On August 10th, 1969 the Tate's house keeper, of their home on Cielo Drive, saw two bodies and she immediatley called the police. When the the police officers got to the seen of the crime they walked up to a white Rambler and found a young man slumped toward the passenger side, covered in blood. There on the meticulous lawn lay two bodies. One was a white man that appeared to be in his thirties. Someone had battered in his head and face, while brutally puncturing the rest of his body with dozens of wounds. The other body was that of a young woman with long brown hair lying in a nightgown with multiple stab wounds.
The officers cautiously moved up to the house and approached the front door. On the lower half of the door, they saw scrawled in blood the word "PIG." In the hallway of the house they found pieces of a broken gun grip.
When the officers reached the couchin the living room, they got quite a surprise. A young woman, very pregnant, was lying on the floor, smeared with blood, a rope was around her neck and it extended over a rafter on the ceiling. The other end of the rope was around the neck of a man lying nearby, also drenched in blood.
As they looked through the rest of the house they heard a man’s voice. It was William Garretson the caretaker. The officers handcuffed him and put him under arrest.
Later that Saturday night, Leno and Rosemary LaBianca drove back from holiday trailering their boat. They arrived home to 3301 Waverly Drive in the Los Feliz area of L.A.
It wasn't until the next day Frank Struthers, Rosemary's son by a previous marriage, came home. Around 8:30 P.M., as he came up the driveway, he noticed things that worried him. The speedboat was still in the driveway, it was very unlike his stepfather not to put the boat in the garage. Then Frank noticed that all of the blinds in the windows were shut -- something his parents never did.
He knocked on the door, but got no answer, so he went to a pay phone and called, but again with no response. He finally got in touch with his sister, who came with her boyfriend to their parents’ house.
Frank and the boyfriend found the back door open.. When the two young men walked into the living room, they saw Leno in his pajamas, lying with a pillow over his head and a cord around his neck. Something was sticking out from his stomach
They rushed out of the house, and called the police at the neighbors’ home.
When the police arrived Leno was found with a blood-soaked pillowcase over his head and the cord of a lamp tied tightly around his neck. His hands had been tied behind him with a leather thong. A carving fork was embedded in his stomach and the word "WAR" had been carved in his flesh.
In the bedroom, they found Rosemary lying on the floor. She too had a pillowcase over her head and a lamp cord tied around her neck.
In three places in the house, there was writing which looked to be in the victims’ blood: on the living room wall, "DEATH TO PIGS;" on another wall in the living room, the single word "RISE;" and in the refrigerator door, "HEALTHER SKELTER," misspelled.
Donald Shea was also murdered. He was a former stuntman and hired hand at the Spahn Ranch,where the Family lived.
