(CNN) —
The case stunned the nation. The chilling details and callousness of the crime still shock and fascinate people more than four decades later.
On June 16, 1970, Charles Manson and three of his followers – Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten – went on trial in Los Angeles for a string of gruesome murders.
The first set of victims: a stunningly beautiful actress named Sharon Tate, who was eight months’ pregnant; a celebrity hairstylist named Jay Sebring; coffee fortune heiress Abigail Folger; writer Wojciech Frykowski; and Steven Parent, a friend of the family’s caretaker. Each was savagely murdered on August 9, 1969, at the home of Tate and her husband, famed movie director Roman Polanski. Polanski was out of the country at the time.
The next evening, another set of murders took place. Supermarket executive Leno LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary, were killed at their home.
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