A Hollywood Home Became A Killing Ground. An 8-Month Pregnant Actor's Blood Was Used To Write A Message

The killers came looking for a house. The people inside hardly mattered.

On the night of August 8, 1969, actress Sharon Tate returned to 10050 Cielo Drive with three friends after dinner. She was 26, eight-and-a-half months pregnant and waiting for her husband, filmmaker Roman Polanski, to return from Europe.

Before sunrise, Tate and four others were dead.

The secluded Los Angeles home, once filled with parties and Hollywood promise, had become the scene of one of America's most notorious crimes.

But Tate was not the reason Charles Manson knew the address.

The house had once belonged to someone else. Someone Manson had wanted to impress. Someone who could have given him the music career he believed he deserved.

By the time Manson sent his followers to Cielo Drive, that man was gone.

Sharon Tate was living there instead.

Hollywood's New Star

Born in Dallas on January 24, 1943, Sharon Marie Tate grew up constantly moving. Her father was an officer in the United States Army, and his postings took the family from one city to another.

Attention found Tate early. She won a beauty pageant as a baby, modelled as a teenager and began appearing in films while her family was living in Italy.

Actor Richard Beymer reportedly noticed her while she was working as an extra in Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man and encouraged her to pursue acting.

Hollywood, however, was slow to see beyond her beauty.

Tate appeared in television shows including Mister Ed and The Beverly Hillbillies before securing film roles in Eye of the Devil, The Fearless Vampire Killers and Don't Make Waves.

Then came Valley of the Dolls in 1967.

The film made her widely known and earned her a Golden Globe nomination for New Star of the Year. Tate was no longer merely another aspiring actress in Los Angeles. Her career had begun to move.

So had her personal life.

A Marriage And A House In The Hills

Tate met Roman Polanski while filming The Fearless Vampire Killers, which he directed. They fell in love and married in London in January 1968.

By the end of the year, Tate was pregnant.

The couple rented 10050 Cielo Drive, a secluded home in Benedict Canyon. Tate decorated it and filled it with friends. It seemed removed from the noise of Hollywood while remaining close enough to its centre.

But the address came with a past.

Record producer Terry Melcher had lived there before Tate and Polanski. Even after he left, people occasionally arrived looking for him.

One of them was Charles Manson.

The Man Who Wanted A Record Deal

Before his name became synonymous with murder, Manson wanted to be a musician.

He wrote songs, performed for anyone willing to listen and drifted close enough to the music industry to believe fame was within reach. Through Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson, he entered a world of musicians, producers and celebrities.

That brought him into contact with Terry Melcher.

Manson hoped Melcher would help launch his career. It never happened.

The rejection mattered to him. By 1969, Manson had surrounded himself with followers who treated him as a spiritual leader. They lived communally, took drugs and absorbed his increasingly paranoid beliefs.

He preached about an approaching race war he called "Helter Skelter", borrowing the name from a Beatles song and twisting popular music into his own violent prophecy.

Cielo Drive stood at the intersection of his failed ambition and growing rage.

Melcher no longer lived there. Manson knew the address nevertheless.

On August 8, he sent four followers to it.

Sharon Tate's Last Evening

Tate's husband was working in Europe. She spent part of the day with actress Joan Pettet before going to dinner with three friends: celebrity hairstylist Jay Sebring, writer Wojciech Frykowski and coffee heiress Abigail Folger.

They returned to Cielo Drive at around 10.30 pm.

The property's caretaker, William Garretson, was staying in a separate guest house. An 18-year-old acquaintance, Steven Parent, had visited him that evening and was preparing to leave.

Shortly after midnight, Charles "Tex" Watson arrived with Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel and Linda Kasabian.

Watson climbed a telephone pole and cut the line.

The house had been disconnected from the outside world.

The First Victim Was Leaving

Steven Parent encountered the killers before he could drive away.

He was shot inside his car.

Watson, Atkins and Krenwinkel then entered the main house while Kasabian remained outside. Inside were Tate, Sebring, Frykowski and Folger.

They had not been chosen because of who they were. They were there because Manson's followers had been sent to that address.

What followed was a prolonged attack.

Sebring was shot and stabbed. Frykowski and Folger fought to escape but were chased and killed. Tate pleaded for the life of her unborn child.

She was stabbed repeatedly.

Before leaving, the killers used Tate's blood to write "PIG" on the front door. By morning, five people were dead: Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, Wojciech Frykowski, Abigail Folger and Steven Parent.

Tate's unborn son, whom she and Polanski intended to name Paul Richard, also died.

The Housekeeper Opened The Door

The crime was discovered the following morning when housekeeper Winifred Chapman arrived for work.

She saw Parent's body in the car. Then she entered the house.

The scenes inside sent her running from the property, screaming for help.

Los Angeles police initially struggled to understand what had happened. There appeared to be no obvious motive linking all five victims. The violence seemed excessive, almost theatrical.

Hollywood panicked.

If Sharon Tate could be murdered inside a secluded home in one of the city's wealthiest neighbourhoods, nobody felt protected by fame, money or locked gates.

Then, the following night, the killers struck again.

Another House, Another Message

On August 10, supermarket executive Leno LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary, were found murdered in their Los Feliz home.

Manson accompanied his followers to the property but left before the killings. Watson, Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten carried them out.

Messages written at the scene echoed the language and imagery found at Cielo Drive.

The two crimes had different victims but the same signature.

Even then, the connection was not immediately clear to investigators. The break came through arrests and confessions involving members of Manson's circle.

Susan Atkins reportedly spoke about the Tate murders while in custody on an unrelated charge. Information began moving from inmates to investigators.

The trail finally led to the Manson Family.

The Man Who Did Not Need To Enter The House

Charles Manson did not personally kill Sharon Tate.

He did not need to.

Prosecutors argued that he controlled the group, chose the target and ordered his followers to kill those inside. His power lay in convincing other people to carry out his violence.

In 1971, Manson, Watson, Atkins and Krenwinkel were convicted of murder. Leslie Van Houten was convicted for her role in the LaBianca killings. Kasabian, who became a key prosecution witness, received immunity.

The death sentences initially handed down were later commuted to life imprisonment after California temporarily abolished capital punishment.

Manson died in prison in 2017.

The Address He Could Not Let Go

The murders have often been remembered as the night the idealism of the 1960s died.

But at their centre was something smaller and more personal: a failed musician, a rejected ambition and an address that had outlived its original occupant.

Terry Melcher had moved out. Charles Manson's resentment had not.

Sharon Tate had barely known him. She was building a career, preparing for motherhood and living in a house whose history should have meant nothing to her.

Instead, she became the most famous victim of a man who sent killers to settle a grievance with a world that had refused to make him a star.

Manson never got the Hollywood career he wanted. He found another way to make sure Hollywood remembered his name.