Radnor native’s book probes Manson murders
Fifty years ago the gruesome ‘Charles Manson Family’ murder spree started with the death of actress Sharon Tate.
LOS ANGELES >> It was 50 years ago this week that Charles Manson dispatched a group of disaffected young followers on a twonight killing rampage that terrorized Los Angeles.
Members of the Manson “family” arrived at the Hollywood Hills home of Sharon Tate on Aug. 8, 1969, where they stabbed, beat and shot to death the young actress and her friends — celebrity hairstylist Jay Sebring, coffee heiress Abigail Folger and aspiring screenwriter Wojciech Frykowski. As they made their way to the house, they encountered a teenager, Steven Parent, who had been visiting an acquaintance at the estate’s guesthouse, and shot him to death.
The next night, Manson led a handful of followers to the home of wealthy grocer Leno LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary. Manson tied up the couple and left the others to kill them.
Manson and his followers also killed two others — musician Gary Hinman and Hollywood stuntman Donald “Shorty” Shea — in separate, unrelated attacks
A look at the key players in a case that remains etched in the American consciousness:
THE KILLERS
— Charles Manson was a petty
criminal who had been in and out of jail since childhood when he reinvented himself in the late 1960s as a guru-philosopher who targeted teenage runaways and other lost souls, particularly attractive young women he used and bartered to others for sex.
He sent them out to butcher L.A.’s rich and famous in what prosecutors said was a bid to trigger a race war — an idea they say
he got from a twisted reading of the Beatles’ song “Helter Skelter.”
Decades after his conviction, Manson would continue to taunt prosecutors, parole agents and others, sometimes denying any role in the killings and other times boasting of them, as when he told a 2012 parole hearing: “I have put five people in the grave. I am a very dangerous man.”
He died in 2017 after spending nearly 50 years in prison. He was 83.
— Susan Atkins, convicted of the Tate, LaBianca and Hinman murders, was a teenage runaway working as a topless dancer in a San Francisco bar when she met Manson in 1967.
The Tate-La Bianca murders went unsolved for months until Atkins, in jail on unrelated charges, boasted to a cellmate of her involvement.
At trial, she testified she was “stoned on acid” and didn’t know how many times she stabbed Tate as the actress begged for her life. Atkins, who became a born-again
Christian in prison and denounced Manson, tearfully recounted that confrontation during a parole hearing years later.
She died in prison of cancer in 2009. She as 61.
— Leslie Van Houten, a former high school cheerleader and homecoming princess, saw her life spiral out of control at 14 following her parents’ divorce.
She turned to drugs and became pregnant but said her mother forced her to abort the fetus and bury it in the family’s backyard.
Van Houten met Manson at an old movie ranch on the outskirts of Los Angeles where he had established his so-called “family” of followers.
She didn’t take part in the Tate killings but accompanied Manson and others
to the LaBianca home the next night. She held down Rosemary LaBianca with a pillowcase over her head as others stabbed LaBianca dozens of times. Then, ordered by Manson follower Charles “Tex” Watson to “do something,” she said she picked up a knife and stabbed the woman more than a dozen times.
Van Houten, 69, has
earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in counseling while in prison and leads several prison programs to help rehabilitate fellow inmates. She has been recommended for parole three times, but former Gov. Jerry Brown blocked her release each time.
— Patricia Krenwinkel was a 19-year-old secretary when she met Manson at a
party. She left everything behind three days later to follow him, believing they had a budding romantic relationship.
After he became abusive and bartered her for sex, she said she twice tried to leave him but followers brought her back, kept a close watch on her and kept her high on drugs.
She testified at a 2016 parole hearing that she repeatedly stabbed Folger, then stabbed Leno LaBianca in the abdomen the following night and wrote “Helter Skelter,” “Rise” and “Death to Pigs” on the walls with his blood.
Krenwinkel, 71, remains in prison.
— Charles “Tex” Watson was a college dropout from Texas when he arrived in California in 1967 seeking “satisfaction through drugs, sex and rock ‘n’ roll,” as he explains on his website.
He recalled meeting Manson at the house of Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson after seeing Wilson hitchhiking and giving him a ride home.
Watson, 73, led the killers to the Tate estate, shot to death Parent as he was attempting to leave and took part in the killings that night and the next at the LaBianca home.
He became a born-again Christian in prison and formed a prison ministry in 1980 that he continues to lead. Watson, who has authored or co-authored several books while in prison, maintains he has changed and is no longer a danger to anyone. He has repeatedly been denied parole.
THE VICTIMS
— Sharon Tate, 26, was a model and rising film star after her breakout role in the 1966 film “Valley of the Dolls.” She was 8½ months pregnant when she was attacked, and she pleaded with her killers to spare her unborn son.
Tate’s mother, Doris, became an advocate for victims’ rights in California and was instrumental in a 1982 law that allows family members to testify about their losses at trials and parole hearings.
Her younger sister, Debra, also dedicated her life to victims’ rights and has testified at countless parole hearings for the killers, demanding they never be released.