40 Years Later, Manson Murders Remembered

Aug. 9, 2009 — -- They were crimes that horrified an entire nation 40 years ago.

Hollywood actress Sharon Tate -- then eight months pregnant -- was stabbed to death Aug. 9, 1969, along with four others in the home she shared with director Roman Polanski.

The next day another well-known couple was brutally murdered. Wealthy businessman Leno LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary, were killed in their Los Angeles home.

The murders were at the hands of a small group led by Charles Manson. The murders, he had told them, would ignite an apocalyptic race war. Many said at the time the grisly crimes brought an end to the decade of love.

Vincent Bugliosi, the former Los Angeles prosecutor who convicted Manson in 1970, says that these murders could not have happened without Manson.

"He would have killed as many people as he could have. That was his religion," Bugliosi said. "These people killed with relish."

More twisted than Manson's vision was his ability to turn four people, three of them young women from middle-class families, into eager killers who laughed when they were on trial.

Manson and his so-called "family" were sentenced to death. But when the state of California abolished the death penalty in 1972 their sentences were commuted to seven years to life. At the time there was no life without parole.

Now with the 40th anniversary of the murders there are fresh calls for the release of two of Manson's followers.

It was Susan Atkins who stabbed Sharon Tate to death while the pregnant actress begged her to stop. It was a moment described at Atkins' parole hearing years ago.

"She asked me to spare her," Atkins said. "I told her I didn't have any mercy for her."

Atkins, now dying of cancer, is asking she be released from prison after 39 years so she can die in hospice.

Her next hearing is scheduled for September 2. Atkins husband will argue releasing his wife to die at home would save the state $10,000 a day in hospital charges.

"She can nod her head and look left and right. ... She has limited use of her left arm," Waterhouse said. "She's expressed remorse and grief for every one of her parole hearings going back to 1972."