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In the first days of November 1968, Manson established the Family at alternative headquarters in Death Valley's environs, where they occupied two unused or little-used ranches, Myers and Barker.
The former, to which the group had initially headed, was owned by the grandmother of a new woman (Catherine Gillies) in the Family.
The latter was owned by an elderly local woman (Arlene Barker) to whom Manson presented himself and a male Family member as musicians in need of a place congenial to their work.
When the woman agreed to let them stay if they'd fix things up, Manson honored her with one of the Beach Boys' gold records, several of which he had been given by Wilson.
While back at Spahn Ranch, no later than December, Manson and Watson visited a Topanga Canyon acquaintance who played them the Beatles' recently released double album, "The Beatles" (also known as the "White Album").
Manson became obsessed with the group.
At McNeil Island prison, Manson had told fellow inmates, including Karpis, that he could surpass the group in fame; to the Family, he spoke of the group as "the soul" and "part of the hole in the infinite".
For some time, Manson had been saying that racial tensions between blacks and whites were about to erupt, predicting that blacks would rise up in rebellion in America's cities.
On a bitterly cold New Year's Eve at Myers Ranch, as the Family gathered outside around a large fire, Manson explained that the social turmoil he had been predicting had also been predicted by the Beatles.
The White Album songs, he declared, foretold it all in code.
In fact, he maintained (or would soon maintain), the album was directed at the Family, an elect group that was being instructed to preserve the worthy from the impending disaster.
In early January 1969, the Family left the desert's cold and moved to a canary-yellow home in Canoga Park, not far from the Spahn Ranch.
Because this locale would allow the group to remain "submerged beneath the awareness of the outside world", Manson called it the Yellow Submarine, another Beatles reference.
There, Family members prepared for the impending apocalypse, which around the campfire Manson had termed "Helter Skelter", after the song of that name.
By February, Manson's vision was complete.
The Family would create an album whose songs, as subtle as those of the Beatles, would trigger the predicted chaos.
Ghastly murders of whites by blacks would be met with retaliation, and a split between racist and non-racist whites would yield whites' self-annihilation.
The blacks' triumph, as it were, would merely precede their being ruled by the Family, which would ride out the conflict in "the bottomless pit", a secret city beneath Death Valley.
At the Canoga Park house, while Family members worked on vehicles and pored over maps to prepare for their desert escape, they also worked on songs for their world-changing album.
When they were told Melcher was to come to the house to hear the material, the women prepared a meal and cleaned the place.
However, Melcher never arrived.
There are alternative theories to the Helter Skelter scenario and whether or not it was the actual motive behind the murders.
According to Family associate Bobby Beausoleil, it was actually Beausoleil's arrest for the torture and murder of Gary Hinman that instigated the Family's ensuing murder spree—enacted to convince police that the killer(s) of Hinman were in fact still at large.
This has been substantiated by interviews of Beausoleil by Truman Capote, and by Ann Louise Bardach in 1981.
Manson entered 10050 Cielo Drive uninvited on March 23, 1969, which he had known as Melcher's residence.
This was Altobelli's property; Melcher was only a previous tenant, and the tenants were now Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski.
Manson was met by Shahrokh Hatami, an Iranian photographer who befriended Polanski and Tate during the making of the documentary "Mia and Roman".
He was there to photograph Tate before her departure for Rome the next day.
He had seen Manson through a window as he approached the main house and had gone onto the front porch to ask him what he wanted.
Manson told him that he was looking for someone whose name Hatami did not recognize, and Hatami informed him that the place was the Polanski residence.
He advised Manson to try "the back alley," by which he meant the path to the guest house beyond the main house.
He was concerned about the stranger on the property and went down to the front walk to confront Manson.
Tate then appeared behind Hatami in the house's front door and asked him who was calling.
Hatami said that a man was looking for someone.
He and Tate maintained their positions while Manson went back to the guest house without a word, returned a minute or two later, and left.
That evening, Manson returned to the property and again went back to the guest house.
He entered the enclosed porch and spoke with Altobelli, who was just coming out of the shower.
Manson asked for Melcher, but Altobelli felt that Manson had come looking for him.
This is consistent with prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi's later discovery that Manson had apparently been to the property on earlier occasions after Melcher's departure from it.
Altobelli told Manson through the screen door that Melcher had moved to Malibu, falsely stating that he did not know his new address.
Altobelli said that he was in the entertainment business, although he had met Manson the previous year at Wilson's home and he was sure that Manson already knew that.
He had complimented Manson lukewarmly on some of his musical recordings that Wilson had been playing.
He then informed Manson that he was going out of the country the next day, and Manson said that he would like to speak with him upon his return; Altobelli lied that he would be gone for more than a year.
Manson explained that he had been directed to the guest house by the persons in the main house; Altobelli expressed the wish that Manson would not disturb his tenants.
Manson left.
Altobelli flew with Tate to Rome the next day, and Tate asked him whether "that creepy-looking guy" had gone back to the guest house the day before.
On May 18, 1969, Terry Melcher visited Spahn Ranch to hear Manson and the women sing.
Melcher arranged a subsequent visit, not long thereafter, during which he brought a friend who possessed a mobile recording unit, but Melcher did not record the group.
By June, Manson was telling the Family they might have to show blacks how to start "Helter Skelter".
When Manson tasked Watson with obtaining money, supposedly intended to help the Family prepare for the conflict, Watson defrauded a black drug dealer named Bernard "Lotsapoppa" Crowe.
