Celebrities Connected To Charles Manson

While Sharon Tate is the Manson Family's most famous victim, she wasn't the only one to die on August 9. When four psychos attacked her house on 10050 Cielo Drive, they also murdered Abigail Folger, Wojciech Frykowski, and Steven Parent. But after Tate, the most famous of the Cielo Drive victims was Jay Sebring, hairdresser to the stars.

After learning to cut hair in the Navy, Sebring set up shop in Los Angeles as a self-described "hair architect." The man was well-known for his hip-hugger jeans and chambray shirts, and his salon was decked out with a stained-glass window and an ankh cross. When guests came to get their hair done, they could knock back champagne while they were attended by beautiful women.

In addition to his snazzy style, Sebring was a pioneer. He was the first to give shampoos to men, and he popularized the use of handheld hairdryers in the US. Sebring charged an arm and a leg, but his clients could afford his price. After all, he serviced Rock Hudson and Henry Fonda. Kirk Douglas hired him to work on Spartacus and praised him as "a genius with hair." Sebring would fly out to Vegas to work on Frank Sinatra (and provide him with hair pieces), and he regularly took his clippers to Steve McQueen's house ... along with plenty of cocaine.

In his spare time, he raced cars with Paul Newman, and it's said Warren Beatty partially based his movie "Shampoo" on Sebring's life. The stylist also briefly dated Sharon Tate before she dumped him for Polanski. Nevertheless, the two remained friends, and he often visited the actress at her home. Tragically, he was there the night when Charles "Tex" Watson showed up, and Manson's lieutenant shot the hairdresser to death.

In the 1960s, Kenneth Anger was a key player in the underground film scene. A man obsessed with everything from black magic to sadomasochism, his biker film "Scorpio Rising" influenced Martin Scorsese, popularized the use of pop music in movies, and carved out the motorcycle movie genre. Plus his book, "Hollywood Babylon," was full of Hollywood gossip, dishing the goods on stars like Marilyn Monroe. True, most of his stories were fiction, but readers didn't care, and the book made Anger a big name among pop culture aficionados.

But while working on a film called "Lucifer Rising," Anger ran into an actor/wannabe musician named Bobby Beausoleil. Anger grew obsessed with the young man, casting him as the protagonist of his film and letting Beausoleil live in his mansion. The two sporadically worked on the movie, until they had a falling-out after Anger accused Beausoleil of stealing the film.

Homeless, Beausoleil eventually met up with Charles Manson. While he never joined the Family, the two enjoyed hanging out together, and Manson hoped Beausoleil's good looks would entice more women to join the cult. However, things went south when Manson asked his buddy to shake down a music teacher-turned-drug dealer named Gary Hinman. Along with two Manson women, Beausoleil took Hinman hostage for four days, beating him repeatedly. And after Manson slashed Hinman's ear with a samurai sword, Beausoleil stabbed the man to death.

It was the killing that started everything, but Beausoleil was arrested long before the rest of the Family. While in prison, Beausoleil made up with Kenneth Anger, even creating the soundtrack for the director's finished version of "Lucifer Rising."

The drummer for the Beach Boys, Dennis Wilson was a notorious womanizer, and that's probably why he picked up two female hitchhikers one day while driving to his Sunset Boulevard home. Those women were part of the Manson Family, and when they told their messiah they'd met a Beach Boy, Manson thought this was his chance to finally get a record deal.

Without invitation, the Family moved into Wilson's house, and the cult leader quickly impressed Wilson with his spiritual beliefs. (It helped that the drummer also liked fooling around with the Family women.) An excited Wilson tried to convince his fellow band members that Manson was the real deal, but they thought Manson was just a freak.

Unfortunately for Wilson, the Family took full advantage of their new benefactor. They used his clothes to make robes for Manson. They got ahold of Wilson's charge account and ran up a hefty bill, and the Beach Boy paid for their medical bills. In just a few months, the Manson Family had cost him over $100,000, and had wrecked one of his Ferraris.

Still, Wilson couldn't kick the Family out, partly because he was scared of Manson by this point. Terrified, Wilson simply moved out and let his lease expire, forcing the landlord to kick out the cult. However, Wilson got his revenge when he took one of Manson's songs, "Cease to Exist," rewrote it as "Never Learn Not to Love," and took sole credit as composer. Naturally, this didn't sit well with Manson, and the thug threatened Wilson's kid, even sending the drummer a bullet as a message.

