Epilogue

On September 26, 1970, the rambling collection of false fronts, movie sets and outbuildings which comprised Spahn Ranch burned to the ground in a mysterious fire. By the following day, when the fires died down, all that remained was the property itself, a barren wasteland littered with the rusting bodies of automobiles stolen and then stripped by the Family. It was, in many ways, a fitting end to the grim place from which Manson had dispatched his legion of killers on their hellish missions of murder.

There are few reminders of those momentous events in the summer of 1969. In Death Valley, Barker Ranch remains much the same as it was when Manson and his Family were captured during the raid of October, 1969; a guestbook, left for the curious to sign, is filled with the thoughts of visitors. “It is always good to have places like this to remind us of what horror goes on in the world,” wrote a visitor from Vancouver, Canada in the spring of 1999. “But we should use this piece of history to remind us of what has happened in the past so it doesn’t happen again. It saddens me to read messages that give sympathy to Manson’s life. If we sympathize with him, that only makes us just as bad. Let’s stop the madness.”¹ The famous Manson Family bus has disintegrated with the passage of time, the rusting skeleton of its frame lying in the barren desert the only evidence of its existence. The adjacent Myers Ranch, where the Family also stayed, recently burned to the ground, victim of suspected arson.

The house at 10050 Cielo Drive, after a number of temporary tenants, was finally torn down in 1993. The new owner, weary of the ever-present stream of curious tourists and macabre interest, had the house razed; in its place, he erected an enormous Mediterranean-style mansion, perched atop a wide crescent of concrete. It is the largest house in Benedict Canyon, visible for miles.

Across Los Angeles, only the LaBianca house remains much as it was the night of the murders. A number of changes through the years have transformed the once-sloped green lawn at the front of the house into an underground garage and series of terraces, but the residence itself has been left alone. Until recently, it was owned by a lady from the Philippines, who took great pride in the house’s grim history.

Only fragments, too, remain of Manson’s Family. Although hardcore members of the Family were locked away, for a time it continued to flourish, directed in exile by two of Manson’s most vehement followers, Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme and Sandra Good, christened “Red” and “Blue,” respectively, by Manson himself. Fromme, who had always seemed a more intelligent, gentle member of the Family, achieved her own notoriety on 5 September, 1975, when, dressed in a long red cape, she aimed a gun at President Gerald Ford during a visit to Sacramento.

Had she wished to do so, Fromme could most likely have assassinated the President; while her action was almost certainly no more than a publicity stunt to draw attention to Manson, she nevertheless received a life sentence without parole on 19 December, 1975.

Fromme disappeared from the headlines for many years, but, on 23 December, 1987, she managed to escape from the Federal Penitentary at Alderson, West Virginia, where she had been incarcerated. Hearing erroneous rumors that Manson was suffering from cancer, she wanted to be near him. Two days later, she was discovered hiding in the woods near the prison, and was transferred to a more secure facility in Kentucky.

Fromme was the subject of a recent biography by author Jess Bravin. In a letter to Judge Thomas MacBride, who had presided at her 1975 trial for attempting to assassinate President Gerald Ford, she wrote: “I did not contribute to this book; while I can’t complain that Bravin was out to get me, some of those interviewed for the book gave distorted or fictitious stories.”² “I’ve never published a book,” Fromme added in a 1998 letter. “Thought the trees were worth more, but I’ve also long considered it.”³

A week after Fromme’s encounter with President Ford in 1975, Sandra Good released a list of government officials and business executives who she declared were enemies of the earth. If they continued to pollute the environment, she warned, they would die. For this thinly-veiled threat, she was put on trial, and found guilty of “conspiring to commit offenses against the United States by causing to be delivered by the Postal Service according to the directions thereon, letters addressed to persons, containing threats to injure the person, addressee, and others.” Having served a ten year sentence, she was released in 1985.

