01x02 - Episode 2

[bunniefuu]

[tense music playing]

[Jeff Guinn] Manson had different means
of getting people to do what he wanted.

And he has taken to having
some of the family members

do what he called creepy crawls.

[female voice] Creepy crawlers.
Creepy crawlers.

[Guinn] Where they would enter
someone's house at random.

And they would silently
stalk around the house,

and they'd move things
to kind of freak out the owner.

But they wouldn't necessarily
steal anything or hurt them.

[Guinn] For Manson,
it's a way of testing his followers.

What he really wants is to get followers
who will do whatever he tells them to do.

[Dianne Lake] It was an obedience lesson.

"Will you follow me?
Will you do this for me?"

I never was asked to go,
or nobody asked for me.

"Well, how about Snake?
Can she go with us?"

I'm just a flower child, and I was 16.

I was unreliable
and disobedient, fortunately.

I think I continued to look
for that love bonding experience.

I loved Charlie,

and I was feeling that I wanted him
to have sex with me.

So I just asked.

[tense music continues]

He took me by the hand,

and we went to this little gypsy caravan
out in the meadow.

We undressed, and he turned me around
and sodomized me.

And it was painful, shocking,

and not what I…

Not what I wanted.

And he said,
"Well, that's how we do it in prison."

And walked off.

That definitely was r*pe.

He was probably teaching me a lesson,
"Don't ask me."

[interviewer] Why do you like
having people do what you want them to do?

-Why control them?
-[Manson] Because, wait a minute--

[interviewer] You love
the world you live in.

[Manson chuckles] Most assuredly.

[interviewer] You love all the pain
that you've caused people.

-All the anguish you've caused.
-[Manson] Oh!

I've been punished by you all my life,
since I was 10 years old.

I've been in every reform school you got
across the country.

And used to lay down and have to get
my a*s whipped till I couldn't walk.

-Tell me about some pain.
-[interviewer] And that's our fault?

-That's all those people--
-[Manson] No one's fault.

Make strong, good pain, understand pain.

Not bad. Pain's not bad, it's good.

It teaches you things.

Like when you put your hand in fire.
"Ow!" You know not to do that again.

[tape player starts]

[haunting music playing]

[film reel whirs and stops]

[suspenseful music playing]

[Guinn] Every demagogue,
and Charlie Manson is a demagogue,

has a specific goal in mind.

To find a place as isolated as possible.

[Day] The group is growing,

and it was a matter of time
until they got kicked out of Spahn Ranch.

And Manson, he knew
he was wearing out his welcome.

And that is kind of the consensus.

That they all need
to get the hell out of there.

[Guinn] But he needs more money to leave.

And the most obvious thing is for Manson
to get involved in active drug dealing.

Meanwhile, a newcomer to the family,
Tex Watson,

is eager to prove himself to Charlie.

[Day] Charles Watson, who they called Tex,

is from a small town in Texas.

He was a frat boy. The athlete.

The women really like him.

And he just becomes
very disillusioned with the whole thing.

And he's looking for something more.

It was the first time
I'd ever seen Manson.

And it almost seemed like
everyone there that was describing him

and talking about him

was worshiping him
from the very beginning.

He had a very cunning way
of singing, smiling,

the way that just attracted you
and made you want more of what he had.

This new kind of love that I found,

uh, I became willing
to do anything for it.

[Guinn] Charlie told Tex in the beginning,

"I know you want to join us,
but you're not enlightened enough."

And he would give Tex all the crummy jobs.

"Prove to me you're worthy of being here."

But Tex's obvious goal now
is to be Charlie's second-in-command.

The one who is trusted
to lead all the hard stuff.

[Manson] Tex always did
what I told him to do.

And the reason he did
what I told him to do

is because everybody does.

Once you become aware
of everything that I'm aware of,

you become Tex,
because we're all soldiers of survival.

Tex was like a big brother to me, really.

He taught me how to drive on the ranch.

But I also remember him
being out of his mind

after he made some tea out of belladonna.

Tex really was responsible

for bringing more of a drug culture
into the family than anybody.

[film reel whirs and stops]

[tense music playing]

[Guinn] Tex and Charlie concoct a scheme.

They are going to tell Bernard Crowe,

a drug dealer known as Lotsapoppa,

that they have a vast amount of weed
if he wants to buy it.

[Day] If Lotsapoppa fronts the money,
then they'll sell it,

and they'll all make a lot of money.

It's a ridiculous plan.

What they're really gonna do is
take his money and run. That's the plan.

[tense music playing]

Tex goes over to Lotsapoppa.

He takes the money,

and he just leaves.

When Tex doesn't return,
Lotsapoppa explodes.

He calls Spahn Ranch.

And he says,
"I'm gonna come down that ranch."

"I'm gonna k*ll you guys.
I'm gonna k*ll the women."

