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Manson is escorted from Superior Court, where he entered pleas in the Sharon Tate and Leno and Rosemary LaBianca murders. Los
Angeles Public Library photo collection
As Joan Didion wrote in her 1979 essay collection The White Album, the sixties ended
abruptly on August 9, 1969, the night the Manson Family committed the brutal and infamous
murders of five people at the home of actress Sharon Tate and director Roman Polanski. The
following night, in Los Feliz, the family murdered two more innocent people, chosen
randomly. The authorities were stumped; their main suspect, a groundskeeper at the Tate
house, was released after passing a polygraph test.
Seven murders in two days was horrible, and without any idea of who did it, the city was on
edge: A Beverly Hills sporting goods store sold 200 firearms in two days. The price of guard
dogs rose from $500 to $1,500, according to Los Angeles magazine.
Eventually the world would learn about the Manson Family, a cult in thrall to a man named
Charles Manson, living together at the remote and abandoned Spahn movie ranch deep in the
Valley. Below we've mapped all those and more important locations in the history of the cult
that changed Los Angeles forever.
1 Dennis Wilson's House
Dennis Wilson got involved with the Manson Family when he picked up two Family girls
hitchhiking by the side of the road; he brought them to his Rustic Canyon house, they hung
out, everyone left. He returned home late that night to find Charles Manson in his house with
about a dozen, mostly female guests. Manson and the guests stayed for a few months, at a cost
of $100,000 to Wilson.
28 Clubhouse Avenue
Venice, CA 90291