What to Read, Watch and Listen to Learn About the Manson Family Murders

On August 9th, 1969, four young people—Tex Watson, Patricia Krenwinkel, Susan Atkins, and Linda Kasabian—who were all followers of the cult leader, criminal, and wannabee rock-musician Charles Manson, entered the house at 10050 Cielo Drive in Los Angeles and violently murdered its five inhabitants—the actress and model Sharon Tate (who was eight-and-a-half months pregnant), the hairstylist Jay Sebring, the heiress Abigail Folger, the screenwriter Voytek Frykowski, and a young man coincidentally there at the time, Steven Parent. The following night, the four killers plus Manson himself and another follower named Leslie van Houten randomly entered the home of businessman Leno LaBianca and gruesomely murdered him and his wife Rosemary.

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All the victims had no connection to Manson’s family—though Tate and her husband, the director Roman Polanski, were renting the home that had previously belonged to record executive Terry Melcher, who had passed on giving Manson a record deal. The seven grisly murders, and their youthful perpetrators, hypnotically captivated by the lawless Manson, came to emblematize the underlying turmoil of the wild hippie counterculture of the decade. Fifty years later, the shocking story has been immortalized in numerous adaptations and dramatic interpretations, all seeking to analyze the trajectory from sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll to brutal violence, mayhem, and tragedy. Below are a few of the best analyses and presentations of the Manson murders.