← DISGRACELAND
DISGRACELAND
The Beach Boys Pt. 1: Endless Summer, LSD, Orgies, Charles Manson and a Steve McQueen Man-Crush
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This episode is brought to you by White Claw Search Great podcast pick friend. No surprises there. After all, you're all about finding the tastiest flavors out there, just like White Claw Surge. And with big bold flavors to enjoy like blood orange, BlackBerry, cranberry and more, it's time to go all in on taste. Unleash the flavor. Unleash what? White Claw Surge. Please drink responsibly. Hard seltzer with flavors 8% alcohol by volume. White Claw Seltzer Works Chicago, Illinois this episode contains content that may be disturbing to some listeners. Please check the show notes for more information. Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. The stories about the Beach Boys, specifically about their drummer Dennis Wilson, are insane. He lit himself on fire, got into a fist fight with the singer and his band on stage in front of thousands, partied with Steve McQueen, and befriended and helped support, unbeknownst to him, one of the most notorious serial killers of all time. Dennis Wilson was the handsome, sunny California surf kid who Brian Wilson, his big brother, wrote all those Beach Boys songs about. But he was also consumed by drugs, alcohol, and darkness. Much of that darkness was due to his relationship with Charles Manson and his guilt over the brutal murders of Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, and all who were felled by Manson's psychotic, homicidal rage. But Dennis Wilson made great music. That music you heard at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my melotron called Monkey in a grind MK1. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to end the year 2525 by Zager and Evans. And why would I play you that specific slice of Futuro Doom cheese? Could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on August 8, 1969. And that was the day Charles Manson's killers crept into the house of Dennis Wilson's friends to commit one of the most gruesome murders in American history. An act that had countless consequences. But for the Beach Boys, forever put to rest the notion of their sunny innocence, marking with authority the beginning of the end for one of the biggest bands on the planet. On this episode, Futuro Cheese. The Beach Boys, Dennis Wilson, Charles Manson and the End of Innocence. I'm Jake Brennan and this is Disgrace. Sam Cook had been dead for almost four years, but his cherry red Ferrari was very much alive. And at the moment, in 1968, its new owner, Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys, was using it to tear the ass off off of the two lane blacktop out on the pch. Dennis downshifted the Ferrari's powerful engine as soon as he saw them. Two hippie girls, one pregnant, both attractive, young with their thumbs outstretched on the side of the road, pacing backwards. Slowly cut off jeans, stems for days, bare feet, visible dirt on their skin, loose flower children, blouses, matted hair, sexy as fuck. Dennis slowed the car to the curb, popped open the passenger side door. Both girls hopped in. Dennis flashed that gazillion watt dumb beach bum smile. Hippie hearts melted. First gear, it's all right. Second gear, out of sight. Spinning tires, spitting sand, squealing rubber, and they were off. In no time they were pulling into his driveway. But it was well understood before the front door of Dennis Sunset Boulevard bachelor pad even opened, they were going to fuck. And so they did. And for Dennis, one of Hollywood's most notorious stunts. Dickman. The sex was revelatory. It tapped into something within him that he didn't know was there. Since splitting with his wife Carol. The sex Dennis had been having as of late, despite its randomness, despite its wildness, it had grown stale. Groupies, hitchhiking hippies, aspiring starlets, even bonafide stars Catherine Deneuve, Jane Seymour and Goldie Hawn among them. He had been having so much sex so often and with so many different partners that it all seemed to blend together. In 1968, sex for Dennis Wilson was more like masturbation. Ordinary, rote, functionary. But sex with these two filthy hippies was something else entirely. It was like they'd been trained by a master to serve, but not just to cater, to connect. Dennis was lost in the menage a trois, completely out of his head. To the unenlightened, his state during sex could be described as being unconscious, but as the enlightened, as the contrarian gurus, as the teachers and the seekers, the Maharishi and Gurdjieff and that fucking Blockhead cousin of his and singer in his band, Mike Love. As they would all agree, it wasn't unconsciousness, it was peak consciousness. It was more than sex. It was transcendent. When it was over, Dennis wiped himself off, threw on his jeans and T shirt and split for his brother Brian's studio. He had a recording session that