How They Died
Step-By-Step: 5 Tate Murders
Chronology Of Slayings By 4 Black-Clad Invaders Told
Girl Occultist Returned To L.A.
December 4, 1969
Los Angeles Times
By Dial Torgerson
Times Staff Writer
From many sources, this is the first detailed account of the Tate and
LaBianca murders:
Steven Parent died first at the home of Sharon Tate. He was shot to death as
he tried to leave the estate when a band of black-clad murderer swept in.
The other four died more slowly, some of them pleaded to be spared, under the
shots, blows and stabbings of what police say were members of a wandering hippie
band.
The next day, fearing they had lost their nerve and seeking to restore their
evil bravado, the band struck again, claiming two more victims in the Los Feliz
district.
It all began at least six months before the August murders.
Witnesses have said they were "under orders" from Charles Miles Manson, 35.
A professional criminal since the early 1950's, he had become the leader of a
car-stealing commune of wanderers who called him "God," "Jesus," or, sometimes,
"Satan". Many of his followers were women who satisfied his sexual fancies. His
domination over the band was termed "hypnotic."
Refused To Aid Manson
Manson hoped to become a professional musician. But, Terry Melcher, 27, son
of Doris Day and a television producer with good show business connections,
refused to help further Manson's career.
As revenge for Melcher’s rejection, according to one of the accused, Manson
told his followers to kill "the pigs" at the Benedict Canyon Estate.
By then Melcher had moved out of the $200,000 residence. Director Roman
Polanski and his wife, Miss Tate, moved in in February. Manson didn't know who
live there when he allegedly ordered the raid.
But he had been there with Melcher. He knew it was a secluded spot. A private
road off Cielo Drive ends in a cul-de-sac at the front gate. An electric button
opened the gate. Manson knew where it was.
On August 8 at 11:30 PM a man and three women went there.
The man had a.22-caliber pistol. The girls carried bayonets.
The man climbed a telephone pole and cut the telephone line and a power line
into the home and the outbuildings.
One of them pressed the button. The gate swung open. One of the women waited
outside. The three entered. There were six people inside:
Miss Tate was in her bedroom. Abigail Folger, 26 who had been staying there,
was in another bedroom. Her boyfriend, Voyteck Frykowski, 37, was lying on a
living room couch. Somewhere in the house was Jay Sebring, 35, a men's hair
stylist.
Just leaving was the Parent youth, an 18-year-old friend of the estate's
caretaker, William E. Garretson, 19. The latter was in a guesthouse at the far
end of the sprawling estate.
Parent was getting into his father's Rambler Sedan to leave when the three,
dressed in black clothes, walked in. Before the youth could get the car started,
the man thrust the pistol in the window and fired repeatedly. Parent died behind
the wheel.
Then the killer crept into the house through a window. There had been a small
party earlier, but all was quiet as midnight neared. Frykowski was asleep. The
man in black went to the front door and opened it to admit the girls.
They awakened Frykowski and bound him. He cried:
"What do you want, money? I'll give you money!"
Shot And Stabbed
The others ran in. Sebring, a karate student, came into the living room, and
was shot, then stabbed. He died beside the living room couch.
Miss Folger ran in. She was stabbed, but not killed. Mrs. Tate either came in
or was dragged in from the bedroom.
Frykowski broke loose from his badly knotted bounds and ran toward the door.
He was clubbed in the face with a pistol. He kept running. The killer shot him
in the back. He fell on the lawn near the front door.
Miss Folger tried to run. She headed toward the south end of the property,
possibly remembering that Garretson and five dogs, one of them a big Weimaraner,
were there.
The man caught her on the lawn and stabbed her. She fell, the victim of
repeated blows, on the grass beneath a tree. It was there she was found dead the
next morning.
Then it was Miss Tate's turn. She was 8 1/2 months pregnant.
Pleads For Baby
Other members of Manson's "family" had spoken of how they loved children, and
everywhere the band moved, children were part of the entourage. Mrs. Tate
pleaded with the black-clad trio:
"Please let me have my baby!"
She was stabbed, time and again. But the blows were directed toward her upper
torso. Her abdomen was untouched. The body was found on the living room carpet.
It was found later that a perfectly formed baby boy died with her.
Although one of the accused later said that she and one of the other girls
did some of the stabbing, most of it was believed to be the work of the man. The
girls held the victims.
Garretson's said he heard the dogs barking, and neighbors later told of
hearing the dogs, screams, and what could have been shot. Garretson's stayed in
his room and didn't leave it. None of the neighbors called the police.
The killings were all over by 12:30 AM that Saturday.
There were some final touches:
The raiders wiped their hands on a towel. One of the women used the bloody
towel to write the word "pig" on the front door. The towel was placed over
Sebring’s head, like a hood. A nylon cord looped around Miss Tate's and Sebring
necks was thrown over a rafter in the open-beam ceiling.
The four assailants then returned to the Chatsworth movie ranch where Manson
led a group accused of stealing Volkswagens and turning them into dune buggies
for resale.
Intruders took with them $73 from the victims. There was more than that they
hadn't bothered to take. Robbery was not their motive.
At the ranch they reported to fellow hippies: "We got five piggies."
The next day there was some talk among the group as to whether they had lost
their nerve.
Manson had apparently once been to a party in the Los Feliz area where
wealthy grocery chain owner Leno LaBianca lived with his wife, Rosemary, on
Waverly Drive.
At random, the LaBianca home was picked as the scene of the next killing. The
nomad band hated affluent, middle-class people. The LaBianca home, a $50,000
residence at the top of a rise, had an expensive car and a speedboat on a
trailer parked in front of it.
Orgy Of Murder
The LaBiancas, who were surprised where they were found - he in the living
room, she in the bedroom - were tied up. Two men and a woman member of the group
left, and a man and two women launched another orgy of murder.
LaBiancas head was covered with a white hood. He was stabbed to death, his
chest was pierced with a meat carving fork, the word "war" and the letters "XXX"
were cut into his flesh.
Mrs. LaBianca was stabbed so repeatedly her back was almost cut to shreds.
After the killing, the trio calmly took showers at the home and then helped
themselves to food from the refrigerator. When they left there was a message
there, too, written in blood on the refrigerator.
It said: "Death to pigs."
Law enforcement agencies said these two murder cases may have accounted for
only a part of the hippie commune’s toll.
