Sunday, August 9, 2009

The Manson Murders on Cielo Drive: 40 Years Later

Today marks the 40th Anniversary for one of the world's most notorious crimes in the Benedict Canyon area of Beverly Hills, California. On August 9, 1969, housekeeper Winifred Chapman arrived to work at 10050 Cielo Drive and discovered the bodies of Sharon Tate (actress and wife of director Roman Polanski), Jay Sebring (famed hairstylist to the stars), Abigail Folger (heiress to the Folger coffee fortune), Voytek Frykowski (writer and boyfriend of Folger's), and Steven Parent (a local teenager who was in the wrong place at the wrong time) brutally massacred. The murders, coupled with a similarly savage slaying the following evening resulted in a massive paranoia that took over much of Hollywood and the Los Angeles-area and a months-long investigation to find the killers. When the suspects were apprehended, the case only got stranger. The world was introduced to Charles Manson and his band of followers, known as the Family, and their apocalyptic vision of "Helter Skelter."

The murders were conducted that evening by Manson Family members, Charles "Tex" Watson, Susan "Sadie Mae Glutz" Atkins, Patricia "Katie" Krenwinkel, and Linda Kasabian. The grisly crime propelled 10050 Cielo Drive into the collective memory of the world and made it one of the most infamous properties in the Los Angeles area – A property that continues to see curious onlookers 40 years later. While it may seem rather strange to some that a "crime scene" would continue to attract that kind of interest, there's more to 10050 (later changed to 10066) Cielo Drive than meets the eye. I've recently updated our article on the property and looked at its history from its early days through the crime and beyond and it is easy to see why the site remains one of the most popular stops for out-of-town tourists. As a matter of fact, Tom and I are in the process of expanding all of our Manson Family coverage – from locations we currently cover to countless additional stops associated to the Family and their horrific crime spree.

Read up on 10050 Cielo Drive where the world was introduced to the Manson Family.

-Casey H.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

There's been other cases of home horror about which I've made this observation - including a LaBianca redux in Virginia wherein an ugly latter-day Nazi & its highfalutin spoiled-brat sperm dump engineered the sickening slayings of the stupid cow's parents in their dignified dwelling - but none so much as at One Hundred Fifty [e.g. Ninety-Nine & One-Oh-One] Cielo Drive. How others can inhabit a house in which innocent people died violently is a mystery to me in the case of a single unfortunate victim. Why did it take 25 years for that 6-victim hellhole [the baby sadly never gets officially counted, but he was near to being born, not just some embryo] to be destroyed? Or maybe 23 years on an evidentiary basis, once the deserved justice had been delivered on those miserable psychopaths. To me it takes a ghoulish kind of character for someone to eat in the same [though suitably cleaned] dining room where Nancy and Derek Haysom were vomitably slaughtered, but that anybody could dare actually live in the same place where Sharon Tate suffered and died so hideously indicates to me somebody's more warped than a sunmelted record. That slaughter shack's replacement might be some architecturally unpleasing box [with a poor choice "66" for an address ending], but thankfully all traces of the original house are now removed. If not pulled down completely such structures at the very least ought to have their interiors gutted and rebuilt. I just dearly wish that every one of those amoral inhumans involved in the entirety of Chuckles the Clown's demented destruction of lives could have been dealt the same fate of butchery as their undeserving victims. May whatever's left of their empty useless souls rot for 6 eternities.

glenna said...

Ken-
Get over it. If you are genuinely outraged, how about getting off your undoubtedly fat ass and doing something? Hmmmm?
Look in your phone book - volunteer as a victim's advocate, help out at a homeless shelter (these people are the most frequent targets of the violence that seems to freak you out.)
How about volunteering for your local Guardian ad Litem program and help little kids caught up in the court system with no one to speak for them?
Why not do these things, Ken, instead of whining about atrocities of 40 years ago??
Grow up.
Glenna