And so Manson says,
"I'll come to you. We'll sort this out."

[Manson] Tex just ran!

I said, "What? Go down there
and face yourself, man."

He said, "No, he'll k*ll me."

I said, "Man, don't drag
your sh*t to my doorstep."

He said, "I can't do it, I can't do it!"

So here it falls on me. Who had to do it?

I picked the g*n up.

I went down and I said to the guy,

"I'll stand in my brother's place.
I'm standing here in my brother's place."

[Guinn] When he's face-to-face
with Lotsapoppa,

the drug dealer lies

and claims he's a Black Panther.

And if Charlie's trying
to renege on the deal,

then by God, the Black Panthers are gonna
storm out Spahn Ranch where Charlie is,

and they'll wipe them all out.

And that scares the crap out of Charlie.

[Day] Manson and Lotsapoppa
get into this confrontation.

Manson reaches in his waistband,
pulls out the g*n,

and shoots Lotsapoppa in the stomach.

-[g*nsh*t]
-Lotsapoppa doubles over.

And Manson runs back to Spahn Ranch.

He's terrified.

Manson believes that he has
not only k*lled a drug dealer,

he believes he has k*lled a Black Panther.

He thinks that the Black Panthers
are gonna retaliate.

He thinks the Black Panthers
are gonna come,

they're gonna find him,
they're gonna hurt him, k*ll him.

And Spahn Ranch
devolves into this paranoia.

[uneasy music playing]

[Catherine Share] Charlie told me
the Black Panthers knew where we were.

And from now on,
I'd have to keep the lights off.

The Black people were angry,
and the Black Panthers were angry.

He reverted back to his survival instincts
when he was in prison.

[Day] For Manson,
everything is about survival.

That's how Manson lived his life.

So what he does is he goes
to a local biker g*ng that he knows,

called the Straight Satans.

And Manson says, "Stay at the ranch
over the summer. Protect us."

"We'll feed you.
You can have all the sex you want."

"All the drugs you want.
Stay around the ranch."

"The women will take care of you."

[Lake] This motorcycle g*ng
shows up with g*ns and knives,

and they kind of are hanging out.

Especially for me,
being a girl from Minnesota,

I did not have any experience with bikers.

And they were scary.

These kind of big, burly, tattooed,

smoking, drinking,
loud music kind of guys.

Charlie liked having them around.

This moved us out
of being this hippie commune

into something more, you know,
bad guys' undercurrent, going on.

[film reel whirs then stops]

[uneasy music playing]

[Guinn] The Straight Satans
now are living mostly at Spahn Ranch

and are also drug dealers of a sort,

which brings in Bobby Beausoleil.

[Share] The first time I saw Bobby,

I saw this stunningly gorgeous young man.

And girls were wanting to just
lay down for him left and right.

[Beausoleil] I was living in Hollywood.

I would go up to the ranch every so often,

stay for a night or two, play music,
smoke some weed, have some fun.

[Day] Bobby Beausoleil
is who they called Cupid.

Bobby and Manson really bond over music,

and he starts spending
a lot of time at Spahn Ranch

in the aftermath of Lotsapoppa's sh**ting.

[Beausoleil] Charlie, after he shot
Bernard Crowe, he lost his mind.

And Charlie was upset.

He pulled me aside,
and he asked me if I would stay over

to be part of defending the ranch
from a possible attack.

So I agreed.

[Day] While they're at the ranch,

Bobby becomes enamored
with the Straight Satans.

He wants to be part of them.

[Beausoleil] I used to hang out
with those guys

and pick their brains about motorcycles

because I was building one
and I needed to get knowledge.

As this is happening,
the Straight Satans go to Bobby and say,

"Hey, can you get us some drugs?"

[Beausoleil] They were planning a party,
and they wanted to get something special.

Being a fool,

being a wannabe kid
trying to prove himself,

I volunteered that I knew a guy
in Topanga Canyon who had some mescaline.

The deal involves $1,000
of the Straight Satans' money

and mescaline produced by Gary Hinman.

[Day] Gary Hinman is a student at UCLA.

He's a Buddhist.

And like many people do in the 1960s,
on the side, he hustles a little drugs.

Gary gives him the drugs.

Bobby takes the drugs.

He gives them to the Straight Satans.
Everybody's happy.

The next day, the Straight Satans
go back to Bobby to shake him down.

And they say, "Hey, that mescaline
you gave us, it was bad."

"We got sick from it."

[tense music playing]

[Guinn] The Straight Satans
say they want their money back.

[Day] Bobby is terrified.

He really thinks
the Straight Satans will hurt him.

[Beausoleil] I've got
to get out of this situation.

I was scared.

I just wanted to get this thing done
and get away from these people.

[pulsing music playing]

[Day] So Bobby, Mary, and Susan Atkins

go over to Gary's house
to get this money back.

Mary knew Gary Hinman.

