 2017. He was just a few days past his 83rd birthday, and hadspent all but 13 years of his life in some sort of supervised setting(either prison, reformatory or boys' home). While in prison, Mansonhad been denied parole 12 times. After 1997, he refused to attend anyof his parole hearings.

Leslie Van Houten (born 1949): Uponher conviction and death sentence in 1971, at the age of 21, VanHouten became the youngest woman ever put on California's death row,as well as the youngest member of the Manson Family convicted ofmurder. (Her original conviction and death sentence was overturned onappeal. She was later retried and sentenced to life in prison withthe possibility of parole.) Currently incarcerated, Van Houten hasbeen denied parole 22 times, most recently in 2019. At her three mostrecent parole hearings, Van Houten was approved for parole by theboard, but in each case the board's decision was overturned byCalifornia's governor (first Jerry Brown, most recently by GavinNewsom).

Charles "Tex"Watson (born 1945): Watson remains incarcerated. He has been deniedparole 17 times, most recently in 2021. While imprisoned, Watsonclaims that he became a born-again Christian.

Conspiracy theories and allegationsof U.S government involvement

In 2019, journalist Tom O'Neillpublished the book CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the SecretHistory of the Sixties, in which he argued that the true story of thekillings had been covered up. O'Neill presented evidence showing thatBugliosi had tampered with witnesses, including instructing TerryMelcher to claim that he had never talked to Manson after themurders, and that the family's drug use had been studied byresearchers at a medical facility before the murders, who inducedthem to take various illegal drugs and attempted to figure out ifthese drugs could lead to violent behavior. One of these researchersworking at the facility (although it is unknown if he was involved inthe Manson study or worked only on other projects) was Louis JolyonWest, a scientist who had participated in CIA experiments involvingthe hypnosis of unwilling subjects, psychiatrically examined JackRuby, and killed an Elephant with LSD in a bizarre botchedexperiment. O'Neill suggested that the FBI and CIA may have incitedthe family to commit the murders as part of their CHAOS andCOINTELPRO projects to discredit leftist movements. O'Neill notedthat the Manson murders led to widespread distrust of Hippies amongthe American people and that the FBI had used violence to discreditthe political left in the past such as in the murder of Fred Hampton,but admitted that he had no direct evidence for his theory, and wasunsure of it himself. The Washington Post referred to O'Neill'sdiscoveries as "stunning."

Sociocultural impact

The Tate–LaBianca murders "profoundlyshook America's perception of itself" and "effectivelysounded the death knell of '60s counterculture".Additionally, the ritualistic nature of the murders laid a foundationfor the rise of Satanic Panic.

Culturally, it led to the proliferationof "darkly psychosexual, conspiracy-laced culturalexploration of America's seedy underbelly" by the movieindustry, including films such as A Clockwork Orange (1971) and DirtyHarry (1971).

In popular culture

Helter Skelter: The True Story ofThe Manson Murders

In 1974, after leaving the DA's office,prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi, jointly with Curt Gentry, wrote a bookabout the Manson trial called Helter Skelter: The True Story of TheManson Murders. The book won an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writersof America for the best true-crime book of the year. The book wastwice adapted as a television film, first in 1976, then later in2004. As of 2015, Helter Skelter was the best-selling true crime bookin publishing history, with more than seven million copies sold.

Film and television

Several films recounted theTate–LaBianca murders and the subsequent criminal trials:

Manson, a 1973 documentary aboutManson and his followers

Helter Skelter, a 1976 televisionfilm based on the 1974 book by prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi and CurtGentry

Helter Skelter, a 2004television film remake of the 1976 TV film of the same name

Aquarius (2015 TV series)

Wolves at the Door, a 2016 film

Mindhunter, a 2017 Netflix series

American Horror Story (2011- / TVseries) Season 7, Episode 10

Charlie Says, a 2018 drama filmstarring Matt Smith as Manson

The Haunting of Sharon Tate, a 2019supernatural horror film starring Hilary Duff as Tate

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, a2019 comedy-drama film featuring a fictionalized revisionist accountof the evening of the murders

Helter Skelter: An American Myth, acomprehensive 2020 six-part documentary film about Manson, theFamily, the murders and the trial on EPIX network.

Books

In addition to Bugliosi's HelterSkelter: The True Story of The Manson Murders (1974), these are theother books about the murders:

The Girls, a 2016 novel by EmmaCline loosely inspired by the Manson family

CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA, andthe Secret History of the Sixties, a 2019 non-fiction book by TomO'Neill with Dan Piepenbring

Music

The Manson Family: An Opera, a 1990opera by John Moran