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Cielo Drive to Corcoran: The Women Who Carried Out the Killings
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
On two nights in August 1969, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Leslie Van Houten carried out the Tate-LaBianca murders — and then spent decades in prison trying to explain why. This chapter follows the women at the center of the Manson Family murders from Spahn Ranch to the parole hearings that still make headlines today.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
It's the early hours of August ninth, nineteen sixty-nine. A hillside home on Cielo Drive in Los Angeles.
To understand what happened, you have to understand Spahn Ranch. It sits in the hills northwest of Los Angeles, an old Western movie set, long past its filming days, its wooden storefronts and dusty trails now home to Manson and his followers.
Susan Atkins was nineteen when she first fell in with Manson in nineteen sixty-seven. By the time of the Tate murders, she was twenty-one.
Patricia Krenwinkel's story continues into the present. She's the longest-serving female inmate in California's prison system, and she's still there.
The third woman at the center of this story took a different path out. Leslie Van Houten was nineteen years old at the time of the LaBianca murders.
Not everyone in the Manson Family who participated in these events ended up serving time. Linda Kasabian was present at both crime scenes.
Vincent Bugliosi prosecuted the case and built it into something that went well beyond a standard murder trial. He called eighty-four witnesses and presented two hundred ninety pieces of evidence.
Quentin Tarantino made a film about this moment in history, "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood," released in twenty nineteen. The film reimagines the night of August ninth, nineteen sixty-nine, and gives it a different ending.
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