August 9: On This Day in World History … briefly

August 9, 1969: The ‘Manson family’ commits murder

The Manson Family was a desert commune and cult formed in California in the late 1960s. Led by Charles Manson, the group consisted of approximately 100 of his “followers” who lived an unconventional lifestyle with habitual use of hallucinogenic drugs. Most of the group members were young women from middle-class backgrounds, many of whom were radicalised by Manson’s teachings and drawn by hippy culture and communal living.

After Manson was released from prison for petty crimes in 1967, the Manson Family moved to San Francisco and later to a deserted ranch in the San Fernando Valley. Manson’s followers also included a small, devoted unit of mostly impressionable young women and girls. They began to believe, without question, Manson’s claims that he was a manifestation of Jesus and his prophecies of a race war.

They gained national and international notoriety after the murder of actress Sharon Tate and four others on August 9, 1969 by Tex Watson and three other members of the Family, acting under the instructions of Charles Manson. Group members were also responsible for a number of other murders, assaults, petty crimes and thefts.

The events that would culminate in the murders were set in motion in late spring 1968, when (by some accounts) 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.

The account given in Manson in His Own Words is that Manson first met Wilson at a friend’s San Francisco house where Manson had gone to obtain cannabis. The drummer supposedly gave Manson his Sunset Boulevard address and invited him to stop by when he came to Los Angeles. Wilson himself said, in a 1968 Record Mirror article, that after mentioning the Beach Boys’ involvement with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi to a group of strange women, “they told me they too had a guru, a guy named Charlie.”

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 a house he would soon rent to actress Sharon Tate and her husband, director Roman Polanski). Jakobson, who was impressed by ‘the whole Charlie Manson package’ of artist/lifestylist/philosopher, also paid to record Manson material.

The Tate murder

On March 23, 1969, Manson, uninvited, entered 10050 Cielo Drive, which he had known as Melcher’s residence. This was Rudi Altobelli’s property; Melcher was only a previous tenant. As of February 1969, the tenants were Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski.

Manson was met by Shahrokh Hatami, an Iranian photographer who was Tate’s friend. Hatami was there to photograph Tate in advance of her departure for Rome the next day. Having seen Manson through a window as Manson approached the main house, Hatami had gone onto the front porch to ask him what he wanted.

When Manson told Hatami he was looking for someone whose name Hatami did not recognize, Hatami informed him the place was the Polanski residence. Hatami advised him to try “the back alley”, by which he meant the path to the guest house, beyond the main house. Concerned about the stranger on the property, Hatami went down to the front walk to confront Manson. Appearing behind Hatami, in the house’s front door, Tate asked him who was calling. Hatami said a man was looking for someone. Hatami and Tate maintained their positions while Manson, without a word, went back to the guest house, returned a minute or two later, and left.

That evening, Manson returned to the property and again went back to the guest house. Presuming to enter the enclosed porch, he spoke with Altobelli, who was just coming out of the shower. Although Manson asked for Melcher, Altobelli felt Manson had come looking for him. This is consistent with prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi’s later discovery that Manson had apparently been to the place on earlier occasions after Melcher’s departure from it.

Speaking through the inner screen door, Altobelli told Manson that Melcher had moved to Malibu. He lied and said that he did not know Melcher’s new address. In response to a question from Manson, Altobelli said he was in the entertainment business, although, having met Manson the previous year, at Dennis Wilson’s home, he was sure Manson already knew that. At Wilson’s, Altobelli had complimented Manson lukewarmly on some of his musical recordings that Wilson had been playing.

 1980s to present

In a January 2008 segment of the Discovery Channel’s Most Evil, Barbara Hoyt said that the impression that she had accompanied Ruth Ann Moorehouse to Hawaii just to avoid testifying at Manson’s trial was erroneous. Hoyt said she had cooperated with the Family because she was “trying to keep them from killing my family.” She stated that, at the time of the trial, she was “constantly being threatened: ‘Your family’s gonna die. [The murders] could be repeated at your house.’

On March 15, 2008, the Associated Press reported that forensic investigators had conducted a search for human remains at Barker Ranch the previous month. Following up on longstanding rumors that the Family had killed hitchhikers and runaways who had come into its orbit during its time at Barker, the investigators identified “two likely clandestine grave sites … and one additional site that merits further investigation.” Though they recommended digging, CNN reported on March 28 that the Inyo County sheriff, who questioned the methods they employed with search dogs, had ordered additional tests before any excavation. On 9 May, after a delay caused by damage to test equipment, the sheriff announced that test results had been inconclusive and that “exploratory excavation” would begin on 20 May. In the meantime, Charles “Tex” Watson had commented publicly that “no one was killed” at the desert camp during the month-and-a-half he was there, after the Tate–LaBianca murders. On 21 May, after two days of work, the sheriff brought the search to an end; four potential gravesites had been dug up and had been found to hold no human remains.

In September 2009, The History Channel broadcast a docudrama covering the Family’s activities and the murders as part of its coverage on the 40th anniversary of the killings. The program included an in-depth interview with Linda Kasabian, who spoke publicly for the first time since a 1989 appearance on A Current Affair, an American television news magazine. Also included in the History Channel program were interviews with Vincent Bugliosi, Catherine Share, and Debra Tate, sister of Sharon.

As the 40th anniversary of the Tate–LaBianca murders approached, in July 2009, Los Angeles magazine published an “oral history”, in which former Family members, law-enforcement officers, and others involved with Manson, the arrests, and the trials offered their recollections of — and observations on — the events that made Manson notorious. In the article, Juan Flynn, a Spahn Ranch worker who had become associated with Manson and the Family, said, “Charles Manson got away with everything. People will say, ‘He’s in jail.’ But Charlie is exactly where he wants to be.”

Charles Manson died of a heart attack and complications from colon cancer on November 19, 2017. He was 83 years old.

HAVE YOUR SAY

Like our Facebook page, follow us on Twitter and Instagram

For news straight to your phone, add us on BBM 58F3D7A7 or WhatsApp 082 421 6033