Good remained Manson’s most vocal proponent, residing in California and supervising Manson’s official website, ATWA, an acronym for Air, Trees, Water and Animals. As author Bill Nelson has pointed out, it is one of the great ironies that the same forces behind the promotion of Manson’s ecological vision were the very people who left the areas round the Spahn, Barker and Myers Ranches littered with old car parts, beer bottles and debris from their tenure.⁴

The website seemed to focus on winning Manson’s freedom, contending that he was denied proper legal representation. The thirtieth anniversary of the crimes, however, did not go unnoticed. “We are not going to participate in the media’s 30th anniversary celebration of the murders,” the site announced. The same article, presumably with the full approval of both Good and Manson, went on to declare “it is true that we do not have sympathy for the victims of these murders.”⁵ Such a stunning admission, however, is in character for Good. “It’s like a soldier’s reality,” she has said of the murders. “If these people in Hollywood have to go, so be it. That made sense to me, and that made sense to all of us. In war, sometimes killing is needed.”⁶ She remains defiant, Manson’s “Blue,” unwavering in her devotion.

The reach of the Family continues to be felt. There have been several searches for bodies believed to be buried at Barker Ranch in Death Valley. In 1969, Susan Atkins bragged that the Family had murdered several people at Barker Ranch and buried their remains there. One of those allegedly privy to the intimate details was Larry Melton, known in the Family as White Rabbit. In 1998, Inyo County District Attorney Phil McDowell offered Melton the following immunity agreement in exchange for information: “I, Larry Allen Melton, also known as White Rabbit, agree to fully cooperate with the Inyo County District Attorney’s Office in the investigation of a homicide case involving the death of two adult males and one minor female occurring on or about October 6, 1969, at Barker Ranch in the Panamint Range in the County of Inyo, State of California.”⁷ The search party was unable to locate any bodies, however, and it remains but one of many open questions which surround the murderous activities of the Family.

Of the others involved in the Family, Barbara Hoyt, who was fed an LSD-laced hamburger during the Tate-LaBianca trials in an attempt to prevent her testimony, lived in Death Valley where she maintained friendships with Paul Watkins, Juan Flynn, Brook Poston, and Paul Crockett. She has since moved away from California and has a successful career. Most of the former members of the Manson Family are now widely scattered: Dianne Lake, Danny De Carlo and Kitty Lutesinger, Bobby Beausoleil’s former girlfriend, all reside in California; Nancy Pitman relocated to the Pacific Northwest; Catherine Share lives in Texas; and Mary Brunner returned to her native Wisconsin.

Linda Kasabian disappeared into obscurity, living under an assumed name near Tacoma, Washington. Bugliosi’s star witness has not had an easy life. A car accident left her with chronic leg and back pain, and made viable employment difficult; she had no resources, no bank account and no marketable job skills. According to a report filed with Pierce County officials, Kasabian, in her own words, “survives however she can.” The court eventually found her indigent.⁸

On 24 October, 1996, members of the Tacoma, Washington Police Department served a search warrant on the apartment owned by Kasabian’s second daughter Quanau, known to the authorities as “Lady Dangerous.” Kasabian, as well as her two grandchildren, were present when the police arrived. Their report stated: “In the master bedroom (defendant’s bedroom) officers located a small baggie containing suspected rock cocaine and a large bundle of cash in a dresser drawer. On top of the dresser was a box of baggies. Also in the room officers located a .45 caliber semi-automatic handgun, ammunition, electronic scales, a plate with cocaine residue, and another bundle of cash. In a hall closest officers located an A-l Army Rifle. In the children’s closet officers found a loaded 30–30 Remington rifle. Officers also searched Kasabian’s purse and located a small amount of suspected methamphetamine. In the defendant’s vehicle officers located five bags of suspected rock cocaine (43 grams total) and a baggie of powder cocaine (30 grams). The suspected cocaine and methamphetamine field-tested positive.”⁹

Kasabian’s daughter Quanau, found guilty of possession of controlled substances, was sentenced to a year in state prison. Kasabian, in possession of methamphetamine, was allowed to plea a reduction of her sentence and attended drug counseling classes rather than serve time. Neither the members of the Tacoma Police Department nor the Prosecuting Attorney for Pierce County had any idea that, nearly thirty years earlier, their suspect had, for a time, been one of the most notorious women in America.

