Get your history fix in one place: sign up for the weekly TIME History newsletter Rather than looking at grudges or hidden messages, this story starts instead with a botched drug deal that took place that July 1. The theory that Day describes in his book revolves around events that were known 50 years ago, but are not as well known today as the Tate murder is. “There’s this whole underlying story people don’t know,” says Day, who, 50 years later, hopes to set the record straight.

“They knew I didn’t have anything to do with it.” So the story Manson told Day about the summer of 1969 is one in which, unlike in the “Helter Skelter” story, his role in the murders is relatively small. “I didn’t have nothing to do with killing those people,” he told Day in a phone call. One of the people who offered Day a version of the story was, of course, Manson, who maintained his innocence until his death. Prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi also argued that Manson was obsessed with the Beatles’ White Album, and thought its message was that he should start a race war by framing black innocents for crimes against affluent white people the “race war” was nicknamed “Helter Skelter” after that song, and the fact that the word “pig” was written on the wall at the crime scene in blood was linked to the track “Piggies.” In Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood, one of the most infamous crimes of the 20th century plays a prominent role: though the movie’s story is fictionalized, Margot Robbie plays Sharon Tate, the real actor who was a victim of the 1969 murders committed by followers of the cult leader Charles Manson.Ī half-century after Tate’s death, there remain plenty of myths and theories about why Manson’s followers carried out the murders - and one of the biggest questions is the extent to which Charles Manson himself was involved, and why.Īt the time, prosecutors said that Manson, who wanted to be a rock star, ordered the murders of Tate and four others because the previous owner of the house at which the deaths occurred - Terry Melcher, a music producer - had refused to make a record with Manson.

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