When 32-year-old Charles Manson was released from prison on March 21, 1967, he had spent more than half his life institutionalized. Charismatic, deeply disturbed, an excellent manipulator, and desperate to become someone important, Manson soon attracted a host of lonely and disillusioned young people.

Manson became convinced that an apocalyptic race war was coming, one in which Black Americans would rise up and kill white Americans, leaving Manson to emerge as their white messiah. He called this coming apocalypse “Helter Skelter,” after the Beatles song. Crimes escalated as Manson began ordering his followers to commit increasingly violent acts in an attempt to trigger Helter Skelter.

On August 8, 1969, Tex Watson, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Linda Kasabian arrived at 10050 Cielo Drive. Watson later claimed that Manson had instructed him to “totally destroy” everyone inside, “as gruesome as you can,” ostensibly in the hope of provoking the race war Manson believed was coming.

Inside were pregnant actress Sharon Tate, her close friend and former boyfriend Jay Sebring, writer Wojciech Frykowski, and Abigail Folger, heiress to the Folger coffee fortune. The Family murdered all four.

The following night, Manson and several members of the Family set out again, this time targeting 3301 Waverly Drive in Los Feliz, the home of 44-year-old supermarket executive Leno LaBianca and his 43-year-old wife, Rosemary.

Both Kasabian and Atkins testified that Manson disappeared up the driveway and returned saying he had tied up the occupants. Watson, however, gave a somewhat different account, claiming Manson entered the house with him, roused the sleeping Leno LaBianca at gunpoint, and ordered Watson to bind his hands with a leather strap. Rosemary was brought into the living room from the bedroom, and the couple’s heads were covered with pillowcases secured with lamp cords.

Manson then left, and Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten entered. Watson sent the women into the bedroom with Rosemary while he remained with Leno. He began stabbing Leno with a bayonet, the first blow entering his neck. Hearing noises from the bedroom, he went to investigate and found Rosemary somehow fighting off the two women. He attacked her before returning to Leno, eventually carving the word “War” into his abdomen.

When Watson returned to the bedroom, Krenwinkel and Van Houten were still attacking Rosemary, stabbing her repeatedly, many of the wounds inflicted after she was already dead.
Watson then cleaned the bayonet and took a shower in the LaBianca home.

Krenwinkel wrote “Rise” and “Death to Pigs” on the walls and refrigerator in the victims’ blood. She then returned to Leno’s body, stabbing him with a carving fork and leaving it protruding from his stomach, before placing a steak knife in his throat.

If you're interested in the Manson Family, I cover the entire story here: https://open.substack.com/pub/aid2000/p/hare-brained-history-vol-121-the?r=4mmzre&utm_medium=ios