And Bobby reasoned,
"Mary might kind of soften the blow."

"She might be able to help me
negotiate this money."

And Susan Atkins,
she is Manson's most trusted supporter.

She's the most enamored with him.

[Guinn] Things don't go well.

Hinman insists that the mescaline
was good, quality product.

Maybe the bikers
are just saying it wasn't any good

so they can have it for free.

[Beausoleil] When he said
he didn't have the money anymore,

I got desperate. I didn't know what to do.

I had the g*n in my belt,

and I did hit him
with the g*n a couple times.

I mean, I didn't even know.
I was just acting on instinct.

[Day] They get into a physical fight
and the g*n goes off.

[g*nsh*t]

But it miraculously hits no one.

[Beausoleil] It was scary.

I just put the g*n away and said,
"Man, let's just get out of this, Gary."

I was ashamed.
I was embarrassed. I was out of my depth.

[Day] Mary calls the ranch.

Somehow, someone says to Charlie,
"They're having trouble at Gary's house."

"You got to go over there.
You gotta help."

And so Manson starts
to head over to Gary Hinman's house.

[Beausoleil] Just when I thought
that everything was settled

between me and Gary,

Charlie walked in and immediately,
without a word,

slashed him across the face
with this little sword thing

that the Satans had given to him.

He is in shock.
He put his hands up to his cheek.

You know, blood was trickling out
between his fingers

and his eyes were real wide.

And I said,
"Charlie, why did you do that?"

And he turned to me, and I'll never
forget this for as long as I live.

He said, "To show you how to be a man."

[unsettling music playing]

As he left, he said, "Clean this mess up."

And walked out the door.

And it was a horrible mistake
with horrible consequences.

[Day] Bobby, Mary, and Susan Atkins,

they spent almost two days
trying to treat Hinman.

[Atkins] After he had been wounded,

I went to a store
and got hydrogen peroxide

and Band-A*DS and stuff
to help clean up his wounds.

[Beausoleil] I called the ranch,
and I got Charlie on the phone.

And I said, "Charlie, you left me
with a problem that you created."

"Gary wants to go to the emergency room."

"I'm afraid that'll mean
that I'm gonna get arrested."

And he said,
"You know what to do as well as I do."

And he hung up the phone.

And I couldn't see a way out.

And it was just a momentary,
impulsive decision.

I didn't give myself time
to think about it

because I knew if I did,
I wouldn't be able to do it, so…

I k*lled Gary.

I stabbed him twice.

[Atkins] I did not know
at that point in time

that he was going to die.

I had a suspicion of it,
but I didn't know.

I was not in my right mind.

Then they do something
that really is such a key

to understanding the Manson story.

They stage the crime scene,
and they blame it on the Black Panthers

because Charlie has been saying to them,
that's their nemesis.

And on the wall,
they write, in Gary's blood,

"political piggy."

And they put a Black Panther
paw print in blood.

[unsettling music rising]

[film reel whirs and stops]

[Glenn Giardinelli] I had been
practicing Buddhism for a while

before meeting Gary.

I liked him.

We hit it off right away,
and got him started with the practice.

He was a very compassionate guy.
And he was a very warm, gentle person.

We spent so much time together.
We were doing stuff every night.

So when you don't hear from him
after a week, I was like,

"No, no, no,
there's something amiss here."

Myself and two others
decided to drive to his house.

I felt from the beginning
that there was something wrong.

It just didn't feel right.

Nobody answered the door.

And we got a ladder.

So I climbed up the ladder
to a small window that was up high.

This did not feel peaceful.

It felt like I was walking in molasses.

I just saw a silhouette.

I didn't really know
what I was looking at.

But I could tell you one thing,
when you see a thousand horseflies,

you know there's a corpse of some sort.

I remember seeing a lot of blood.

It was just so crazy, so evil.

Just everything about it was horrible.

You can't think of a reason
somebody would do that to him.

We went next door, made a phone call,
and they sent, uh, detectives.

They questioned us,
but we didn't know much.

Nobody knew of Manson at that point.

We had no idea.

[unsettling music continues]

[music fades]

[Guinn] After the Hinman m*rder,

Charlie and the family hope
the police will immediately associate it

with the Black Panthers.

There will be all kinds of stories
in the newspaper.

Unfortunately, that doesn't happen.

They wait. They don't see it on TV.
It's not on the front page of the paper.

So for Charlie, it's a wasted effort.

For Bobby Beausoleil,
it's, "Wait a minute, I k*lled somebody."

He wants to get the heck
out of Dodge for a while.

He drives away in Hinman's car,
but it breaks down.

Police come up behind.
And, of course, it's a stolen car.

And so they take a look in the car.

And in the tire well of the car, Bobby has
the bloody knife he'd used to stab Hinman.

And so he is arrested
on charges of m*rder.

[film reel whirs and stops]

[Manson] We got
this big problem that came up.

