I was 7 in 1969.
But I remember well when the murders happneed and the paranoia that followed.
We lived on the other side of Griffith Park from the LaBianca house.
The chaos and fear in the aftermath of those incidents.
Police doing door to doors.
Ambulance and cop sirens running non stop.
Curfew ( not that we obeyed)
Oh,and the gossip and rumors that ran through the neighborhoods.
I went to college in the late 1980's with a gal who was staying just a few houses away from the Cielo Dr house the night of the Tate murders. She was only a baby in 1969, but you could tell how being so close to a tragic piece of history had stayed with her. I can only imagine what kind of effect that those 2 nights of brutal murder had on the city.
shareThat was a crazy time. I lived in North Carolina and was 11 years old then. Once the Tate murders happened it was national news, and when Manson and his followers were arrested of course that was all over the news all the time. I cannot imagine how wild and chaotic it must have been to live that near to the source of it.
Even for me on the other side of the country it made me wonder what was coming next from those crazy people. Were there more of them around the country?
What a crazy crazy time.
I went by the house and the location where Tate house was when I went on a tour when I first started college in L.A. It was pretty interesting
"I'd rather lose for what I am than win for what I ain't"
Kacey Musgraves "Pageant Material"
I, too, made a trip up to Cielo when I was in LA. While the house and original gate is gone, I believe telephone pole still stands. It was weird driving up that very narrow road knowing that the killers walked up and down that same road that night. It was also eerily quiet up there when I made the trip. Made me think of the first paragraph of Helter Skelter where they state that it was so quiet in the canyon that night, and it said something along the lines of, that "you could almost hear the ice in people's martini shakers." When we went up there I totally understood what they meant.
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