Fortunately, the Family didn't follow up on their threats. "I'm the luckiest guy in the world," Wilson later said, "because I got off only losing my money." Still, Wilson usually refused to talk about his relationship with the Family. Tragically, the drummer also struggled with substance abuse, and on December 28, 1983, Dennis Wilson drowned in the ocean.

If you know anything about Charles Manson, you know he was obsessed with The Beatles. He first heard their music while serving time for forgery, but as the years went by, his relationship with the band took a dark turn. By the time he was a cult leader, Manson claimed The Beatles were sending him secret messages in their songs. In fact, he felt their release, "The White Album," was one big prophecy meant especially for the Family.

According to Manson, The Beatles were predicting an apocalyptic revolution called "Helter Skelter." During this uprising, black people would slaughter all the white people, except for the Manson Family, who would enslave the black people and rule the world.) For proof, Manson pointed to the songs "Blackbird" and "Happiness is a Warm Gun." Manson also cited "Revolution 9" as evidence, claiming the song was connected to the Book of Revelations, chapter 9. He's the only person to ever hear "Revolution 9" as anything but pure gobbledygook.

Manson also claimed The Beatles needed his help to survive the apocalypse, and their song "Honey Pie" was a plea for the cult to travel to England. He also claimed The Beatles wanted him to write a response album, thus justifying his desire to become a rocker. As further proof of his crazy claims, he explained how the song "Sexy Sadie" was named after Manson follower Susan Atkins, a woman he'd coincidentally nicknamed "Sadie."

When the Manson Family finally carried out the killings, they used the blood of their victims to write words from Beatles songs on the walls, including "Healter [sic] Skelter." And after their arrests, Manson's followers were genuinely confused why The Beatles weren't coming to their defense. As for the Fab Four, when asked what they thought about Manson, John Lennon said the man was absolutely "barmy," which is Lennon-speak for "completely wall-bouncing bonkers."

Before her murder, Sharon Tate appeared in a Dean Martin movie called "The Wrecking Crew," a spy comedy featuring lots of martial arts. Since Martin and Tate weren't skilled at fighting, the legendary Bruce Lee was brought on board to teach the actors how to look cool while throwing kicks. While Lee thought Martin was "too lazy and too clumsy," he was impressed with Tate's ability at throwing sidekicks "with just a minimum of teaching."

Soon, Roman Polanski hired the actor for private lessons. On a couple of occasions, he flew Lee out to Switzerland, and other times, they trained on Patty Duke's driveway. Interestingly, Lee was also connected to Jay Sebring, as the hairstylist introduced the martial artist to the producer of the "Batman" TV show. As a result, the producer cast Lee as the superhero Kato in "The Green Hornet."

However, after the killings, Polanski became incredibly paranoid, suspecting his friends were involved in the murders. He actually bugged houses and checked friends' cars for blood stains. But things took a twist when police officers found a pair of glasses at the crime scene. Suspicious, Polanski began checking all his friends' prescriptions, and the director soon suspected Lee of the killings, when the martial artist admitted he couldn't find his glasses anywhere.

Wondering if his instructor murdered his wife, Polanski took Lee to see an eye doctor and bought him a new pair of glasses, just to see what kind he wore. Little did Polanski know, those eyeglasses from the crime scene actually came from Manson himself. The tricky mastermind had visited the Cielo Drive house after the murders and dropped little "clues," like the glasses, to throw off the cops.

Sharon Tate has the most tragic connection to Charles Manson, for infamous reasons. Although her husband, the director Roman Polanski, wasn't at their home on Aug. 9, 1969, she was — along with friends Abigail Folger, Wojciech Frykowski, Steven Parent, and Jay Sebring. That is, of course, when members of the so-called Manson family stormed the house and committed the brutal murders that culminated in deaths that included Tate's unborn baby.

Although the most common narrative is that Manson chose the house to carry out high-profile killings designed to start a race war (which he would eventually lead the winners of), Vox says that it was a little more complicated than that. In the months leading up to the murders, Manson was involved in killings of a more hands-on kind. In May, he had shot and killed a drug dealer named Bernard Crowe, and shortly afterward, he had urged some of his family members to hit up a friend of his for some quick cash. Several days of torture ended with the death of Gary Hinman, a murder that family member Bobby Beausoleil was arrested for three days before Tate was killed.

Manson dispatched his followers to the house (which History says was chosen because it was the former home of a record producer who had refused to sign Manson), with orders to kill — and ultimately, to make it look like the same person who had killed Hinman had committed these murders, which Manson hoped would lead to Beausoleil's release. It did not.

