Hypothesis #6—Manson ordered the deaths of Hinman, the LaBiancas and Sebring et al out of revenge.

Argument for: Manson visited Harold True, the next-door neighbor of the LaBiancas numerous times. According to some sources, Charlie had a couple of run-ins with Leno LaBianca while visiting, and thus wanted to kill him and his wife.

Meanwhile, the sadistic brand of Satanism involving Jay Sebring and important Hollywood friends raised Manson’s ire when it crossed the path of Susan Atkins, a filmed victim of Sebring’s viciousness and rapes for the delight of Tate and Polanski’s orgy crowd. Detailed statements that appear in Ed Sanders’ The Family illustrate a tendency for the Polanskis to walk on the wild left-hand side. Rumors abound that film of these Satanic orgies existed, and that they include just about anything from child participation to a purportedly salacious biracial, bisexual (bi two, get one free) threesome starring Tate herself.

According to Manson, Atkins had previous sexual encounters with Sebring that included servicing a couple of his male paramours. Hal Lipset and unnamed sources within the Los Angeles Police Department confirmed the existence of a number of videotapes depicting the action, among them a recorded tryst between Atkins and Wojiciech Frykowski and a four-way featuring Cass Elliot, Warren Beatty, Yul Brynner and Peter Sellers. The latter three posted a $25,000 reward in order to suppress these tapes.

Argument Against: Once again, we have rumors masquerading as evidence. While it’s certainly plausible that Manson might have had a hostile encounter with Leno LaBianca, no one has ever gone “on the record” to state this as fact, much less given any explanation as to the nature of the dispute.

While Lipsett allowed writer/researcher Paul Krassner to cite him as a source for the alleged tapes of these satanic orgies, the tapes themselves never surfaced. In this day and age of the Internet, one has to wonder how someone could have kept such a tight lid on these. Furthermore, the eyewitness account of Sebring and Tate’s alleged dalliances with satanic sex given by Sanders comes from a second-hand source. Like a game of telephone, the original source might have said something quite different, with the account changing in transition from one speaker to the other. Thus, it’s unreliable.

Most important, direct eyewitness accounts contradict this supposition. In a recent Dateline interview, Sharon’s sister Debra, the only surviving family member, vehemently denied the allegations against Sebring, Tate and Polanski on the basis that she had spent several weeks with her famous sister in the fall of 1969 and witnessed no satanic activity whatsoever:

The rumors were absolutely unbearable, for my parents especially. Because I was in the inner circle with Sharon and her friends, I knew that the rumors of witchcraft and devil-worship and all of that were absolutely unfounded. But the rumors were hitting mom and dad full force. I, at least, had a basis to put them to rest in my own mind.

It made me very angry. Don’t get me wrong. The spin that the press and Hollywood itself put on everything was absolutely horrific. That in itself was a crime. It was absolutely unmerciful what it was doing to my family, which also included Roman. It was brutal. I watched a very strong man break down completely....

It was a three-ring circus being led by the media; being fueled by people in Hollywood that didn’t want their dirty little secrets told. They didn’t want to be investigated, or stand too close to the fire, so to speak....

Figure 1: Debra Tate on Dateline



What X. Dell really thinks of this hypothesis: To start with, there are logical gaps in this account as an explanation of motive. After the arrest of Bobby Beausoleil for the murder of Gary Hinman, parolee Manson had every reason to keep a low profile. The subtlety of his actions on the nights of the Tate-LaBianca murders—telling Atkins, Krenwinkel and Kasabian to follow Watson’s orders instead of telling them they would be going out on a murder spree—demonstrates his desire to stay under the radar of law enforcement. If Watson had a killing jones, Manson didn’t care to stop him, so long as Charlie himself didn’t have to take the rap.

With that said, it would have made far more sense to break into the Polanski home, steal the videotapes, and sell them on the black market—either that, or blackmail the Hollywood stars involved with them—if revenge were truly the motive. First of all, this would have been significant revenge. More important, it would have provided even more cash to the growing slippie crime business. Third, they could have had half of Hollywood holding its collective breath. Most critical, blackmail could have kept the victims from reporting the crime, thus ensuring a low profile.

And even if they decided to kill Tate et al anyway, wouldn’t it make sense to scour the house to look for the tapes, since they apparently knew they existed (after all, according to this hypothesis, Atkins starred in one)? They had no problem at all ransacking Hinman’s place in an attempt to find money. And a pregnant woman pleading for her life would have most likely given anything for a chance to spare her fetus.

This particular hypothesis falls apart pretty quickly as a motive. Yet, some elements are more plausible than they first seem. Despite Debra Tate’s understandable rage and disbelief, I have to say, with all due respect, that siblings can keep secrets from each other quite easily, especially if one sibling is underage (as Debra was in August 1969) and only at her sister or brother’s place for a temporary visit. Anyone can be on their best behavior for three weeks. And a pregnant woman who tired easily might not feel like whooping it up in some kind of wild orgy.

Given the nature of Roman Polanski’s work at this time—e.g. The Fearless Vampire Killers, Rosemary’s Baby, or even his supernatural interpretation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth—it seems rather possible that the renown director might have acquainted himself with the black arts to some degree, if only for research. If so, it’s not much of a stretch that his wife would accompany him in this pursuit, especially since she starred in one of these flicks. Then too, one has to remember that in the 1960s, people experimented with all sorts of stuff. Among other things, good people dabbled in Satanism for reasons not difficult to understand. So I wouldn’t necessarily see Tate and Polanski in a bad light had they looked into this faith to any degree. However, I can understand why surviving family members would feel offended considering the role Satan plays in contemporary Christian thought.

Debra Tate also mentioned the “dirty little secrets” of Hollywood in her Dateline interview. This could possibly describe the purported incentive of Brynner, Beatty and Sellers in offering the reward money. Perhaps all three realized that the home movies were irrelevant to the police investigation, but could still cause them embarrassment. While the tapes have never surfaced, I cannot dismiss the possibility that these existed. Many claimed to have witnessed them. Prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi stipulated that police found one (and only one). And Elliot, the rumored star of another flick, never steered Krassner away from the assumption that the tapes floated around somewhere in the underground.

Of course, the tapes would prove their own existence. And you really have to question how there could be absolutely no footage that’s surface for all this time, given the nature of telecommunications nowadays.

Regardless of whether or not the tapes existed, they’re still very tangentially connected to motive, and ultimately lead down a dead end, for the most part. The only way they could have some bearing on motive is if (a) we finally do see them, and (b) if we catch Atkins, or Krenwinkel, or anybody else within the Manson circle participating in them. Until then, I would have to view this hypothesis as slightly interesting, but not in the least convincing.