Wild Cult Blamed In Tate Slayings
Nine Held In Case; Band Also Linked To LaBianca Murders
December 2, 1969
Los Angeles Times
By Jerry Cohen
Times Staff Writer
Police believe they have solved the Sharon Tate murder case and
that an occult band of hippies, directed by a leader who calls himself "Jesus,"
committed the five killings.
Members of the band-a mystical, hate-oriented tribe of 20th century
nomads-also are suspected of the LaBianca-or "copycat"-killings and at least
four other comparably grotesque butcheries.
The suspects were their victims, police believe, both to "punish" them for
their affluent lifestyle and to "liberate" them from it.
The killers invaded the Tate and LaBianca households, is suspected, because
they learned about the victims affluence through friends or relatives of those
slain.
Police have found no evidence of association between the suspects and the
victims prior to the murders, it was reported Monday.
The cult leader, Charles Manson, 34, who also refers to himself as " God "
and "Satan," is in custody, along with a man and two young women. A third young
woman is being sought out-of-state, but her where abouts is believed known.
At least five other women are being held in Sybil Brand Institute here as
material witnesses.
All are members of Manson's "family," as the tribe calls itself. They
reportedly consider themselves his "slaves," willing to do his bidding without
question.
Police got their break about two weeks ago when a young woman member of the
hippie clan poured out to an informer an eerie story of mass murder and sadistic
sexual gratification.
Details Recounted
The young woman reportedly confided that the Tate and LaBianca killers were
members of the cult, which considered itself divinely guided and above the law.
She recounted details of the Tate murder scene, which, in the judgment of
police, only the killers could have known.
She supplied nicknames, aliases, first names and a few entire names which the
informant past a long to detectives. These led officers to the last known
stronghold of the nomadic tribe in Death Valley.
Before Mrs. Tate was killed, the informant told police, she pleaded to be
spared, saying: "Let me have my baby." She was 8 1/2 months pregnant at the
time.
At the press conference Monday, police Chief Edward M. Davis released
fragmentary details about what possibly has become the most celebrated murder
investigation in California history.
He revealed that murder complaints had been issued for three of the suspects,
none of them Manson, and he said:
"It is anticipated that an additional four or five persons will be named in
indictments which will be sought from the Los Angeles County grand jury."
However, it is known that police believe only five persons-two men and three
young women-actively participated in the slaughter of Miss Tate and four others
at the Actress's Benedict Canyon Estate August 9.
The second man Charles D. Watson, alias Charles Montgomery, 24, is being held
in McKenny, Texas, on an unrelated charge. But he was accused in a complaint
filed here Monday by Deputy District Attorney Vincent Bugliosi with the slaying
of 18-year-old Steven Parent.
The El Monte youth, who had been visiting the estate's caretaker, was shot to
death in his car parked in the driveway of the secluded estate rented by Miss
Tate and her director-husband Roman Polanski.
He is not believed to have been acquainted with Miss Tate or the other three
victims-hair stylist Jay Sebring, Polish Playboy Voyteck Frykowski and coffee
heiress Abigail Folger.
The two young women charged with five counts of murder in complaints filed
Monday by Bugliosi are Linda Kassabian, 19, and Patricia Krenwinkel, 21, both
Los Angeles area residence.
Watson, a native of Texas, goes by the nickname of "Tex," and his cousin, Tom
Montgomery, is sheriff of Collin County where he is being held.
The suspect, son of a grocer in nearby Copeville, Texas, was described by
Sheriff Montgomery as clean-shaven and wearing his hair short when arrested.
Miss Krenwinkel, also known as Mary Scott, Marnie Reeves and "Katie," and
charged under the name Krenwinkel, was arrested in Mobile, Alabama.
Mrs. Kasabian, still at liberty, is believed to have sought sanctuary in a
covenant in New Mexico.
No charges were filed in connection with the slayings of wealthy grocery
executive Leno LaBianca and his wife Rosemary in their Silver Lake home the day
after the Benedict Canyon massacre.
Formal charges in either case have yet to be filed against Manson, who is an
ex-convict with a record dating back to 18 years, or the third female suspect,
Susan Denise Atkins, 21.
However, Manson is in custody, charged with arson and receiving stolen
property, in the town of Independence, county seat of Inyo County, the site of
the "family's" most recent encampment.
Miss Atkins, also known as Sadie Glutz, is in custody here accused of a
murder related to both the Tate carnage and the LaBianca murders.
Very Strange Cult
Police believe that, at the outside, the family numbers no more than 35, but
investigators suspect that knowledge of the murders was widespread among
members, all held in the thrall of their leader by a strange "spell."
The cult to which the suspects belong is an anomaly even in the offbeat
hippie world, and beyond its member’s proclivity for violence.
The men wear long hair, but the women cropped theirs short, and identify with
no one but their own close group.
Those who have observed them, especially the young women, say their mind are
almost ethereal. When Miss Krenwinkel, an attractive brunette dressed in hippie
garb-floppy hat, blue denims and a man's checkered shirt two sizes too big-was
arrested in Mobile she was riding in a car with a teen-age boy. He was not held.
When she saw police, officers said, she pulled the hat over her face.
Miss Krenwinkel had lived in and around Mobile most of her early life,
according to police. Her mother lives in nearby Theodore, Alabama, said
investigating officers, but her daughter was not living with her.
