This is the story of how a cult leader
murdered the Hollywood actress and ended
the hippie movement. A story that starts
with a Beatles song and that ends with
a Quentin Tarantino movie. Charles
Manson was a cult leader, a criminal and
a wannabe musician who was prominent in the 1960s. He led a desert commune of
brainwashed followers who believed that
America was on a path to a deadly race
war. One that only Manson's white
supremist hippie revolutionaries would
survive and triumph over. Helter-skelter.
For most people it was just one song out
of many from the Beatles White Album. For Charles Manson it was an anthem for a race war.
One that perfectly fit the
the convoluted narrative he had built to his
ardent followers, a desert commune known as the Manson Family. The lyrics
originally about an amusement park ride
were interpreted to fit his post
apocalyptic vision of race Wars and
messianic redemption. Manson convinced his
psycho hippie followers to commit up to
nine murders between July and August of
1969. One of his victims were Sharon Tate, a Golden Globe nominated actress then
married to Roman Polanski.
Tate was just 26 years old, and eight-and-a-half
months pregnant,
when a gang of four attacked her and
stabbed her to death at her home in Los
Angeles. Six people died that night
including Kate's unborn baby, as a result
of Manson's twisted instructions. Cruelly
none of those killed were the original
targets of the attack. Manson's motive
was to kill the owner of the house, a
famed record producer who had refused to
sign Manson on for an album. He was not
present that night.
Tate, along with five others, became the
victims of an organized attacked by the
Manson Family. The killing shook the
conscience of the country destroying the
mood of love and peace that the hippie
movement had originally stood for and
making Manson the man who killed the
sixties. Fifty years later and a Quentin
Tarantino movie promises to revisit the
murders, depicting the classic age of
Hollywood and its ultimate end in the
upcoming film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
Margot Robbie will play Tate while Brad
Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio play semi
fictional characters said to be her
neighbors. The film will depict the
murder set against a backdrop of 1960s
Hollywood. Manson died on November 19
2017,
three months after Once Upon a Time in
Hollywood was announced.
