They used the blood of their victims to scrawl anti-establishment messages on the walls: "Pig," "Death to Pigs," "Rise" and a misspelled "Healter Skelter."

"The murders were probably the most bizarre and far-out in the recorded annals of American time," said Vincent Bugliosi, who prosecuted Manson and members of his "Family" and later wrote the best-selling book "Helter Skelter." "People are fascinated by the strange and the bizarre."

Laurie Levenson, a professor at Loyola Law School who follows high-profile cases, described Manson as the worst of the worst, evil incarnate.

"If you're going to be evil, you have to be off-the-charts evil, and Charlie Manson was off-the-charts evil," said Levenson.

The Manson murders abruptly ended the "decade of love," and Southern California lost its sun-kissed, self-indulgent innocence. The crimes added a lasting mantra for the times, Los Angeles Times columnist Patt Morrison said: "Live freaky, die freaky."

"It was the dark side of paradise," Morrison said. "People could shake their fingers and say, 'This is where your high-living, rich, hippie, movie-star lifestyle gets you. This is where the drug culture gets you.' It's the boomerang effect, the wages of sin."

Actress Sharon Tate, 26, famed hairstylist Jay Sebring, 35, coffee fortune heiress Abigail Folger, 25, and two others died shortly after midnight August 9, 1969, at a rambling house overlooking Benedict Canyon.

Tate was married to director Roman Polanski and eight months pregnant. She begged in vain for her life, saying she wanted to live to have her baby, according to Bugliosi.

The next night, grocer Leno LaBianca, 44, and his wife, Rosemary, 38, were butchered in their home in the wealthy Los Feliz neighborhood. Rosemary LaBianca was stabbed 41 times. A fork jutted from Leno LaBianca's abdomen, where one of his killers had carved the word "war."

When arrests came and the identities of the killers became known, the case grew even more frightening, Bugliosi said.

The suspects were hippies who lived in a commune at an old movie set in the San Fernando Valley called Spahn Ranch, where they dropped acid, engaged in orgies and went on nighttime break-ins, missions they called "creepy crawls."

"They could have been the kid next door," Bugliosi said. "Tex Watson was a straight-A student, a track star. Patricia Krenwinkel wanted to be a nun and sang in a church choir. Leslie Van Houten was homecoming princess at Monrovia High School."

They were in thrall of Manson, who told them he was Jesus Christ -- and the devil, rolled into one.

Manson's "Helter Skelter" race war and revolution never came. He and Susan Atkins, Watson, Krenwinkel and Van Houten are serving life terms for their roles in the murders. Atkins, who is said to be dying of brain cancer, has a parole hearing next month.

With their brew of violence, music and anti-establishment youth counterculture, the murders and ensuing trials established Manson as a perverse cultural icon that endures to this day. Along the way, the mastermind transcended his victims, and the Tate-LaBianca murders became known as the Manson murders.

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