Bobby's in prison. My brother's in jail.

Now, understand my mind.

All my life, I've been in jail because
I didn't have anyone to get me out.

I can't let somebody
that's with me stay in jail.

It just ain't--
You know, it's not in my makeup, man.

I got to get my brother out of jail.

So everybody's standing around.
I said, "Pay me what you owe me now!"

And they said, "How do we do that?"
I said, "Get my brother out of jail."

"How do we do it?"
I said, "I don't know how."

"I don't care how you do it. Do it now!"

[Share] Charlie told people,
"Bobby, he's our brother."

"We have to get him out."

Because that's what they needed to hear.

What he said to me was that he had
a lot of disdain for Bobby.

He was a terrible liability
for him sitting in prison.

[Guinn] Bobby Beausoleil can link Manson

to the k*lling
of Gary Hinman if he wants to.

[Day] Manson has to do something.
The whole commune has to do something.

And the collective goal
of the commune at that time

is to get Bobby out of prison.

[Guinn] Somebody said, "I saw a movie
where somebody k*lled a person

and then some of his friends
commit a similar m*rder

so that the police will think
the perpetrator's still at large,

so that their friend was in prison
when it happened,

and so it couldn't have been him
and they had to let the guy go."

"Maybe we could do something like that."

[Day] It's a ridiculous scenario.

You have to remember, they're smoking
a lot of marijuana, they're doing acid,

they're living in the middle of nowhere
in this very isolated compound.

There's no books, there's no clocks.
All they have is each other.

And they come up
with this ridiculous idea.

[Guinn] Charlie quite masterfully
manipulates Tex Watson.

Charlie begins by saying,

"Tex, you brought in
that whole Lotsapoppa thing,

and that was a screwup."

"And I had to go in there
and I had to sh**t Lotsapoppa for you."

[g*nsh*t]

"Well, now Bobby's in trouble."

"Now we got to do something for Bobby."

"I have k*lled for you."

"Are you man enough to do the same thing?"

[Manson] I said, "I took my life for you,
you sorry f*cking coward punk."

And I threw the g*n at him.
I said, "You owe me one."

And that's the way of the outlaw.

If you've got somebody you want wasted
and you're supposed to be my brother,

and you tell me to do something for you
in here and I do it,

then when I call you and tell you
I want something done,

what are you gonna do?

You've got to do it.
You ain't got no choice.

Tex didn't have a choice.
He had to do what he had to do.

[Guinn] And Watson thinks
that's a hell of an idea.

"Yeah, sure, I'm gonna do that.
I'm gonna k*ll somebody."

Manson, "Well, I wonder
who you have in mind."

"I know what you're thinking."

"You must be thinking it'd have to be
somebody rich and famous."

"Somebody really important, right?"

"In fact, you were over
at that Cielo house once, weren't you?"

"You know how to get there."

"I bet you're thinking
of going over to that house."

"Whoever's there dies,
and leave some things

that'll make people think
it was the Black Panthers."

"Yeah, that's what we need to do.
That's gonna save Bobby."

He suggested,
"I want you all to go together."

"And go up to Terry Melcher's old house,
and I want you to k*ll everyone in there."

Now, you would think that someone
in their right mind would say,

"Wow, you know,
what are you talking about?"

But we were under his control.

And at that time,
we were willing to do anything

that would please him
and that would be accepted by him.

[Guinn] So Watson will later testify

that Charlie Manson
told him to go to Cielo

and k*ll who was ever there.

Charlie will claim that it was Tex's idea
to go k*ll people at Cielo.

And they're both telling the truth.

Terry Melcher turned down Charlie Manson.
Didn't give him a recording deal.

Manson knows that Terry Melcher
has left the Cielo house,

because he went looking for him
and was told that he had moved.

He didn't know exactly
who lived there now.

[Steve Oney] But he was
so furious at Terry Melcher

that he was gonna wreak havoc
on whoever was in that house

because they were somehow
connected to Terry Melcher.

That was all he needed to know.

Charlie only told people
what they needed to hear

to get what he wanted out of them.

This is what people don't understand.

Everything, big and small,
originated with Charlie.

There's a leader, and that's it.

[Day] After Manson and Tex
have this conversation,

Manson goes out and he tells three women

to go get a set
of black clothes and a knife.

[Guinn] Susan Atkins
was at the Hinman k*lling.

She knows about
having to write the words in blood.

Pat Krenwinkel
is thoroughly afraid of Manson

and always will do exactly
what she believes he has told her to do.

Linda Kasabian
has a valid driver's license.

Manson tells them very specifically,
"You are going to go out with Tex."

"Whatever he tells you to do,
that's what you do."

"Do whatever Tex tells you."

-[distant screaming]
-[thudding]

[car engine starts]

[Atkins] Before I ever got in the car,

Tex and I had our own
special little stash of, uh, cocaine.

