Altoona Mirror, Friday, Aufuit 31, lilt

P|e II

10 Years Ago

Manson Killings 'Most Bizarre9

By JACK V. FOX LOS ANGELES (UP1) - On a night In Beverly Hills 10 years ago, a night so quiet you "could almost hear the sound ol Ice rattling in cocMail shakers in the homes way down the canyon," a crime occurred that tore Ihe fabric ot American society. Four young people In "creepie crawlles" climbed over the automobile gate of a cul de sac home at 10050 Cielo Drive. Although It was yi degrees and mid-summer, Christmas lighls were burning along a split rail fence. They had been put up by actress Candke Bergen when she was living Ihere with the previous tenant, Terry Melcher, son of Doris Day, Melcher lived there no longer. The house was occupied by another beautiful actress, Sharon Tate. She was a month away from having a baby by her husband, movie director Roman Polanskl. Polanski was in London on a business deal. The intruders, once on the other side of the fence, came across a boy in a white Rambler, trying to reach the button lo let himself oul Ihe gale. He was Steve Earl Parent, 18. He was interfering with tbeir plan. So one of them shot him five times with a longbarrelled pistol and left him to bleed to death. fnsiife (he house Sharon Tale was reclining in bed clad in a bikini bottom and nightgown. Jay Sebring, a jet set men's hair stylisi, was silting on the bed, talking to her. In the living room, a few feet away, were Abigail Folgcr, heiress to the coffee fortune, and Voytek FrykowsKi, a friend ol Polanski's from their boyhood days in Poland. They were lovers, They had been taking drugs. Wilhin 15 minutes all four were dead. Sebring was shot to dealt). Frykowski was shot and knifed. Sharon Tate and Abigail Folger were stabbed doiens ot times. On the lower half of a white dutch door the killers painted in btood the word: "PIG." The next night the scene was repealed, with a slightly different cast of killers, at the home of grocery chain owner Leno LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary. They were stabbed to death and the word "fig" was pair.ied in blood on their refrigerator. For months the police did not seriously connect Ihe two cases. The theory was that the LaBianca murders were done by a "copycat" and that the Tale slayings were the work ol an underworld narcotics ring. As one movie figure put it: "For Ihe next lew days you could hear drugs being flushed down toilets all over Beverly Hills." Vincent Bugliosi, the district attorney who prosecuted the case, looks back over those 10 years and calls them the "most bizarre murders in American history." "There have been more brutal murders but none so bizarre nothing (o match if,"he says. "Here were these young girls, most of them from average homes, slavishly following a man who had spent almost his entire adult life in jail. They found messages to kill in Beatle records and believed in "Helter Skelter" the day when Ihe blacks would rise and kill Ihe whiles and they would hide in a bottomless pit in the desert." There were dozens ol members of the "Family" and Ihere were other murders (Bugliosi estimates Ihere may have been J5 altogether) but the perpetrators of the Tale and LaBianca killings were four young women, a young man and the ex-convict. Their names became household words during a trial that ran from July 21 1370. lo April, 19,1971: Susan Atkins, known lo her peers as Sadie Mae Glutz, a flakcy former topless dancer, somewhat unique in a clan mostly of girls Irom average homes. It was her blabbing lo iwoprosl'umes while being held in jail on another charge that broke the case. Leslie Van Houten, a former "A" grade student and high school homecoming princess. Asked ai the trial il she fell any remorse, if she was sorry, she said: "Whal is sorry? Sorry is a 5letter word." ; Palricia KrenwinVel. a loner, who described life at Ihe Spahn Ranch where ihey lived at Ihe time of the murders: "We were just like wood nymphs and wood creatures. We would run through the woods with flowers in our hair and Charlie would have a small llute..." Linda Kasabian, ihen a 19-year-old girl with an infant son, who went along on the Tate foray but slayed out of the house and later turned state's evidence. Charles "Tex" Walson, an All-America type boy from a small Texas town, who fought extradition for a lime and finally was tried separately. And Charles Manson. His hold on his "Family" was a weird combination of sex, drugs, music, mysticism and con man. He picked up girls from the streets of Haighi-Ashbury but also from the campus of the University of California at Berkeley. He testified once, oulside ihe presence of Ihe jury, al Ihe trial. "What aboul your children?" he said. "You say there are just a few? There are many, many mare coming In the same direction. They are running in ihe streets and they are coming righl al you." Hanson. Susan Atkins, Leslie Van Houten, Patricia Krenwinkel and Charles Walson all were found guilty and sentenced lo deaih in the gas chamber. The senlences were reduced lo life aller the California stale supreme court outlawed capital punishment. (Il has since been reinstated in special cases and would cover the Tate-LaBlanca murders). All five already have been up for parole and will appear under law before parole boards every year. It is widely expecled that Leslie Van Houten will be released in ihe next few years and Susan Atkins and Patricia Krenwinkel within the nexl 10. Watson is also expected lo be freed eventually. Bugliosi says il his opinion that Manson himself has a "50-50 chance" of finally being released. The three females are al ihe California Institution for Women at Frontera. about 25 mites west of the Los Angeles civic center courthouse where ihey were tried. Paul Fitzgerald, one of Ihe defense attorneys at ihe trial, now represents Leslie Van Houten and visits the institution frequently. "They have grown into reasonable, rational young women," he says. "They have long ago cut any allegiance to Manson." Walson is held at the California Men's Colony al San Luis Obispo, on the coast about midway between Los Angeles and San Francisco. He has becomes "borrvagain" Christian and recently announced he intended lo be married. Manson is in the California Men's Facility at Vacaville, about 25 milts northeast of San Francisco. He is kepi in a maximum security area with aboul SO other men. The murders and a tilal were not only a sensation but they also had a profound effect on sociely. Almost everyone concerned wilh Ihe case believes il was a turning point, a souring of Ihe perception of the "hippie" cull not only among the older generation but among young people themselves. Tolerance ol the "llower children" evaporated almost overnight with the grisly evidence of where il had led the "Manson Family." Filzgeraid says il was Ihe "death knell" of the hippie movement. Bugliosi agrees thai il opened society's eyes but he is bitter about the way events have turned out. "I am not a law and order fanaiic but Justice has not been served," he says. "Manson is exactly where he wants to be. Prison life Is his lite. He actually fought against being released from the Terminal Island federal prison a year before the killings and now he Is back home. "And Susan Atkins has never been happier - playing tennis and painting." The first girl Manson recruited was Mary Brunner, a librarian at Berkeley. The second was a tiny, red-haired girl named Lynelte Fromrne. known In the family as "Squeaky." In Sacramento In 1975 the pointed a pistol at President Ford from only a few feel and pulled the trigger. To her howling anger, ihe gun did ml fire. She is now serving a life term at the federal prison at Akfenon, W.Vt. She (s the mother of one ot Matnon't children. She will be eligible for parole In 1985

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