For those incarcerated members of the Family, December, 1996 saw the end of conjugal visits, a measure which Doris Tate had long worked to pass. She was enraged that Charles Watson, the man who had slain her daughter and unborn grandson, had himself become the father of four children while in prison. “It’s unbelievable,” she said. “That man should never have been allowed to have any children. He gave up his right to have a family when he took Sharon’s away from her. If they want to have sex in prison, fine—make them get vasectomies. No child should have to suffer through knowing that their father is in prison for murdering eight people.”¹⁰

In subtle ways, the work which Doris undertook, and the appearances Patti continued to make at parole hearings, seem to have inspired and strengthened the determination of other victims’ families. In 1994, Alice LaBianca, Leno LaBianca’s first wife and mother to his three children, published a novel about their life together, No More Tomorrows. “We have nine grandchildren,” she says, “and none of them knew their grandfather. I wrote the book for them. I wanted to concentrate on Leno as I knew him, and not on the murders.”¹¹

“For twenty-five years,” Alice said in 1994, “we’ve been subjected to this, and we have nine grandchildren, and they’re subjected to it. It’s been a devastating thing, and it goes on, and on, and on. And it’s as if Manson’s some sort of celebrity himself, a god or something, that everyone is so thrilled with what he has to say.”¹²

In 1998, Alice became the first member of the LaBianca Family to present a formal objection to the parole of Leslie Van Houten. She did so in the form of a letter, written on behalf of her entire family:

“Manson and his minions thrust our family name into public focus when they murdered Sharon Tate and her house guests one night, then they killed my former husband and his wife in the most brutal manner the next night. Their shocking criminal actions became known as the Tate-LaBianca murders. We lost out privacy and our obscurity.

“My Family never became vocal, we did not become activists, we relied on the justice system to seek and find the justice that was due us. We have never been asked by the District Attorney’s Office to participate in opposing the release of any of the killers. After all, they all received the death penalty, and that was all our family could expect.

“But we can no longer remain silent. Let me preface my remarks with this statement. We do not desire to become activists. We do not desire to be bombarded by the media and have our privacy destroyed. Yet we must make a statement about the parole hearing for convicted murderer Leslie Van Houten.… Sympathy for these killers, and especially this one, is misplaced. Sympathy, understanding and compassion, should be given to the victims of the murders, and not the killers. In all these years, not one of these killers have expressed remorse to our family, not even Leslie Van Houten, who says she did the least in the murders. If she is really ready for parole then amends to the family should have already been done.…

“We emphatically oppose the release of any of the Manson menage.… It’s a sacrilege to Leno’s memory that the family has to be confronted with the parole hearings for these individuals every few years. We are glad for her maturity and her model prisoner status, but that does not equate to freedom. We also want to say that Suzanne LaBerge, daughter of Rosemary, the murdered wife of Leno at the time, does not represent the LaBianca family. She certainly did not represent us at the May 4, 1990 parole hearing for Tex Watson, when she made that pathetic appeal for his release because she “forgave him.” As Ms. Van Houten continues her incarceration, let her continue to remember that what she did that fateful night was forever. The Manson Family mark on this society is deep. As deep as the stab wounds to their helpless victims.”¹³

Like the LaBiancas, the family of Steven Parent long remained silent. His sister Janet recalls the painful memories of the Tate-LaBianca trial, and the devastating aftermath which followed the verdicts. Once the trials were over, the police released the victims’ personal property which had been held in evidence. The white, 1966 Ambassador in which Steve had been shot and killed by Watson, was duly returned to the Parents. “The police had taken the panels out of the car,” Janet remembers, “and when we got it back, Steve’s blood was still in the cracks, along the seat and under the console. They also brought back an envelope which had my brother’s personal effects. His watch and his class ring were still covered with dried blood. There was no feeling about it at all. My brother was a nobody as far as everyone else was concerned, but he was a somebody to us.”¹⁴

The subject of parole remains an understandably painful one with Janet Parent. She takes umbrage at the seemingly endless series of hearings given to Manson, Watson, Atkins, Krenwinkel and Van Houten. “I want to do what I can do to keep them in there,” she says, “but I don’t want to do anything that will endanger myself and my family. I just want somebody to make me understand how this can even be happening. I just can’t rationalize any of it. These are people who we know have killed already. Why do we want to put them back out? I fear for my life, I fear for the lives of others. They’re putting everyone in jeopardy. I know that somebody has got to help keep them in there, but at the same time, I’m upset, I’m afraid. I don’t even know how to deal with it. They have to keep rehashing it, and giving these people the chance to get out. They shouldn’t even be alive, they shouldn’t be here. There’s no way they can ever be rehabilitated. I just don’t understand why people support them.”¹⁵

