Charles Manson is dead, but the sister of a victim of the string of murders he orchestrated in 1969 Los Angeles said upon his death that he is the “least of (her) worries.”
"Right now, we have one Manson family member on deck who has been granted a parole date," Debra Tate, sister of slain actress Sharon Tate, told ABC News. "It's important for people to know that these are individuals that are still brutal monsters capable of coming heinous crimes."
“Although I’ve forgiven, I have not forgotten, and I feel it’s very important that they stay exactly where they are until they die.”
Manson, who died Sunday night at age 83, became one of the most infamous criminals of the 20th century when, in the early morning hours of Aug. 9, 1969, he armed a group of his followers and ordered them to go to 10050 Cielo Drive, a secluded home in Benedict Canyon. There, they brutally murdered Sharon Tate, celebrity hairdresser Jay Sebring, coffee heiress Abigail Folger, Folger's partner, Wojciech Frykowski and Steven Parent, a teenager who had stopped by to visit the caretaker of the property, who was later found unharmed in the guest house.
Credit: AP Photos
Credit: AP Photos
Tate, the wife of famed director Roman Polanski, was nearly nine months pregnant when she was murdered. Their baby, a son named Paul, also died when Tate was stabbed to death.
"People are saying that this should be some kind of relief, but oddly enough, it isn't," Debra Tate told ABC News. "While Charlie may be gone, it's the ones that are still alive that perpetrated everything, and it was up to their imaginations for what brutal things were going to be done. In an odd way, I see them as much more dangerous individuals."
The Manson family’s murder spree continued the following night, Aug. 10, 1969, when Manson and his followers went to the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles, to the home of grocer Leno LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary. After tying the couple up, Manson left and the others in his group stabbed the couple to death.
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Manson and four others -- Charles “Tex” Watson, Susan Atkins, Leslie Van Houten and Patricia Krenwinkel -- were subsequently convicted in the Tate-LaBianca murders. Linda Kasabian, another Manson follower initially charged with murder, received immunity for testifying against the others at trial.
The trial ended in death penalties, but the sentences were commuted to life in prison in 1972, when the California Supreme Court abolished capital punishment.
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