night. He told the girls to hang tight at his pad. He'd be back for round two in a couple hours. In 1968, the Beach Boys were in a tenuous state. They had experienced near immediate chart topping success when they hit the scene in 1963. But by 68 all the vertigo of their ride to the top had finally hit and they were reeling. Inspired by Dennis, genuine embodiment of the Southern California surfer life, filtered through the musical genius of his older brother Brian, and guided to their initial recording contract by the Wilson brothers, overbearing and meddling father Murray, the Beach Boys had built a throne out of surf rock on the west coast of America, just as the Beatles were building their own parallel throne out of Brit pop on the west coast of England. And then, almost simultaneously, both bands transcended their pop roots, shed their skins and remade themselves as countercultural visionaries. Murray, the old man was out as manager. So were the skinny ties and candy striped matching suits. Brian's compositions grew more operatic and experimental. The 60s, or at least what we talk about when we talk about the 60s, had arrived. By mid decade, the mutual admiration society between the Beach Boys and the Beatles had produced several of the greatest records of all time. The Beatles Rubber Sole inspired the Beach Boys, Pet Sounds and Pet Sounds Inspired the Beatles. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Brian Wilson's artistic correspondence with the artists he considered his peers resulted in some of the greatest music of the 20th century. And not just his own. That is the very definition of cultural influence. The Beach Boys caught a wave and were sitting on top of the world. But the air gets thin when you're up that high. And Brian's constant need to defy gravity left him lighten it. He had always been a sensitive soul, but the demands of the throne of creative genius had led him from that transcendent high into something scarier, weirder, more paranoid. Extensive drug use, LSD experimentation and all the other rights of 60s rock royalty had unlocked greater volatility and vulnerability in Brian Wilson's fertile creative mind. When the result of that was Brian literally living in an indoor set sandbox. It was troubling, to say the least. But when the result was something like Good Vibrations, the Pure piece of pop synthesis intended as a prototype for the sound that Beach Boys would achieve on their next anticipated masterpiece album, Smile. Well, one Good Vibrations forgave a lot of indoor sandboxes. Brian called the song a teenage symphony to God. It was more tender loving care than three minute pop. More impressionist paint than assembly line product. It was born out of a library of individual sounds Brian had categorized by feeling. He used them as brushstrokes to recombine into a track that most likely made Paul McCartney seethe with jealousy. And yet Brian had become too anxious to perform live. As he dug in to record the full album, he became increasingly retired. He suffered outright delusions that his songs were causing terrible events out in the real world. The mind fuck was too much for him. The release of Smile was canceled, making it one of, if not the most notorious unreleased album in the history of pop. On a business level, it was moot. Brian Wilson was either having a nervous breakdown or he was such a sensitive soul that he was having a premonition of things like lurking out there in the darkness of the future While Brian Wilson spiraled, Dennis Wilson partied. The Beach Boys next three albums, Smiley Smile, Wild Honey and Friends, were received with disappointment, both critically and commercially. Each album had its moments, particularly Wild Honey, where the band seemed to remember what the Beatles never forgot. That at their core, stripped of all the hippie zeitgeist artifice, they were always just a good little rock and roll band. Perhaps it wasn't fully appreciated at the time, the fact that the band's creative turn south was due to Bryant's mental health. But regardless, their canceled performance at the Monterey pop festival in 1967 dealt an undeniable public blow to their reputation and relevance. Yet here Dennis Wilson was in 1968, trying, in his way anyway, to keep his and his brothers Brian and Carl Wilson's endless summer of love dream alive. Jamming that afternoon at Brian's, working on the next album with two dirty hippie sexpots waiting back home for him. Record sales were down, but so what? It was all good. Peace, love and lots of sex. And his brothers loved him for it. Most people loved him for it. Dennis was the type of guy who showed up and left work with a smile on his face. Charismatic isn't strong enough a word positive to his core. Back then, he seldom had a negative word to say about anyone. Except, of course, for Mike Love. The Beach Boys by this point were splitting into two camps. Camp One, the brothers Wilson, Brian, Carl, and their fierce