After The Helter Skelter
IN the strangely hot summer of 1969, the hills above Los Angeles offered a sanctuary, not only from sweltering workplaces and smog-wreathed freeways, but the ominous flow of bad news spilling through the vast metropolis.
At her home on Cielo Drive, a steep, winding road behind Beverly Hills, 26-year-old Sharon Tate, one of Hollywood’s brightest young stars, kept the windows open and padded around the secluded property dressed as lightly as possible. Things were going well for Sharon. After a hesitant start, her career had taken off, and a year earlier she had married the newly fashionable French-born film director Roman Polanski, whose worldwide hit Rosemary’s Baby had rocketed him into the big league. Best of all, Sharon was eight months pregnant with the couple’s first child.
As the weekend of August 9-10 approached, learned that had been delayed in London and wouldn’t be home as planned. Instead, she invited friends over for dinner and a chill-out at Cielo Drive. None of them would surviveunborn child, died at her house, and two more were slaughtered the following night. The murders marked the end of the freewheeling idealism of the 1960s, bringing fear and paranoia into Hollywood and darkening America’s sense of itself.