On 7 July, 1999, media attention focused on the California Women’s Correctional Facility at Corona, where Leslie Van Houten was scheduled to attend her thirteenth parole hearing. The year before, on receiving a one year denial from the Board of Prison Terms, she had smiled broadly at the commissioners. In 1999, there was much talk that the photogenic and well-spoken Van Houten might finally be given a release date.

Also present that day were three disparate players: Stephen Kay, Deputy District Attorney who had assisted Vincent Bugliosi at the original Tate-LaBianca trial and tried Van Houten in her two following trials; Angela Smaldino, niece of Leno LaBianca; and Bill Nelson, an independent producer, author of two books on the Manson Family, and owner of a website dedicated to the history of the crimes.

It was obvious from Van Houten’s initial appearance before the Board of Prison Terms that this day was to be somehow different. Kay noted: “She looked like she didn’t sleep last night, she had big circles under her eyes, she was shaking and quivering.”¹⁶ Van Houten scarcely glanced at Smaldino and Kay as she took her seat. Van Houten began her parole hearing by raising an objection. She was incensed that Nelson, among others, was offering copies of her various parole hearings for sale. “I feel,” she told the Board of Prison Terms, “that this has gotten a little out of hand, and I believe that there is really no reason for the camera to be in the board room, when it’s being gotten to somehow and sold for profit. And I believe that the internet has become a place where there’s a lot of exploiting of violence, and this man has a shopping list, and I am part of that shopping list, and if you allow the camera in here then I’m partaking in it, and I can’t do that.”¹⁷

After some discussion, however, the Board members refused to remove the camera. Visibly upset, Van Houten continued to voice objections. “I think there’s a lot of things going on,” she said, “that are not proper and correct. I feel like I’m part of a circus, to tell you the truth, and I need to get an attorney to look into why these decisions are being made the way they are, because I don’t think it’s right. I think someone’s manipulating the system to make money, and I can’t be part of that.”

Van Houten turned to Angela Smaldino, Leno LaBianca’s niece, who sat at the end of the table. “I deeply apologize to you,” she began, “for all the pain I caused you,” before Presiding Commissioner Carol Bentley interrupted, telling Van Houten not to speak directly to the family member. Van Houten, however, ignored the Commissioner and continued to speak over her objections, finally declaring, “I gotta go, I can’t be part of this hearing. I don’t know how this works, I don’t know if I’m postponed, I just know that I can’t sit here and do this knowing that someone’s going to sell it.”

On her feet now, Van Houten was on her way out of the hearing room when Bently stopped her, suggesting that the Board take a recess to discuss the matter. When the three member Board of Prison Terms returned, they told Van Houten that her parole hearing would be postponed until her objections could be examined.

“I’m going to look into hiring an attorney also,” Van Houten added. “This has gotten too big for me … I um … I don’t know … how many cameras are outside? How many news media are outside, how many agencies? Do you know? Do you know if Mr. Nelson is on the grounds?”¹⁸

Nelson was indeed on the grounds, there to obtain his video copy of the proceedings. He stood outside the facility, watching a live feed from the hearing room along with other media representatives. “I heard her mention my name, and I turned away from the monitor in disbelief and said, ‘I’ve just become the story.’”¹⁹

As soon as the hearing was adjourned, the collected media swarmed round Nelson, shouting questions and demanding to know how much income he had derived from his website sales. He patiently explained his permission to tape the proceedings, and that the majority of sales from his site were made to researchers and television producers. The press, however, was reluctant to let the story drop with this simple answer; he was described on the KNBC news broadcast that evening as “an obsessed man with a website.”²⁰

