Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties

by Tom O'Neill

For a year, I’d been hearing a rumor from people inside and outside the case: that Manson had visited the Cielo house after the murders, that he’d gone back with someone unknown to rearrange the scene. This would’ve accounted for discrepancies in the positions of the bodies: the killers left them one way, and the police found them in another. There were pools of Tate’s and Sebring’s blood on the front porch, splatters on the walkway and the bushes. But according to the killers, neither Tate nor Sebring had ever left the living room, where they died. The coroner described blood smears on Tate’s body, as if she’d been dragged—again, never mentioned by the killers. Those in the area, including a private security officer, had heard gunshots and arguing hours after the killers said they’d left. And Manson himself had claimed on a few occasions that he’d gone back to the house with an unnamed individual to “see what my children did.”