THAT man has wronged me. Society has wronged me. We'll kill whatever
pigs are in that house. Go in there and get them.” With those raging
orders from their Rasputin-like leader, a band of hippies, clad in
black, allegedly broke into a secluded Los Angeles home last August. In
the orgy of hacking, stabbing and shooting that followed, Starlet
Sharon Tate, 26, and four other people were killed. It was one of the
grisliest, bloodiest, and apparently most senseless crimes of the
century. Last week Los Angeles police announced that they had solved the five
murders and three others as well. If they are correct, the alleged
murderers were even stranger and more bizarre than their crimes. The
police case was based on the tale of an accused murderer, Susan Denise
Atkins, 21. She sketched out a weird story of a mystical,
semi-religious hippie drug-and-murder cult led by a bearded, demonic
Mahdi able to dispatch his zombie-like followers, mostly girls wearing
hunting knives, to commit at least eight murders and, police say,
possibly four others. Murder Sprees. Three members of the gang were arrested last week:
Charles Watson, 23, Patricia Krenwinkel, 22, and Linda Kasabian, 20.
The police also were seeking murder indictments against two other
“family” members. The suspects, as well as the thin, vacuous Miss
Atkins, were all members of a hippie-type gang who styled themselves
slaves to their guru-type leader. Miss Atkins, a prosecution witness
who hopes to save herself from the gas chamber, claimed that she was
present but did not participate in the murders committed by the gang.
At least eight members took part in one or another of the murders, say
police, although the leader, Charles Manson, 35, did not participate in
the killings himself, but confined himself to directing them. Miss Atkins said that Manson had ordered the Tate murders on Aug. 9, the
murder of Musician Gary Hinman on July 25, and those of Mr. and Mrs.
Leno LaBianca on Aug. 10. Hinman was allegedly murdered because he
would not turn over $20,000 that Manson thought he had. Miss Atkins
and another Manson follower are charged in that murder. The LaBiancas
were picked at random from among the affluent, she said, the night
after the Tate murders, just to prove that the killers had not lost
their nerve. The Tate victims did not even know Manson. They died, she
said, because Manson, an aspiring songwriter, nursed a grudge against
Doris Day's son, Terry Melcher, who refused to have one of Manson's
songs recorded. Miss Tate had rented the Melcher house, and Manson
ordered everyone in it killed, presumably not even knowing who the
tenants at the time were—or caring. According to Miss Atkins, she, Watson, Mrs. Kasabian and Miss Krenwinkel
entered Miss Tate's house and stabbed and shot the occupants: Abigail
Folger, the coffee heiress; Voityck Frokowski, her boy friend;
Hollywood Hair Stylist Jay Sebring and Miss Tate. The starlet, 8
months pregnant, pleaded: “Please let me have my baby,” but was stabbed
16 times. Steven Parent, 18, who was visiting the caretaker's cottage,
was also killed.