It was cocaine or methedrine,
I'm not sure which.

We both snorted some speed.
We were very, very wired.

[Watson] We were really wired up
like animals.

Wasn't any fear in us.

We were just, "Wow."
Just in a groove, I guess you would say.

We were driving down the freeway,

missed the turnoff
and had to go through Hollywood.

And we came back up
from Sunset Boulevard up to Cielo Drive.

And we drove up to the gate.

[car doors open and close]

And as soon as we got over the fence,
these lights hit us in the face.

I just walked up and stuck that g*n
right into the window

and started pulling the trigger.

[g*nshots echoing]

[Atkins] We went into the house.

I remember when we first went in,
one of the people said, "Who are you?"

And Tex said, "I'm the devil,
and I'm here to do the devil's business."

[unsettling sting]

There was no turning back.

Even if I had wanted to run,
even if I had wanted to leave, I couldn't.

It was like I was caught in something
that I had no control over.

I had absolutely no say-so
as to what was happening there.

I was just like a tool
in the hands of the devil,

is the only way I can put it.

[Krenwinkel]
When all the madness took place,

there was no way to put together
the kind of rational thinking

because there was no
rational thought in my head.

At that point,
everything was out of my control.

I felt helpless.
I felt hopeless to do anything.

All I was doing
is carrying through a macabre dance.

It was horrible,
and I didn't know how to stop it.

[Watson] People at the time
of the crimes were just blobs.

[unsettling music continues]

They weren't individuals.

They meant nothing to me.
I didn't know the people.

I was so high on speed.

I understood what I was doing,

but it just didn't make any difference.

[unsettling music continues]

[Oney] This was an intimate m*rder

in which the bodies
of each victim were violated,

and it gives a new definition
to the term overkill.

Each victim was cut to pieces,

and each victim
bled horribly and suffered.

There was nothing quick about it.

It was extended,

and the K*llers were right in their faces
wielding these knives.

Sharon Tate was k*lled in the living room
where the tragedy really started.

[Stephen Kay] I don't think anything
could be more terrifying

than seeing an eight-and-a-half-month
pregnant woman not only stabbed to death,

but hung from the beams
going across her ceiling.

The coroner, Dr. Noguchi,

testified that Sharon Tate
was still alive when she was hung.

The victim suffered 102 stab wounds.

Wojciech Frykowski was beaten
with a g*n butt over his head,

so much so that his skull looked
more like a football than a human skull.

Manson had told the girls
to leave a sign, something witchy.

Susan Atkins went out to the front door
and wrote "P-I-G" in Sharon's blood.

Manson would later tell the K*llers
that they had not really committed m*rder.

That life was the same as death.

All they'd done is send
those people's spirits to another place.

This was the way he would fit in
m*rder with a philosophy

supposedly of bringing love to everyone.

[interviewer] Now, what'd you think
about Sharon Tate and her unborn baby?

-[Manson] What did I think about it?
-[interviewer] Yeah.

[Manson] Not my world.
I don't live in that.

-[interviewer] Well, so you didn't care?
-[Manson] What the hell does that mean?

[interviewer] That means love,
some sense--

[Manson] Put me in solitary confinement,
break my teeth out, break my ribs,

bust me up, kick me down a hole,
and then come back and tell me about care.

I don't know what care is.

[interviewer] You said to Tex,
"You owe me one."

Tex goes out and commits this atrocious,
horrendous, horrible crime.

-[Manson] From where you're looking.
-[interviewer] From where anybody looks.

-[Manson] Oh, no!
-[interviewer] Oh, yeah, it is.

[Manson] No, no, no.

[film reel whirs and stops]

[helicopter blades whirring]

[indistinct chatter]

[somber music playing]

[officer] Two of the bodies
were found inside the house.

One in the vehicle
and two on the front lawn.

At this point, you must realize
we only have tentative

and very meager amount of information.

[reporter] Were the bodies
badly mutilated?

Uh, this I'd rather not discuss.

The next day, the press shows up.

The story is that there have been murders,

and five bodies were discovered
in this high-rent district.

[Day] Sharon Tate, Roman Polanski's wife,

one of the most famous movie actresses
in the world at that time.

Her ex-fiancé/best friend, Jay Sebring,

who's a very famous Hollywood hairstylist,

and then Roman Polanski's
childhood friend, Wojciech Frykowski,

and his girlfriend, Abigail Folger.

She was the heiress
to the Folgers' coffee fortune.

And they had just happened
to be staying at the house

on this night with Sharon Tate.

Steven Parent, he had nothing to do
with Roman Polanski or Sharon Tate,

and had come over that night to sell
a clock radio to the groundskeeper.

[g*nshots echoing]

[Guinn] Because everybody's
so obsessed with,

"Oh my God, Sharon Tate
had been m*rder*d in the house,"

in terms of coverage
and being on people's lips,

it was always "the Tate murders."

