Tate–LaBianca murders
1969 homicides by the Manson Family in Los Angeles
The Tate–LaBianca murders were a series of murders perpetrated by members of the Manson Family cult during August 9–10, 1969, in Los Angeles, California, under the direction of Tex Watson and Charles Manson. The perpetrators killed five people (not including the unborn child of an 8½ month pregnant Sharon Tate) on the night of August 8–9: Tate and her companions Jay Sebring, Abigail Folger, Wojciech Frykowski and Steven Parent. The following evening, the Family murdered the supermarket executive Leno LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary, at their home in Los Feliz, Los Angeles.
On the night of August 8–9, four members of the Family – Watson, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel and Linda Kasabian – drove from Spahn Ranch to 10050 Cielo Drive in Benedict Canyon, the home Tate shared with her husband, the film director Roman Polanski. The group murdered Tate and her unborn child. Also killed were her houseguests: Sebring, a celebrity hairdresser; Folger, heiress to the Folgers coffee fortune; her boyfriend Frykowski, an aspiring screenwriter; and Parent, an 18-year-old visiting the guest house caretaker. Polanski was not home as he was working on a film in Europe. Manson was a cult leader and would-be musician who had tried to get a contract with record producer Terry Melcher, who had previously rented the house.
The following night, the four participants in the Cielo Drive killings, in addition to Manson, Leslie Van Houten and Steve "Clem" Grogan, committed two more murders. Manson had allegedly said he would show them how to do it.
“Tate–LaBianca murders” enters the record as 1969 homicides by the Manson Family in Los Angeles. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Tate, LaBianca and murders can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Tate–LaBianca murders” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Tate, LaBianca and murders provides the most credible route into that argument.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q24930704. Authority coordinates are 34.094, -118.433. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1969.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Tate–LaBianca murders”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Tate–LaBianca murders primary sources, Tate–LaBianca murders archive and Tate research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Tate–LaBianca murders”?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Tate–LaBianca murders” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.