Moments in History: The Manson Family Murders
Photo by Rok Romih from Pexels.
Caroline Aron
The following is the Forensics entry under the category of Moments in History. Read on to see a Hamilton student’s state finalist Forensics piece for the 2023 competition year!
There were pools of blood everywhere; on the walls and the floor. Sharon lay in front of the sofa on her side, body drenched in blood. Jay was crouched a few feet away, closer to the fireplace. Both still with a rope around their necks. The towel that one of the murderers had used to write ‘pig’ on the front door laid over Jay’s face. Winifred Chapman, the maid of the household on 10050 Cielo Drive, Los Angeles, California; who found the carnage, immediately ran back through the kitchen and out the back entrance, beside the garage and toward the gate. The petrified housekeeper raced toward the other homes on Cielo, screaming about ‘murder, death, bodies and blood’.
The news of the murders traveled like wildfire throughout Los Angeles, terrifying celebrities everywhere. Little did they know that the murders of Sharon Tate, Abigail Folger, Jay Sebring, Voytek Frykowski, and Steven Parent were the work of an unremorseful, notorious, free-loving, hippy family.
The Manson Family cult members were made up of mostly young women in their late teens and early 20s. White, middle-class women all over the country were heading for cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles, inspired to “turn on, tune in, and drop out.”. They were the perfect candidates for Charles Manson to target and persuade to join his cult. Manson also used his female followers to lure other men to both join the group and to support it. They thought he was The Man! Righteous and far out, all the Manson girls dug him. But Manson had a dynamic personality: he was able to read a person's emotional weaknesses and manipulate them.
After moving to San Francisco, his follower count grew, and in the fall of 1967, Manson packed up the Family and moved them to Los Angeles. In August 1968, Manson and the Family moved to Spahn Movie Ranch, a popular site for filming Westerns, where Manson traded sexual favors of his female followers to the ranch’s owner in exchange for free room and board.
While at Spahn Ranch, Manson exercised total domination over the group—members were reportedly forbidden from wearing eyeglasses or carrying money. He also instructed others at the ranch to take LSD and listen to him preach about the past, present and future of humanity, and most importantly Helter Skelter.
In reference to the 1968 Beatles self-titled white album, Manson was convinced that he and the Family may have to begin Helter Skelter themselves, an up-and-coming race war between Caucasians and African-American that would kill thousands and cause the Family to disappear into underground caves. They would do this by committing savage crimes in celebrity-filled neighborhoods in an attempt to make it look like the monstrosities were committed by the Black Panthers, an African-American leftist organization whom Manson hated.
Manson decided on 10050 Cielo Drive, in Los Angeles to be the first crime scene. This was where Terry Melcher, a record producer who Manson befriended to help him with his musical career, used to live. But due to Manson’s threats, general lack of talent, violent temper, and flagrant racism, Melcher backed out and moved away.
He figured that the address was a big and expensive house that would definitely gain the attention of the news if the people that lived there were brutally murdered. And right he was, because the current residents were well-renowned movie director Roman Polanski and his eight month pregnant wife, and up-and-coming Hollywood actress, Sharon Tate.
On August 8, 1969, Manson ordered his right-hand man, Charles “Tex” Watson, to take three members of the Family to the Cielo Drive address and “totally destroy” the current occupants. That night Manson Family members Tex Watson, Patricia Krenwinkel, Susan Atkins, and Linda Kasabian drove to Tate and Polanski’s home, though the director was out of town working on a film.
Just after midnight, Watson and the three family members encountered and shot dead Steven Parent, an 18-year-old who had been visiting the estate’s caretaker. Watson, Atkins, and Krenwinkel then broke into the main house, leaving Kasabian to stay at the gate as a lookout. Tate was hanging out with her friends; celebrity hairstylist Jay Sebring, coffee heiress Abigail Folger, and Folger’s boyfriend Voytek Frykowski, when they heard the Family break in.
Gathering them all in the living room, Tate and Sebring were linked by ropes tied around their necks. Sebring was shot and stabbed seven times, murdering him. Frykowski and Folger managed to free themselves and flee, but both were chased down and killed by Krenwinkel and Watson, Folger being stabbed a total of 28 times and Frykowski a total of 51 times. Finally, Tate, witnessing the horrific crimes, pleaded with Atkins for mercy but was unsuccessful. Tate was stabbed a total of 16 times and her unborn child did not survive. As they left, Atkins smeared the word “PIG” on the front door in Sharon Tate’s blood.
The very next night, the same group of Family members, plus Leslie van Houten and Manson himself, set out to commit more murders because of how “not gruesome enough” the Tate murders were. They picked grocery business executive Leno LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary. LaBianca was totally unknown to the Manson Family, the LaBiancas were chosen at random after several hours of driving around rich Los Angeles neighborhoods.
When Manson and Watson were in the residence, they tied up the LaBianca couple with a lamp cord and put pillowcases over their heads. Soon after, Van Houten and Krenwinkel entered the premises with the instructions from Manson to kill the couple. Watson began stabbing Leno multiple times, while Rosemary began to swing the lamp still attached to the cord wrapped around her neck. Watson gave the knife to Van Houten and she began to stab Rosemary. She was stabbed a total of 41 times.
Watson returned to the living room and continued to stab and kill Leno. Krenwinkel stabbed him multiple times, leaving a carving fork sticking out of his stomach, and a knife in Leno’s throat. He was stabbed a total of 26 times.
The word “WAR” was then carved into Leno’s stomach, on the walls of the living room, “Death to pigs” and “Rise” were written in his blood. On the refrigerator door, a misspelled “Helter Skelter” was smeared.
At the time they occurred, LA police shrugged off the idea of a link between the Tate-LaBianca murders, despite the identical messages scrawled on the walls in blood. Although police raided the Manson Family at Spahn Ranch shortly after the murders, it was on suspicion of car theft. The Family was quickly released. It wasn’t until three months later that the Family was actually arrested and charged for their crimes.
And thus ended the Swinging Sixties, where the brutal nature of the murders committed by the Manson Family, in addition to the fact that some of the victims were celebrities, touched upon some of the deepest fears of the American psyche—the idea that you might not be safe at home, the idea that even ‘good girls’ are a few moves away from committing unspeakable crimes, and the idea that the Free Love movement of the 1960s wasn’t free at all.
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