Welcome to One Explained Extra, with me Richard McClain Smith.

Where for the weeks in between episodes, we look at stories and ideas that for one reason

or other didn't make it into the previous show.

In the last episode, when Love breaks down, we followed two young women on two very different

paths, albeit ones that were destined eventually to collide, in devastating and tragic circumstances.

With all the conflicting testimonies, it isn't known exactly what took place inside the

main house of 150 C.L.O. Drive on the night of August 8, 1969.

What is known however, is that sometime around midnight, Susan Atkins, Patricia Cremwinkel,

and Charles Tex Watson entered the property uninvited, while Linda Kassabian remained

outside on lookout.

By the time they'd left, Sharon Tate, eight months pregnant at the time, Jay C. Bring,

Abigail Fulger and Voicek Freikovsky, who were staying with Sharon that night, and Stephen

Parent, who'd been visiting the property's caretaker William Garretson in the guesthouse,

had all been murdered.

So at first, Tex Watson attempted to take responsibility for all the murders.

It was made clear in the subsequent trial that although he may have taken the lead, he

was far from acting alone.

Reports vary as to whether Tex murdered Sharon Tate single-handedly, or whether in fact

she was also stabbed by Susan Atkins.

The killing spree continued the following night, when Watson and Cremwinkel joined this

time by then 19-year-old Lesley Van Halton, were ordered by Charles Manson to kill Rosemary

and Lino Labianco at their home in Los Felis in Los Angeles.

...