The story of The Mamas and the Papas is so tawdry, over-the-top, and downright shudder-inducing that it borders on the ridiculous, and it includes a bizarre connection with Charles Manson. It starts, says the Chicago Tribune, with the wanna-be musician Manson attending all kinds of free-love parties, and getting his groove on alongside both "Mama" Cass Elliot (center left) and John Phillips (right). Does it get stranger? Of course it does.

In his memoir, "Papa John," Phillips spends a good amount of time talking about his friendship with Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate. (And anyone who thinks they can see where this is going? They definitely cannot.) Phillips wrote that when the news of the murders broke, everyone was worried about him — because he was often at the Tate/Polanski house, he had to reassure everyone he was fine. Weeks passed, and Phillips wrote that Polanski started his own investigation ... into him. Polanski, Phillips wrote, was convinced that he had something to do with the slaughter that had taken place at 100500 Cielo Drive, and allegedly went as far as breaking into Phillips' home with a police test kit to look for evidence. What did Polanski think was the motive? Retribution for Polanski's fling with Michelle Phillips (center right).

Things came to a head one night when Polanski allegedly grabbed Phillips, held a cleaver to his throat, and demanded to know if he'd been behind the murders. He assured him that he had not, and once Manson's trial started, "life was more or less back to normal."

While Michael Caine might seem as far away from the Manson Family's semi-transient lifestyle of hedonistic pleasures at the Spahn Ranch as it's possible to get, Caine did have a run-in with him.

According to The New York Times, Caine recalled the incident in his memoir, "What's It All About?" Caine, apparently, was less enamored of the man than many people who met him, saying that he was a "scruffy little man" who also happened to be at one of the many, many parties thrown by Cass Elliot of the Mamas and the Papas. While it's not clear just how long people spent talking to each other, he did also add that both Sharon Tate and hairstylist Jay Sebring — the Manson Family's ill-fated victims — were also at the party.

Later in his memoir, Caine recalled moving to Los Angeles in 1979, describing himself as "a refugee from my own beloved country and living in a strange land." It was going to get stranger: While he was comforted by the fact that his new home was in the jurisdiction of Beverly Hills's emergency services, it was somewhat short-lived when he learned that he was living a few hundred yards from the house where Manson's followers had brutally murdered Tate and her friends.

Certain areas have a certain reputation, and Joni Mitchell was once quoted as explaining the purchase of her Lookout Mountain home as coming after it was recommended to her as "where the craziest people live." In the 1960s, the Laurel Canyon area was known as a hotbed of inspiration and artistry that would change music forever, thanks to the likes of Mitchell, Cass Elliot, Jim Morrison, and scores of others — including Frank Zappa.

Grazia recalls Frank Zappa's Laurel Canyon house (where the above photo was taken) as always being open and inviting, where anyone and everyone was welcome. It was magical, but unfortunately, it's also human nature to take anything that's magical and crush it into little tiny pieces. Parties, drugs, and lifestyles got more extreme, and when the Manson Family murders went down, things were suddenly not-so-fun.

According to the documentary "Zappa," (via Newport This Week), the wildly welcoming home of Frank and Gail Zappa ended up closing the doors before the murders even happened. It was Gail who recounted the fact that after run-ins with their nearby neighbors — who she described as "creepy" — the Zappas decided to sell their house and move out of the area entirely. The creepy neighbors? The Manson Family.

In a 2008 interview with NME, Black Flag's Henry Rollins revealed something pretty shocking: Charles Manson had seen him on MTV and liked his work so much that the two became pen pals for a time. "We corresponded a few times in 1984; I'd just tell him about what we were doing with our new record and he'd send back semi-lucid responses," Rollins recalled, adding, "His letters would always have swastikas on them, so they were easy to spot."

It turns out, that wasn't the end of their contact. In 2010, Rollins appeared at an event for a Los Angeles radio station called KCRW, where he played little-heard recordings of artists from Debbie Harry and Queen to Iggy Pop and ... Charles Manson (via The Hollywood Reporter). Rollins said that he had been struggling when he was approached by SST Records on Manson's behalf, asking him to produce an album for him. Manson did all the recording from prison, and the record — called "Completion" — was actually finished when the project was squashed. Rollins said that the company had started receiving death threats when news of the record leaked, and of the five copies that were made, Rollins kept two of them.