Deputy District Attorney Stephen Kay suggested after the adjournment that the presence for the first time of a LaBianca relative, Angela Smaldino, unnerved Van Houten. “I know Leslie pretty well,” Kay said. “We sat next to each other in the original trial. I tried her on both of her re-trials, and I’ve been to all thirteen of her parole hearings.… She usually is very well spoken, but she had trouble with her words today, and what this was all about was that for the first time in any parole hearing a relative of the LaBianacas showed up, and she was going to have to face Angela Smaldino, who was a niece of Leno LaBianca, and hear about the devastation that these murders caused the LaBianca family, and even worse than that for Leslie, the Board was going to hear about the devastation.”²¹

Smaldino certainly believed that it was her presence which led to Van Houten’s shaken appearance. She told Court TV correspondent Clara Tuma: “I wanted her to face what she did to the whole family. We know what she did to Leno and Rosemary. They died in fifteen minutes, but our family died slowly, over the last fifteen years.”²² Smaldino told Court TV’s Clara Tuma that she thought it was “appalling that this day, in public, Leslie Van Houten would reach out” to her.²³

On June 3, 2000, Patti Tate died after a long battle with cancer at the age of forty-two, while Sharon’s father, Paul, passed away in 2005. Debra Tate, the last surviving member of Sharon’s immediate family, has become the public face of opposition to parole for those involved in the 1969 murders. Endowed with her mother’s strength of purpose, Debra fights on against the horror her family has endured for five decades while promoting Sharon’s memory.

Cancer also brought an end to Susan Atkins’s decades-long effort to win her freedom. She received a four-year denial at her 2005 parole hearing; three years later, she was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. Debra Tate opposed her proposed release; Atkins, she said, should remain incarcerated while receiving medical treatment. A review panel sided with Tate. On September 24, 2009, the woman who had once so proudly boasted of stabbing Sharon Tate died at the age of sixty-one.

“Many people I know in Los Angeles,” wrote Joan Didion, “believe that the Sixties ended abruptly on August 9, 1969, ended at the exact moment when word of the murders on Cielo Drive traveled like brushfire through the community, and in a sense this is true. The tension broke that day. The paranoia was fulfilled.”²⁴

Thirty years after her death, Sharon lives on, not only in the hearts and minds of her family and friends, but also in books, magazines, film, and on pages scattered across the internet, operated by those too young or too removed to ever have known her in life. Many are fascinated by her macabre death; others, enchanted by her beauty and entertained by her brief body of work, dream of what might have been.

Sharon Marie Tate Polanski continues to haunt the minds of the American public, an admittedly morbid fascination, but also a measure of her immense charm, beauty and sense of innocence which came to an abrupt end that hot summer night at Cielo Drive. No one knows what might have become of her career as an actress. The one area where she appeared to be heading, that of a comedic actress, might have proved a showcase worthy of her talents had she gained more experience and starred in further roles. Ultimately, and unfortunately, what Sharon so wanted in life she managed only to achieve in death: stardom.

Sharon’s real legacy lies not in her movies or in her television work; not in the glowing memories of friends and colleagues whose recollections may be accused of having fallen to the inevitable trap of nostalgia; nor does it lie in the monstrous end which she suffered, and the ensuing trials and incarcerations of one of the most sinister groups ever to surface in the United States. Sharon Tate’s legacy must be viewed as the one which her mother and sisters, Patti and Debra, so tirelessly endeavored to promote: the fight for victims’ rights. The very fact that, today, victims or their families in California are able to sit before those convicted of a crime and have a voice in the sentencing at trials or at parole hearings, is largely due to the work of Doris Tate. Their years of devotion to Sharon’s memory and dedication to victims’ rights, ironically wrought from devastating tragedy, have helped transform Sharon from mere victim, restore a human face to one of the twentieth century’s most infamous crimes, and finally sever the link between her name and that of Charles Manson.

“Sharon Tate,” wrote Gerald Malanga (a writer-actor at Warhol’s factory), “enjoyed her life to the utmost while it lasted and contributed to a high and joyous quality to the life of others. Death could not alter this fact; for however death may affect the future, it cannot touch the past.… Sharon came into existence and has passed out of existence. Yet between that birth and death she lived her life, has made her actions count with a scope and meaning that the finality of death cannot defeat.”²⁵