Tate-LaBianca Murders
The address was 10050 Cielo Drive, a secluded property tucked into Benedict Canyon above Beverly Hills. On the night of August 8, 1969, four members of what would become known as the Manson Family drove up from Spahn Ranch with instructions from their leader. By morning, five people lay dead inside the home rented by actress Sharon Tate and her husband, film director Roman Polanski. The following night, the killers struck again in the Los Feliz neighborhood. The Tate-LaBianca murders would become the crime that defined the end of the 1960s, a brutal punctuation mark on the Summer of Love.
Cielo Drive
Sharon Tate was eight and a half months pregnant when Tex Watson, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Linda Kasabian arrived at her home that August night. Polanski was working on a film in Europe. Inside were Tate's houseguests: Jay Sebring, a celebrity hairdresser; Abigail Folger, heiress to the Folgers coffee fortune; and her boyfriend Wojciech Frykowski, an aspiring screenwriter. Steven Parent, an 18-year-old who had been visiting the guest house caretaker, was leaving the property when the killers cut the phone lines. Charles Manson had sent his followers to a house where record producer Terry Melcher once lived, the man who had rejected Manson's musical ambitions. Melcher had moved out. The current residents paid the price.
The Second Night
On August 9, Manson joined the group for their next killing. He had told his followers he would show them 'how to do it.' They drove to 3301 Waverly Drive in Los Feliz, the home of supermarket executive Leno LaBianca and his wife Rosemary. Thinking the gate might be electrified, the killers climbed an embankment to enter the grounds. Manson himself tied up Leno LaBianca, binding his hands with a leather thong and covering the couple's heads with pillowcases. Then he left, leaving Watson, Krenwinkel, and newcomer Leslie Van Houten to finish the murders. The word 'WAR' was carved into Leno LaBianca's abdomen. 'HEALTER SKELTER' - misspelled - was written in blood on the refrigerator.
Trial and Aftermath
Prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi argued that Manson had ordered the killings to trigger a race war he called 'Helter Skelter,' borrowing the name from a Beatles song. All five perpetrators received death sentences, but in 1972 the California Supreme Court ruled the state's death penalty laws unconstitutional in People v. Anderson. The decision spared 107 death row inmates, including Manson and his followers. Susan Atkins died of brain cancer in prison in 2009, having been denied parole 14 times. Charles Manson died in 2017 at age 83, having spent all but 13 years of his life in some form of custody. Leslie Van Houten was finally paroled in July 2023, after 22 denials. Patricia Krenwinkel and Tex Watson remain incarcerated.
The End of Innocence
Film critic Erik Morse argues that the murders brought about 'a dark period of film in Hollywood, filled with ultraviolence, gore, satanism and freakouts.' Scholar Ian Cooper coined the term 'Mansonsploitation' to describe the violent genre that emerged in the killings' wake. Even films that avoided the subject bore its mark: George Lucas changed Luke Skywalker's original surname from 'Starkiller' because it could be misconstrued as 'celebrity killer.' The murders generated countless books, films, and documentaries, from Bugliosi's Edgar Award-winning Helter Skelter (1974) to Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019). The house at 10050 Cielo Drive was demolished in 1994, but the murders remain embedded in Los Angeles geography - a reminder that paradise can harbor darkness.
From the Air
Located at 34.09N, 118.43W in the hills above Beverly Hills. The original Tate residence at 10050 Cielo Drive was demolished and replaced with a new home; the address was changed to 10066 Cielo Drive. The LaBianca house at 3301 Waverly Drive in Los Feliz still stands. Both sites are in residential canyon areas with limited visibility from the air. Nearby airports include Santa Monica (KSMO) 7 miles southwest and Burbank (KBUR) 8 miles northeast. Best viewed at 2,000-3,000 feet AGL, though the terrain requires caution due to rising hillsides.