[reporter] Friday night in Los Angeles,

a movie actress
and four of her friends were m*rder*d.

And the circumstances were lurid.

[Guinn] Charlie was furious

that the news coverage
of these initial murders

did not include suspicions
of the Black Panthers.

No one saw the connection at all
to the k*lling of Gary Hinman.

My God, what's he gonna have to do?

Trying to do a parallel m*rder.

He still sees that as a way
to get Bobby out of jail

before Bobby starts snitching.

Manson took it upon himself to say,
"Okay, I'm gonna go out."

"I'm gonna lead the charge,
and we're gonna set this all right."

And he has the four K*llers
from the night before.

Tex Watson,

Patricia Krenwinkel,

Susan Atkins,

and Linda Kasabian.

Also, he has a young
ranch hand named Clem,

who is kind of a slow, young kid

who wandered into Spahn Ranch one day
and helped with the horses

and endeared himself to the Manson Family.

And then finally, Leslie Van Houten.

She was kind of this former beauty queen.

She had had a teen pregnancy
and fallen out,

and she had found herself
as a lost soul like all the other women.

[Van Houten] I felt that
what we were doing

was a mission that needed to be done.

I felt that if they went again,

that I wanted to go and be a good soldier

and surrender myself
for what I believed in.

[Guinn] They are in the car,
and it's kind of a mess.

They follow a sort of haphazard route.

Charlie keeps saying,
"Turn here, turn there."

But suddenly,
he starts giving specific directions.

And they end up on Waverly Drive
in a neighborhood known as Los Feliz.

And Pat Krenwinkel, for one,
recognizes where they are.

There had been a friend of the family

who lived on that block
and had thrown some parties.

And Manson told them to park the car
outside the home of the LaBiancas.

[suspenseful music playing]

Leno and Rosemary LaBianca
were upper-middle class.

They owned their own small businesses.

[Oney] In terms of their place
in Los Angeles society,

they were not glamorous,
they were not part of the Hollywood crowd.

They seemed utterly unconnected
to the Tate victims.

[Guinn] They'd gotten home
from a short trip.

Rosemary's gonna go to bed,

and Leno said he's gonna
stretch out on the couch

and look at the sports section first.

[Day] Manson and Tex
go into the house by themselves.

They find Leno sleeping on the couch.

They find Rosemary
sleeping in her bedroom.

And they tie them both up

with a leather thong
that Manson had brought with him.

And Manson has some sort of discussion
with Leno and Rosemary LaBianca.

We don't exactly know what was said,

but when Manson comes back
to the car about five minutes later,

he has Rosemary's wallet with him.

He then gets in the car, and he tells
Leslie Van Houten and Patricia Krenwinkel

to go inside and listen to Tex.

[car engine starts]

And Manson, Clem, Linda,
and Susan Atkins, they drive away.

Pat and I walked into the house.

And we went into the kitchen.

And Pat got a knife out of the kitchen.

And we were told to take
Mrs. LaBianca into the bedroom.

And it was at that point I began to feel

the realness
of the situation that I was in.

Up until then,
it had all seemed like abstracts.

[unsettling music playing]

We could hear Mr. LaBianca being stabbed.

You could hear
the guttural sounds of him dying.

-And I remember her screaming for him.
-[screaming]

I remember thinking to myself
how much she loved him.

I tried to hold Mrs. LaBianca down
while Pat stabbed her,

and she hit her collarbone,
and the knife bent.

I stood in the hallway
until Tex handed me a knife,

and he said, "Do something."

I went back in the bedroom,

and Mrs. LaBianca was laying
on the floor on her stomach.

And I stabbed her
numerous times in the back.

[Day] After Rosemary is dead,
and the three are covered in blood,

what happens next, to me,
is almost more disturbing.

They go out to the kitchen,
and they fix themselves a snack.

[Van Houten] I believe
Tex went into the refrigerator

and got cheese and chocolate milk.

We went and we hid in the bushes nearby,

and then when the sun came up,
we hitchhiked back to the ranch.

Leno and Rosemary LaBianca
were found butchered in their house.

Rosemary LaBianca
had been stabbed 40 times.

Leno had been stabbed multiple times.

A knife plunged down his throat

and the word "w*r"
written into his stomach

with a bifurcated fork,

the kind of thing you'd use to toss
a piece of meat on the barbecue grill.

The word "rise"
was written in blood on one wall.

The words "death to pigs" were written
in the living room above the sofa.

And on the refrigerator in the kitchen
was the phrase "helter-skelter,"

misspelled H-E-A-L-T-E-R, skelter.

These were telegrams from the bizarre.

They just added to the overall
sense of violation and peculiarity.

It was impossible to understand
a motive for violence of this magnitude.

What point was being made?

You just had to catalog the violence
and collect the evidence

and hope that
you could begin to find meaning.

