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Waverly Drive: The Second Night and the Randomness That Was the Point
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
The LaBianca murders weren't a repeat of Cielo Drive — they were a demonstration, a proof of concept chosen at random to prove the killing could happen anywhere. This is the second night of the Manson Family murders, and the night that changes everything about how you understand the first.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Most people, when they think about the Manson Family murders, think about Cielo Drive. The first night.
To understand the second night, you have to understand where these people were coming from. Literally and figuratively.
The framework had a name. Manson called it Helter Skelter.
The first night was August ninth. Charles Manson sent four of his followers to the house on Cielo Drive in the Bel Air hills.
The following night, Manson took a more direct role. He drove the group himself to the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles.
Leno LaBianca was stabbed multiple times and had a carving fork left in his body. The word "War" was carved into his skin.
The investigation that followed was slow and complicated. The killers weren't identified immediately.
The decades that followed produced one of the longest-running parole debates in American legal history. Susan Atkins spent the rest of her life in prison.
Quentin Tarantino's film "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" imagined a different outcome. In his version, the killers go to the wrong house first and are repelled by accident, and the horror of those nights never touches Sharon Tate.
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