Naturally my parents had a Tate connection. One was in how they
ran a liquor store and later a small, literally “Mom and Pop” market in
Altadena and knew the name of Labianca. Leno and Rosemary Labianca were Manson
victims as well as those at Cielo Drive that August. The connection with mom
and dad was that they were involved in the same business as my parents as
owners of two important Southern Californian market chains, Gateway
Ranch Markets and The State Wholesale Grocery Company. The Gateway Ranch
Market’s signage I actually still remember.
My parents must have felt eerily vulnerable
during the whole Manson media blitz, I mean for all intents and purposes, that
could of been…THEM!
About four years after the killings my mother even worked at the
same place of work that one of the victims had worked at. She never spoke of
Steven Parent, the teen age boy shot at entrance of 10050 Cielo Drive but her
workplace being a hub of gossip - must have been steeped in the history of this
legendary crime case.
He lived fifteen minutes away from us and was the same age as my
youngest aunt who lived with us.
Plus my mom had a huge love for detective and crime novels and
television programs.
All I am saying is that she
must have heard all about the story of this ill-fated boy and former employee
of the plumbing supply company she worked at for ten years.
That poor kid must have had quite a ‘60’s experience and when I
read up on him, he did!
This case is just an ongoing thing to this day, my partner even
worked as a junior employee with one of the Manson Family killers. To check
back even further, a former lover of mine when stranded out in the San Fernando
Valley at an auto wrecking yard picking up spare car parts found himself in an
old Partridge Family bus and discovered an old L.A. Times newspaper front-page
screaming the news that eight people had been ritualistically murdered in
Benedict Canyon; tucked into the bus’s front seat.
When I would watch my favorite ghost story mystery suspense TV
show, “Night Gallery”, in reruns, there was an episode called, “The House”
starring Joanna Pettete, who not only was friends with Sharon but had been at
the Tate house earlier that same day of the murders and shared a picnic lunch
with the very pregnant Sharon.
I remember thinking what a trip this was, coincidence or not, in
the TV show Joanna was obsessively drawn to this “haunted house” and real life,
Sharon was obsessively drawn to her Cielo Drive house from what I learned later
from an E! TRUE HOLLYWOOD STORY, in the late 1990’s.
In this episode Joanna seemed to look like Sharon and the haunted
house she kept driving to get to in the story, looked exactly like 10050 Cielo
Drive, which I immediately recognized.
So I could never get away from this case, even if I wanted to.
”Summer In The City” by the Loving Spoonful came out in August of 1966, three full years before the massacre and played often on 93 KHJ, a perfect anthem to this time zone; making the crime part of my Southern Californian landscape. Perhaps this song even foreshadowed August 10, 1969 except Watts had happened a bit earlier but even that was a summer riot. Suffice to say, tempers run high in L.A. in June, July, August and September.
Our Southern California summer heat waves of madness occur are not
hard to understand because it has the character of a monster.
L.A. is in an absolute
fever pitch of soul draining negativity due in part because of the heat and the
fact that the roasting temperatures having been set on “fry” for four months.
Add to the fact that one can truly cut the tension with a knife.
I believe the heat, along with the drugs and the general insanity
of those extremely violent times, played a part in motivating the madness that
grips Los Angeles during the summer.
Summer and Hollywood blondes have it rough in the summer in
L.A. Jean Harlow died of uremic
poisoning in June of 1937.
Marilyn Monroe passed on in August of 1962 and
Sharon and baby boy died that horrible week-end in during a classic Southern
Californian heat wave in 1969.
I think it rather cryptic that as early as eight years old, I
connected the term, “A very beautiful woman” with murder.
As a side note; at twelve midnight, on the first night after the
killings, the automatically timed Christmas lights activated, right on schedule
causing the policemen stationed at 10050 Cielo Drive to nearly jump out of
their skins.
References
URL’S
References
dicksdrawings.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/index.php#!/richard.london.98
Wordpress-WPosts-ral310WordPress
Photographic
References
All pictures referenced from
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/.
The Doors
Palos Verdes
Sharon Tate
Photographic
References
All images © 2012 Richard Lloreda (specified)
Mid-century modern home
Paul Revere and the
Raiders
Penelope Pitstop
Peter Brady
Robert F Kennedy
SHAZAM
Zenith TV
Sharon Tate
Beach Boys,
“20/20”
Paul
Peterson
Wild Flowers
Richard
Nixon
Rosemary’s
Baby (title)
Rosemary’s
Baby (photo)
Modern Bride
Where Angels
Go Trouble Follows (photo)
Airport 1975
(photo)
Le Coque
Basque, Vanity Fair
The Byrd’s,
“Turn, Turn, Turn”
The Lord
Jesus Christ statue
Datsun 240 Z
1970 toy
1960’s
General Electric Radio
Ernest
Borgnine in “The Poseidon Adventure”
Shirley
Booth in “Hazel”
Agnes Moorhead
in “Bewitched”
El Atauo del
Vampiro
Explosion
St. Rita’s
Forbidden
Planet
S.S.Titanic
Los Angeles
Times
Mannix car
model
Partridge
Family bus
Pregnant
Sharon Tate
Joanna
Pettit in “Night Gallery”
10050 Cielo
Drive
Joanna
Pettit in “Night Gallery”
Godzilla
Jean Harlow
Marilyn Monroe
Sharon Tate
Sharon Tate
in London
Disclaimer: I will happily remove any images that are copyrighted. This site is not for profit, retailing or anything commercial.
- © copyright 2012 Richard Lloreda.
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