But at first, there was no meaning.

[film reel whirs and stops]

[reporter] The city of Los Angeles
has had another multiple m*rder.

Last night, a middle-aged couple
was stabbed to death

in a case that has striking similarities

to the mass m*rder Saturday
of actress Sharon Tate and four friends.

[uneasy music playing]

[Ivor Davis] When the m*rder
of Sharon Tate, this famous person,

and her friends
and the famous hairdresser broke,

Hollywood went into a panic fit.

And then the LaBianca murders happened.

[Linda Deutsch] People were locking down.
They were not going out to dinner anymore.

It was the summer and it was hot,

and people were keeping
their windows closed.

The whole city was under siege.

[Oney] People insulated themselves
behind security.

g*n sales had jumped by the hundreds.

The price of guard dogs had tripled.

[Al Wiman] People like Frank Sinatra
hired extra security.

In all of the history of Hollywood,

I think there had never been
anything as horrible as this,

and the situation was very unsettling

because you had the police department
that didn't know who did what.

People said, "How could that happen?"

It really scared the hell
out of a lot of people.

[Guinn] The police did not believe
that the two cases were linked at all.

They felt that probably the Tate murders
were the result of a drug deal gone bad.

Quantities of ill*gal drugs
were found in the house.

The LaBianca murders
were suspected of being copycat killings.

Some, in their words,
"sick son of a b*tch,"

had read the stories
about the Tate murders

and went right out the next night
to try to do the same thing.

The homicides are not connected.

I think the public and a lot of the media

picked out the fact
they were similar in nature,

possibly because of the blood
and the inscriptions,

but this is rather
a common type of thing in homicide.

[Deutsch] The problem was that the police
were not working together.

There was a little boy
who had found the g*n in the bushes

from the Tate k*lling.

-The police department had the g*n.
-[g*nsh*t]

[Oney] They put it in evidence,

but didn't tell anyone downtown
that they'd found this g*n.

The main group of detectives
who were searching for the m*rder weapon

were sending out bulletins
trying to find this handgun.

They had it all along.
They just didn't know they had it.

[Guinn] And the greatest mistake of all,

Los Angeles area county detectives
were investigating the Gary Hinman m*rder.

Right after the Tate m*rder,

the Hinman county detectives
called the LAPD

to speak to someone on the Tate case.

And they said,
"We think we've got a similar k*lling."

"Vicious stabbing, word written in blood."

"You know, let's get together

and see if there's some connection
between the murders."

And the LAPD said,

"No, we've already decided
that the Tate case is all drug related."

"Good luck with your case."

[Davis] The police were clueless.

For three months, my office would say,
"What's new on the Sharon Tate m*rder?"

And there wasn't anything new.

Is it generally the case that the longer
a homicide investigation goes on,

the tougher it is
for investigators to solve?

Yes, I think this
is an axiom in police work.

If we had physical evidence
now to place someone at the scene

and adequate testimony to indicate guilt,

we would have made an arrest and already
been in the, uh, prosecution stages.

[somber music playing]

[Davis] Even though he wasn't
in the country when it happened,

Roman Polanski came under suspicion

of being the architect
of his wife's m*rder

because he made these oddball,
strange, bizarre movies.

And Roman was even asked
to do a lie detector test.

[whirring]

[Deutsch] Roman had done the picture
with Sharon Tate, The Vampire K*llers.

That was what made her a star.

And then he did Rosemary's Baby,
which was a huge hit.

It was a horror movie
based on the birth of a devil baby.

[intense music playing]

And Sharon was pregnant with his son.

People just leapt to weird conclusions.

Satanism seemed as good as anything
at the time because Rosemary's Baby…

-[man] Rose!
-[Rosemary] Help me!

[man] Oh, Rose--

[Rosemary] Somebody help!

[Davis] All the wild stories
that were circulating

soon after the m*rder
got credence because the journalists,

the press, were writing
about whatever they could.

[man] Would you mind standing?

I don't.

[Deutsch] He had to have
a press conference

because he was the center of focus
of everything now.

[Polanski] I can tell you
that the last few months,

the last few years I spent with her…

[somber music playing]

…were only time
of true happiness in my life.

And facts, which will be
coming out day after day,

will make us shame a lot of newsmen

who, for a selfish reason,

write, unbearable for me,
horrible things about my wife.

Sh…

All of you know how beautiful she was.

And very often I read and heard statements

that she was one of the most beautiful,

if not the most beautiful,
woman of the world.

But only few of you know how good she was.

She was vulnerable.

[breathing heavily]

She couldn't refuse any friendship.

She had innumerable friends.

And I had them too.

[Deutsch] The press was overboard
on the way that they treated Polanski.

I think that they didn't take
into consideration the fact

that he was a devastated widower
at this point.

Someone who had lost
his wife and his unborn son

in the most horrible manner possible.

