THE SHADOW OVER CIELO DRIVE

Not all anniversaries should be celebrated. Fifty years ago today our world changed. Woodstock was a week away and everything felt groovy. Then, on the night of August 8, a little man with big plans sent a group from his coven of tripped out followers, so stoned that they'd do anything for the manipulative ex-con, to commit murder. "Do something witchy", he is known to have said, and so they did, but the result was more of the devil than witchy.

But the nightmare wasn't over yet. The following night, Manson sent his murderous minions out once again, and this time he came along for the ride. The Leno and Rosemary LaBianca residence in Los Feliz had been "creepy-crawled" a few months before by some of Charlie's girls. They had partied at a house just a couple of doors down. Manson is thought to have chosen this house to enact a copy cat murder in the style of Gary Hinman, so that the incarcerated Bobby Beausoleil, convicted for his murder, would be sprung. It didn't work. Sadly, it did not matter for the LaBianca's, as they were found dead by their son, tied up and stabbed nearly 50 times.

The murders sent shock waves through the community and eventually, the world for its heinous nature. Four months later Manson was picked up at Barker Ranch in Death Valley, originally a suspect in local vandalism. The arresting officers did not know exactly who they had nabbed. Ironically, they found the little man with big plans hiding in the cabinet of a bathroom vanity.

The original house on 10050 Cielo Drive has been since torn down and the site is barely recognizable now. Maybe that's for the best. The face of horror may be obliterated, but the memory will not. "Cielo" means "Heaven", but the people in this house suffered the worst kind of Hell. The LaBianca house on Waverly Drive has just recently been sold.

Manson is (finally) dead, Susan Atkins, who admitted stabbing Tate, but "didn't know why", died in prison in 2009 from brain cancer (a fitting end -- go out on drugs). Patricia Krenwinkel, Leslie Van Houten and Charles "Tex" Watson are all still behind bars, and will hopefully remain so, forever polluting our air with their breath. Vincent Bugliosi, who as Los Angeles' Deputy District Attorney prosecuted Manson and his accomplices, died in 2015.

It's hard to say how time will treat these dreadful deeds. The story still fascinates. Director Quentin Tarantino has recently released his film recounting the events at the time, and judging by the other recent news stories, it's likely that these tragic events will be remembered as true crime legend.

[SOURCE: PEOPLE MAGAZINE TRUE CRIME CULTS, December 2018.]

Tourists descend on Charles Manson murder scene after Tarantino flick
By Jon Levine August 3, 2019

The scene of the Manson murders has found new life as a tourist attraction.

With the release of Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood,” a new generation of gawkers has swarmed Cielo Drive, where the notorious Manson killings took place, according to a new report from TMZ.

In 1969, followers of Manson descended on the West LA home, killing five. Among the dead was pregnant actress Sharon Tate and coffee heiress Abigail Folger.

The original home was demolished in 1994. A new residence was later built on the same site with a different address.

While most Cielo Drive residents today aren’t keen to discuss the murders, one man, David Oman, says he has been set upon by unsettled spirits — including the ghost of Sharon Tate — ever since moving in down the block.

“First couple of months I was in the house, there were things I would put on a table, come back a couple of hours later to find that they weren’t there anymore,” he said during a 2013 interview published to his YouTube channel. “And then we would find them in another part of the house I had not been in.”

[SOURCE: NY POST.]


Sharon Tate gal pal slams Tarantino’s ‘Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood’
By Christopher Cameron August 1, 2019

Quentin Tarantino is enjoying the best opening weekend of his career on the 50th anniversary of Hollywood’s most brutal murders. His ninth film “Once Upon a Time in . . . Hollywood” raked in $41 million in its first weekend.

But for those who lived through the 1969 Manson Family murders — which claimed the lives of actress Sharon Tate, her unborn child and four others — the all-star film is insult on top of injury, says Ava Roosevelt, a friend of Sharon Tate’s.

“I felt angry. I felt very angry,” says Roosevelt, 71, after seeing the film, which intertwines the tale of fictional washed up actor Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his stuntman Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) with the Manson attacks in typical gory and irreverent Tarantino style.

“Tarantino has abused the memory of my friends,” Roosevelt says. “After the film, my boyfriend asked me how I was doing. I said, ‘Let’s not talk.’ I didn’t really sleep last night.”

Roosevelt — the widow of the late William Roosevelt, grandson of President Franklin D. Roosevelt — was just a teenager in Warsaw when she first met the director Roman Polanski. She attended his wedding to the actress Sharon Tate in London in January 1968, and when she moved to Los Angeles at the age of 21 to pursue a career as a model, she was brought into the inner circle of the Hollywood stars.

“Sharon and Roman, Wojciech Frykowski and Abigail Folger, and Jay Sebring, we were like family,” says Roosevelt of her friends who were murdered (she dated Sebring for a time). “I never lived at 10050 Cielo Drive [the Polanski residence where the murders occurred] but I was there constantly. Roman was away in London and we thought, ‘What if Sharon has the baby sooner than anticipated!’ We need to be with her.”

During that time Tate became a sort of mentor to Roosevelt, styling her ahead of photo shoots and helping pick out clothes.

“She was so patient putting on my false lashes and mascara,” Roosevelt says. “She didn’t like the dress I was wearing and she gave me this beautiful blue midi-dress. I still have it today.”

But unlike the real Tate, who was “a brilliant and strong actress who took her image very seriously,” Roosevelt believes that Tarantino went out of his way to demean the memory of her friend.

“Sharon Tate as portrayed by Margot Robbie is a mere sex symbol and a ditz,” Roosevelt says. “Would [Tate] ever go to see her own movie to see the reaction of the audience? [a scene from the film]. Never in a million years. She would have never gone to the Playboy mansion and danced around. And what is with the snoring in the movie? Sharon Tate was snoring. The Italian wife of Rick Dalton was snoring. Is it to belittle the women?”

Bruce Lee's daughter upset about his depiction in 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood'
In Roosevelt’s view, “every female character is portrayed as sluts.” She says that those “who support the #MeToo movement should not support this movie.”

“Despite a nearly $100 million budget, Tarantino failed to capture the era I lived in,” Roosevelt says.

She says Sebring “was a shy, almost unassuming person,” in contrast to his depiction as a “braggadocios, self-centered hair-dresser-of-the-moment.”

“I spent a lot of time at his house, which used to be owned by the actress Jean Harlow,” Roosevelt says. “He was kind, shy and loving. The film is an insult to the memory of my friend.”

Roosevelt, whose new book is “The Racing Heart,” says that it’s important for her to preserve her friends’ reputations because she very nearly died with them. On the night of Aug. 8, 1969, after stopping by the home of singer John Phillips, she began to drive her secondhand Rolls-Royce up to Cielo Drive when she realized her gas tank was nearly empty, forcing her to turn back from Bel Air.

“I spoke to Sharon that afternoon,” she says. “She said, ‘Please come and join us for dinner.’ I’ve managed to live the last 50 years, because my gas gauge showed empty. I sometimes feel very guilty that I am still alive.”

[SOURCE: NY POST.]

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