It is believed police have some, but not all, of the physical evidence to
support circumstantial evidence obtained from informants.
In search of it, six homicide detectives and Deputy District Attorney
Bugliosi - armed with the young woman informants tips-sped to the abandoned
encampment near Death Valley the night of November 19 with a search warrant.
Their objective was a converted school bus, which the clan used as a mobile
headquarters during meandering.
The searchers reportedly found no weapons, but confiscated clothing and other
articles, which they hope may yield evidence.
Most of the tribe, officers discovered, had been seized in mid-October at
their encampment in barren Goler wash, 20 miles northeast of Trona, in the Death
Valley area, and booked as suspects in the ring specializing in the theft of
dune buggies an expensive automobiles.
Many of the same hippies had been arrested two months earlier, or just a week
after the Tate killings, for similar thefts during a raid on an isolated
Chatsworth ranch, known as the Spahn Ranch, where they were living in an
abandoned movies.
It was from the Chatsworth ranch that police believe the suspects made
murders sorties into populated areas when the deities to which they paid homage
so ordained.
Connection With Religion
Asked if the clan was any kind of religious organization, chief Davis replied
Monday: "It perhaps could have some religious connotation connected with it,
depending on your frame of reference."
Those familiar with the nomads say they practiced "a kind of witchcraft," and
that part of their rites was associated with drug usage-marijuana and LSD, but
not the "hard stuff," heroin and cocaine, used by some of the Tate-Polanski
intimates.
After the Chatsworth raid, remnants of the tribe drifted to the Death Valley
commune and were soon joined by others who had been freed on bail or had their
charges dismissed.
At the time of the October raid on the Death Valley Commune in the Panamint
Range, officers found about 20 persons-men, young women and even a few small
children-living in two primitive miners' cabins.
Deputies also found fortified observation posts, equipped with telescopes and
walkie-talkies.
Manson reportedly was manning one of the lookout stations when officers
arrived.
The area, about 125 miles southeast of Independence, is virtually
inaccessible except by four- wheel drive vehicles.
Most of the young women arrested in October were nude or clad only in bikini
bottoms at the time of the raid. Some of them, and the men, wore sheaths holding
knives.
Officer’s confiscated guns there, as well as at the Chatsworth ranch.
Complaints From Miners
Deputies said Death Valley miners had complained of being driven away from
the encampment earlier by young people armed with knives.
Manson, slight and fierce-eyed, with shoulder length hair, was in jail as a
result of the Death Valley raid at the time he came under suspicion in the Tate
case.
Miss Atkins also was arrested in the Death Valley raid, and then brought to
Los Angeles County when evidence linked her to a Malibu area torture murder.
Gary Hinman, 34, a musician, was slain last July in his Topanga Canyon home.
He had been stabbed numerous times. "Political piggy" was scrawled in blood on
one wall of his home.
"Pig" was found written in blood at the Tate home when the murders were
discovered.
"Death to pigs" was smeared in blood on the door of the refrigerator in the
LaBianca home.
There has been speculation that the gruesome legends were an attempts to
throw investigators off sent, to make it appeared the slayings may have been the
work of black militants, whom the Manson family is known to despise.
Death Valley residents said they had heard that the Manson clan had retreated
to the remote commune because they feared a black takeover in Los Angeles.
A codefendant with Miss Atkins in the Hinman case, Robert K. Beausoleil, 21,
was tried last week, but an 8-4 vote for his conviction resulted in a hung jury
and a mistrial. He was arrested in August, two days before the Tate murders, and
his connection with Manson's hippie tribe is not known.
However, a second informant in the Tate case testified at Beausoleil's trial
that the defendant had boasted in late July about killing the musician.
The second informant is Daniel Thomas De Carlo, 25, of Inglewood, now under
heavy guard.
De Carlo reported he knew of the hippie tribe’s murderous excursions because
he was the head of a motorcycle gang formerly headquartered in Death Valley near
the Manson commune.
The motorcyclists reportedly were invited to join in the Tate murders, but De
Carlo rejected the overture.
Ms. Atkins was charged with the Hinman murder, as was Beausoleil, but she was
not apprehended until long after the Tate slayings. Their cases were severed.
She was arraigned only last Wednesday.
Police believe the killers entered the Tate residence just before midnight
August 8 and the murders occurred sometime before 12:30 AM August 9.
Parent was slain first with the.22-caliber revolver, police said.
All four other victims died of stab wounds but Sebring and Frykowski also
were shot with the same caliber revolver. Frykowski also was clubbed over the
head with a heavy instrument.
It is understood police believe only one gun was used in the killings.
Davis credited "tenacious investigations carried out by robbery-homicide
detectives" with forcing the break in the case.
The chief said the investigators "developed a suspicion which cause them to
do a vigorous amount of work in the Spahn ranch area and the people connected
with the Spahn ranch with which led us to where we are today."
The ranch is 1 mile west of Topanga Canyon road on Santa Susanna Pass Road.
Davis said evidence in the Tate case obtained thus far would be presented to
the county grand jury's criminal complaints committee this morning to support a
request for a formal inquiry on December 9.
The district attorney's office has assigned three deputies to assist
detectives "to make certain all the requirements are complied with," Davis
added. He said the three, J. Miller Leavy, Aaron Stovitz and Bugliosi, "will
carry the case to its conclusion."
