Helter Skelter

On Saturday August 9, 1969, after an alert of possible homicide, three police officers go to the home of actress Sharon Tate - the wife of film director Roman Polanski, eight months pregnant - located at 10050 Cielo Drive , in the opulent Los Angeles neighborhood of Bel Air. At the mansion, they discover the savagely murdered bodies of the actress and four other people in what appears to be a ritual crime. The next day, not far away, in the Los Feliz neighborhood, they find the stabbed bodies of the Leno and Rosemary LaBianca couple. Forty-one stab wounds are subsequently identified on the woman's body. At three points in the home, someone has left written, with the blood of one of the victims, some strange proclamations. The erratic investigation that followed these beastly murders - which at first were unrelated to each other, despite the coincidences - swung between stupefaction and impotence. Who had committed those atrocities? And because? As news headlines from across North America fueled the commotion and stupor, and speculation about the suspects and the motives continued, the investigation would target a group of youths who had settled in the arid environment of the Spahn ranch - a old natural scene of westerns in north Los Angeles converted into a hippy commune- led by Charles Manson -alias Jesus Christ-, whose power and influence over the group -the Family- would reach the point of getting them to kill following their dark designs.