Crowe responded with a threat to wipe out everyone at Spahn Ranch.
The family countered on July 1, 1969, by shooting Crowe at Manson's Hollywood apartment.
Manson's belief that he had killed Crowe was seemingly confirmed by a news report of the discovery of the dumped body of a Black Panther in Los Angeles.
Although Crowe was not a member of the Black Panthers, Manson concluded he had been and expected retaliation from the Panthers.
He turned Spahn Ranch into a defensive camp, with night patrols of armed guards.
"If we'd needed any more proof that Helter Skelter was coming down very soon, this was it," Tex Watson would later write.
"Blackie was trying to get at the chosen ones."
Gary Allen Hinman was a music teacher and PhD student at UCLA.
At some point in the late 1960s, he befriended members of the Manson Family, allowing some to occasionally stay at his home.
Manson was under the impression that Hinman had considerable stocks and bonds and owned his property.
Believing that he was wealthy, Manson sent Family members Bobby Beausoleil, Mary Brunner and Susan Atkins to Hinman's home on July 25, 1969 to convince him to join the Family and turn over the assets Manson thought Hinman had inherited.
The three individuals held the uncooperative Hinman hostage for two days, during which time Manson arrived with a sword and slashed his ear.
After that, Beausoleil stabbed Hinman to death, allegedly on Manson's instruction.
Before leaving the Topanga Canyon residence, Beausoleil or one of the women used Hinman's blood to write "Political piggy" on the wall and to draw a panther paw, a Black Panther symbol.
In magazine interviews of 1981 and 1998–1999, Beausoleil said he went to Hinman's to recover money paid to Hinman for drugs that had supposedly been bad; he added that Brunner and Atkins, unaware of his intent, went along merely to visit Hinman.
Atkins, in her 1977 autobiography, wrote that Manson directly told Beausoleil, Brunner, and her to go to Hinman's and get the supposed inheritance of $21,000.
She said that two days earlier Manson had told her privately that, if she wanted to "do something important", she could kill Hinman and get his money.
Beausoleil was arrested on August 6, 1969, after he was caught driving Hinman's car.
Police found the murder weapon in the tire well.
Two days later Manson told Family members at Spahn Ranch, "Now is the time for Helter Skelter."
On the night of August 8, 1969, Manson directed Watson to take Susan Atkins, Linda Kasabian, and Patricia Krenwinkel to Melcher's former home at 10050 Cielo Drive in Los Angeles and kill everyone there.
The home had only recently been rented to actress Sharon Tate and her husband, director Roman Polanski (Polanski was away in Europe working on "A Day at the Beach", which he ultimately only produced).
Manson told the three women to do as Watson told them.
The Family members proceeded to kill the five people they found: Sharon Tate (eight and a half months pregnant), who was living there at the time; Jay Sebring, Abigail Folger, and Wojtek Frykowski, who were visiting her; and Steven Parent, who had been visiting the caretaker of the home.
Atkins wrote "pig" with Tate’s blood on the front door as they left.
The murders created a nationwide sensation.
The next night of August 9, 1969, six Family members—Leslie Van Houten, Steve "Clem" Grogan, and the four from the previous night—drove out on Manson's orders.
Displeased by the panic attack of the victims at Cielo Drive, Manson accompanied the six, "to show them how to do it."
After a few hours' ride, in which he considered a number of murders and even attempted one of them, Manson gave Kasabian directions that brought the group to 3301 Waverly Drive.
This was the home of supermarket executive Leno LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary, a dress shop co-owner.
Located in the Los Feliz section of Los Angeles, it was next door to a house at which Manson and Family members had attended a party the previous year.
According to Atkins and Kasabian, Manson disappeared up the driveway and returned to say he had tied up the house's occupants.
He then sent Watson up with Krenwinkel and Van Houten.
In his autobiography, Watson stated that having gone up alone, Manson returned to take him up to the house with him.
After Manson pointed out a sleeping man through a window, the two of them entered through the unlocked back door.
Watson added at trial, he "went along with" the women's account, which he figured made him "look that much less responsible."
As Watson related it, Manson roused the sleeping Leno LaBianca from the couch at gunpoint and had Watson bind his hands with a leather thong.
After Rosemary was brought briefly into the living room from the bedroom, Watson followed Manson's instructions to cover the couple's heads with pillowcases.
He bound these in place with lamp cords.
Manson left, sending Krenwinkel and Van Houten into the house with instructions that the couple be killed.
Before leaving Spahn Ranch, Watson had complained to Manson of the inadequacy of the previous night's weapons.
Now, sending the women from the kitchen to the bedroom to which Rosemary LaBianca had been returned, he went to the living room and began stabbing Leno LaBianca with a chrome-plated bayonet.
The first thrust went into the man's throat.
Sounds of a scuffle in the bedroom drew Watson there to discover Rosemary LaBianca keeping the women at bay by swinging the lamp tied to her neck.
After subduing her with several stabs of the bayonet, he returned to the living room and resumed attacking Leno, whom he stabbed a total of 12 times with the bayonet.
After this attack, the word "WAR" was carved into his abdomen by a perpetrator.
Returning to the bedroom, Watson found Krenwinkel stabbing Rosemary LaBianca with a knife from the LaBianca kitchen.
Heeding Manson's instruction to make sure each of the women played a part, Watson told Van Houten to stab Mrs. LaBianca too.
She did, stabbing her approximately 16 times in the back and the exposed buttocks.
At trial, Van Houten would claim, uncertainly, that Rosemary LaBianca was dead when she stabbed her.