Later in covering him,
I found out that when he was a boy,

he escaped the Krakow ghetto
during the Holocaust,

but his mother was taken
to a concentration camp.

I had discovered from research I did later

that his mother was pregnant
when she was m*rder*d.

So it was like he was reliving history
when Sharon was k*lled.

[Manson] His name was Roman Polanski

because he was the Jew that was
controlling the Roman Catholic Church.

How many people got k*lled
behind those movies?

Rosemary's Baby. All this madness.

Do you think that Christ,
if he came back, would submit to that?

Do you think he would like that?

And if he didn't submit,
would he be rejected and outcast?

Would he be crucified again? I think so.

[film reel whirs and stops]

[suspenseful music playing]

[Day] At this time,
the police have no suspects.

But Manson and the family
had this kind of side hustle,

where they'd go around and they'd steal
car parts all around Simi Valley.

If they found a car
on the side of the road

or in someone's driveway
and no one's looking,

they'd take the muffler,
take this, take that.

And they would use it to retrofit
these dune buggies.

And they would drive these dune buggies
all around Spahn Ranch,

all around the canyon.

It did not go unnoticed.

[indistinct radio chatter]

The sheriff's department actually thought
that Manson and the women

were running kind of a car parts
auto theft ring out of Spahn Ranch.

And they began to launch
this huge investigation into auto theft.

[indistinct chatter]

[Guinn] On August 16th at Spahn Ranch,
everybody wakes up.

There's helicopters overhead.
There's cars with officers rolling in.

And pretty much
everybody in the ranch is arrested.

[Schram] There was a lot of commotion
one morning at the Spahn Ranch.

I had no idea why the police were there.

[Share] I was pulled out at gunpoint.

There was people on the dirt, handcuffed.

There's this giant raid.

[Schram] One by one, they were bringing us
out to the front of the boardwalk.

I didn't know what was going on.
I… I… I was scared.

One of the policemen went inside
and brought my guitar out and smashed it,

I suppose looking for drugs.

[Share] They were all gleeful
finding Charlie.

Charlie looked like, to me, like a martyr.

He looked like Jesus
being taken by the soldiers.

That's how programmed I was.

[Guinn] The officers can't understand why,
when they haul Charlie out

and tell him he's being arrested
for auto theft, that he looks relieved.

Charlie, of course, thought they must have
come after him for the murders.

So the family's taken down to jail.

And in the next day's newspaper,
on the same page, there are three stories.

The first story's the big one.

The Tate murders,
the police say they have suspects,

but they still
may not have cleared everybody.

Then a smaller story, that the LaBiancas
who were m*rder*d were laid to rest.

And finally, the third tiny story is that
there's been a raid on Spahn Ranch.

So on the same page,
they not only have both murders,

but the people who committed them.

No one saw the connection at all.

Manson and the members of his family
then were released

because the warrant that was
originally issued for August the 13th

wasn't carried out until the 16th,
making the raid ill*gal.

The LA County Sheriff's Department
had the entire Manson Family in custody

one week to the day
after the Tate killings.

And then,
because of their own incompetence,

they have to let them go.

And in fact, because of the raid,

Manson and the family
become really freaked out.

And they run away from Los Angeles.

[film reel whirs and stops]

[Day] After the raid,
Tex goes back to Texas.

Patricia Krenwinkel goes to live
with her mother in Alabama.

The rest of them
begin this exodus to Death Valley.

One of the women in the family
had a grandma who had a ranch.

And that's where Charlie
decides they'll move.

The area's perfect.

It's so isolated.
It's so rugged. It's so raw.

It's a place where
Charlie and the family can hole up,

and anybody after them
can't actually get there.

And Charlie's domination will be complete.

[Schram] Death Valley,
where we were at the Barker Ranch,

was mostly just
a few scrub oaks or manzanita.

And honestly, I don't ever remember
being inside of a building

the whole time I was there.

Charlie would lay out a long carpet,
sort of like,

and we'd just line up
kind of like sardines and sleep

and try to keep each other warm
during the night.

I was just totally committed.

I was totally in.

We were all gonna survive together.

My role was to make sure
everyone was fed and taken care of.

Ever the nurturing mom.

Charlie sensed that I was kind of in
a "I want to go home" frame of mind.

And he looked at me,
and he seemed very kind.

And he said,
"You want to go home, don't you?"

And I said, "Well, yeah, I do."

And he hit me in the head
with a r*fle butt a couple times.

I saw stars.

He held a knife
to my throat and, you know,

said, "You don't leave this family."

[Manson] Nobody left the family.

If you're not willing
to get down with the worst of it,

and do whatever you got to do,
you're not gonna survive.

I have the same mind inside
as I do outside, and it's a rebel.

If I have to die,
I'm taking everybody with me.

I'll take everything you've got.

[unsettling music builds]

[music fades]

[haunting music playing]

[music fades]