Not long after, Bobby was pulled over and arrested in one of Gary’s cars and charged with the murder but, as Bobby was a family member, the group stood up for its family members, which brings us to the infamous Helter Skelter murders. In an attempt to make Bobby look innocent, they decided to stage a copy cat murder, hopefully leading the investigators to believe that Bobby couldn’t have been the one to commit the murder and set him free. So remember Terry Melcher? The despised music producer? They settled on him as a victim feeling the murder should be fairly easy to carry out as Manson knew where Terry lived having been to his house before during his stay with the Beach Boy band member.
August 9th 1969, Manson’s recruited killers Tex, Pat, Linda and Susan head to Terry’s big house on Cielo Drive in Los Angeles, where unbeknownst to them, Terry no longer lived and had instead rented out the home to actress Sharon Tate who was eight months pregnant and her movie producer husband Roman Polanski. Now this night Roman was in the U.K and Sharon was home having a little get together with her friends, celebrity hair stylist Jay Sebring and Folger Coffee heiress Abigail Folger, along with her boyfriend Wojciech Frykowski and property caretaker Steven Parent. The gang arrived at the home late at night and Tex heads into the property first, coming across poor Steven Parent who was in his car presumably about to head home for the night, and shoots him four times killing him. Then Tex gathers the girls from the car and they head into the house, (Tex had gained entrance through an unlocked door) once inside the home they encounter Jay Sebring first so while Tex struggled with Jay, he instructed Susan to find everyone in the home and bring them into the living room. Once in the living room everyone in the house was tied up and brutally murdered, writing the word PIG on the front door using Sharon Tate’s blood. In total the victims had been stabbed 102 times and shot dozens more. The murders were just unnecessarily brutal.
Back in Hollywood, the media catching wind of the murders branded them Satanic ritual killings sending celebrities in a panic, fearing the murderers would come for them as well. Back at the ranch the family was hoping the investigators would tie the murders to the Crowe, and Hinman killings, unfortunately this never happened so of course with their logical criminal minds, another murder was planned, this time, the victims, a grocery company executive named Leno and his wife, Rosemary LaBianca. This night Leslie Van Houghton joined the killing party to prove her loyalty to the family, and Manson himself drove. Once arriving at the house, Manson went in first and tied up the LaBiancas and then left in order to not be responsible for the actual murder. The girls were supposed to be the ones to kill the couple but had chickened out and had asked Tex to do it, so after Tex killed the couple, the girls stabbed them, carved into their bodies and cut them up in order to “participate”. The Labiancas had been stabbed a total of 67 times and once again, using their blood they wrote “death to pigs,” “rise,” and “Helter Skelter” on the walls and fridge of the home. Helter Skelter was referencing the Beatles song Helter Skelter from the “White” album, one of the only things they were allowed to listen to on Spahn Ranch. Manson believed the music incited a race war and murderous thoughts. Because the Beatles were huge they thought investigators would make this connection, further connecting all the murders leading back to the drug dealer hopefully making it look like the start of a race war. They say the reason they killed again is because they didn’t realize the Tate murders would become so big, (Sarian) it was just supposed to be Terry Melcher home so they needed to hit again. The reason they chose the LaBiancas was because Manson held grudges heavy and the LaBiancas used to live next door to a guy named Harold True, and they had actually stayed at Harold’s house for a bit of time. But during their stay, they were causing a bit of a ruckus and the neighbors (the poor LaBiancas) called the cops, resulting in Manson and his family having to move out. That silly reason is why the couple was picked that night.
