“Will You Die for Me?” | 1969, August

The victims of the “copycat” murders had to look random, but Charlie didn’t want to waste the killings, so he picked victims that deserved to die—people he didn’t like, who weren’t too closely linked to the Family.  Charlie picked right, the prosecution would be unable to connect the dots; but the state came up with an alternative, arguing that “Helter Skelter” was the motive.  In the years since the trials, a web of connections has formed, Spahn Ranch/Cielo Drive, Spahn Ranch/Waverly Drive.  Some of it’s speculative, and some of it’s more speculative, and all of it happened a long time ago, but the big picture is one of overlapping social circles with shared interests in sex, drugs, and the occult.

—Bobby Beausoleil had acted in Mondo Hollywood, which documented decadent Hollywood, with Jay Sebring, one of the victims at Cielo Drive.  Sebring was active in a sex/party crowd that crossed Satanistic ritual and S&M performance.  Charlie had first-hand knowledge of that scene; in later years he’d say he wasn’t fond of it.

—Tex and Sharon Tate had lived just a few doors from each other in L.A. (right near the Whiskey Lounge).

—Charlie had known Abigail Folger in San Francisco, where she rejected him spiritually, and maybe sexually.  In L.A., Abigail volunteered at a free clinic where the Family went for medical treatment (mostly sexually transmitted diseases and skin diseases from eating out of the garbage).

—In San Francisco, Sadie had been involved with Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan, and a dancer in his “Topless Witch Revue.”  LaVey had consulted for Polanski’s film, Rosemary’s Baby; he also played Satan in the film.  Sammy Davis Junior, who had been introduced to the Church of Satan by Jay Sebring, would say of the victims at Cielo Drive: “Everyone there had at one time or another been into Satanism, or, like myself, had dabbled around the edges of it for sexual kicks.”

—Dennis Hopper spoke of sadistic and Satanic films by Polanski; Ed Sanders, in his biography, The Family, tracked rumors of Charlie dabbling in sadistic movies, kiddie porn and snuff films.  Charlie: “Don’t you think those people deserved what they got? They were into kiddy porn.”  (A porn-ring “cover-up” theory has developed along these lines.)

—Tex had spent time at the Cielo Drive house, and maybe lived there when Terry Melcher was renting it.  Tex had been tight with Terry; Terry had provided Tex with cars and credit cards.  Other Family members also spent time at the house; Gypsy and Sadie had swum in the pool.

—In March, Polanksi had hosted a party at Cielo Drive; some crashers, maybe Family people, were thrown out.  Later that month, Charlie had visited Cielo Drive, asking after Melcher, who was out of town; Charlie had seen Sharon Tate there, and he’d been unceremoniously dismissed.

—According to Family biographer Ed Sanders, Wojciech Frykowski, Abigail Folger’s boyfriend and a victim at Cielo Drive, was selling MDA.  In postmortem examinations, small amounts of MDA were found in the systems of Frykowski and Folger.  Jay Sebring was also a drug dealer, according to former Beach Boys musician Bill Scanlon Murphy, and may have been the object of a Tex Watson “burn.”  (This is another area where there’s been a great deal of conjecture and not-quite hard evidence in the years since the murders.)

—The groundskeeper at Cielo Drive had spent time with someone he remembered as “Patty Montgomery,” which was a Patricia Krenwinkel alias.  Tex also used the alias “Montgomery.”  After throwing “Patty” out of the guest house, where he was living, the groundskeeper would hear prowlers at night.

—On July 30, eight days before the murders, a call was placed from Esalen Institute to the house at 10050 Cielo Drive.  Manson may have recognized someone from the Cielo Drive house at Esalen, where he felt he had been passed over in some kind of musical audition.

—Charlie cased houses he was going to rob.  Because Sharon’s Ferrari was not in the driveway, he may have believed that Sharon was not at the house; Tate and Polanski had been traveling, and if Charlie had knowledge of their itinerary, and/or the sublet arrangement between them and Folger and Frykowski, who were staying at Cielo Drive in Tate and Polanski’s absence, he would have thought she was still out of town.  Given Charlie’s aversion to killing children (Sharon was eight months pregnant), that helps to explain why he picked the address; he thought only Frykowski and Folger (a drug-dealing competitor and a woman who’d spurned him) would be present.

—Leno LaBianca, the husband in husband/wife victims at Waverly Drive, was in massive debt, either from gambling or from fraud, or from bad investments, or from all three.  He owed money to the mafia.

—Rosemary LaBianca, the wife of the husband/wife victims at Waverly Drive, had a complicated personal life: three marriages, extra-marital activity, and a number of possible lovers, male and female.  Her financial dealings were just as suspect as Leno’s.  (According to Manson researchers Bill Nelson and Maury Terry, she was also involved in the drug trade.)

—The LaBianca’s moved into their Waverly Drive home the previous November; they’d bought the house from his mother.  Since they’d moved in, they’d been the victims of numerous robberies.  The house had been unoccupied prior to that—during that time, Charlie and his people were often at the home of Harold True, who lived a house over.  As part of his routine, Charlie scouted the Los Angeles area for houses to rip off: people on vacation; people moving.  He’d taught Family members how to case and creepy crawl a house—get the layout and figure out what was there.  That the LaBianca dogs didn’t bark at Manson’s people suggests they were already familiar with them.

—Suzan Laberge, Rosemary’s daughter from an affair at the end of her first marriage (Leno was her third husband) was dating a Straight Satan member who had lived at the ranch.  (A great deal of speculation has also sprung up around this relationship: black magic, drugs, etc.)  LaBerge had been dating the biker the previous year during a six-month period when she lived across the street from Tex Watson in Los Feliz.  (Tex, during this time, was a wig salesman.  Suzan’s mother, Rosemary, stocked wigs in her dress store.  One of Jay Sebring’s specialties as a hairdresser was working with wigs, i.e. Frank Sinatra.  According to Bill Nelson, Rosemary received at least one shipment of drugs from Mexico via the cover of wigs.)

Leslie: “Pat Krenwinkel and I were in a small room taking care of the children, and Manson came in and said to Pat to leave with him.”

Leslie: “I felt that, if they went again, that I wanted to go.  I wanted to go and be a good soldier and surrender myself for what I believed in.”

Leslie: “Charlie came up to me and asked me, did I believe enough that I could go with them and that I could kill.  Was I crazy enough to believe in him, and I said: ‘Yes.'”

Sandra Good: “The crimes; those weren’t crimes, it was war.  That was a Holy War.  And that has nothing to do with Manson.  This was society’s children taking lives and at the same time giving their lives to make change in this country.  My friends who did the killings, I stand by them.  I stand by them because I didn’t see anyone else willing to go to war; in war there’s death, there’s killing and sacrifice.  They were willing to go to the gas chamber.  I hand it to them.  I don’t see anyone else with the heart.”