defender and loyal brother Dennis and Everyone else, Mike, guitarist Al Jardine and Brian's road replacement Bruce Johnston. The latter camp endeavored to keep the wheels on and ensure the band remained a profitable, creatively satisfying endeavor worth everyone's time. The former camp had, well, less formal intentions and was clouded by a reservoir of alcohol and lsd. Beach Boys fans divide themselves amongst these camps as well, with those who consider themselves serious aficionados. Aligning with Team Wilson, they harbor real contempt for Mike Love and company. Brian, the sensitive, drugged out creative genius is viewed as the vulnerable mark for the straight as an arrow, Machiavellian Mike Loves, who throughout the history of the band is seen as being guilty for their greatest creative transgressions. Kokomo, anyone? Paging Mr. John Stamos. Uncle Jesse, you're late for the gig. But this is way too simple an explanation. The Beach Boys, pretty much since their inception were a total mess. Creatively, financially, personally, in every which way. And a large part of that mess was created and sustained by Brian, Carl and Dennis Wilson. Not that the Mike Love camp's hands were totally clean. But Mike Love is was more than a creative boogeyman, more than a necessary evil. Much more. He was a great singer, an astute lyricist and skilled songwriter who brought out some of the best in his cousin Brian Wilson. And in a lot of ways, Mike Love was the engine that motored the Beach Boys forward through blow after devastating blow. Without Mike Love and to a lesser degree, without Bruce Johnston, the Beach Boys would have ceased to exist a long time ago. Maybe that wouldn't have been such a bad thing. I get why people would think that way, but I don't. There'd be no wild honey either way. I digress. Back to Dennis Wilson and the hippie sexbots. The session was dragging. Brian was stuck and Dennis was bored. He bounced eagerly, headed home for what he hoped would be another round of mind bending sex with the two hitchhikers he'd left back at his place, the one that called herself no Joke Cinderella and the other one, Katie. Dennis pulled his car up the driveway at 14400 Sunset Boulevard, killed the engine and made his way up the stairs to his patio entrance. He felt the California night air shift. Suddenly there was a chill. And then he saw something ominous and stopped short on the stairs. There, a few feet in front of him, was a small, mean looking man, a long hair, standing in the light of his doorway. He was disheveled, dirty. The menace in his dilated pupils was immediately evident. In fact, his eyes seemed to roll around inside of his head. As he stood there near still but oddly somehow pulsating his body, his lips clenched, his cheekbones stretched themselves up the sides of his face and pressed his eyes into that insane rolling spell they were now casting. The short man's chest heaved slowly as he stood, moving ever so slightly, not bouncing, not rocking, not quite shifting, but definitely moving softly, almost, it seemed to Dennis, hovering. His aura was obvious. It was dark, compelling, witchy. Dennis spoke first. Are you going to hurt me? This short man spoke as if the option was definitely on the table. Do you want me to hurt you, brother? Dennis stood silent, his heart beating a rampant triple stroke roll. Total fear. It was clear that he didn't want the short man to hurt him. That is. The short man took a step toward Dennis. Dennis leaned back impulsively but otherwise remained still. His heartbeat quickened. More fear. And then the short man dropped to his knees and began kissing Dennis Wilson's feet. Dennis was still in shock when the man finally stood and looked up at him to say, welcome home brother. My name is Charlie.
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The victims were an elderly couple. It was up close and personal.
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I'm 48 Hours correspondent Erin Moriarty. I thought I had seen it all until I encountered the mastermind behind those murders.
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He's. I think the word is psychotic.
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Steve McQueen loved Dennis Wilson as much as the inner workings of Steve McQueen's holy hetero mind would allow him to love another man. Anyway, Steve, like Dennis, was one of Hollywood's biggest hounds, notoriously sleeping with as many as two women a day while on set shooting his films. This is somehow unbelievable, gross, impressive, and sad all at the same time. Free love meant a lot of things to a lot of People, but the guys like Steve McQueen and Dennis Wilson. Rich, famous, handsome beyond compare. It meant something entirely different. The opportunities for promiscuous sex were endless. But Dennis Wilson was learning that nothing is indeed free. Dennis and Steve were hanging out behind the mobile station up on the pch. It was their spot. They'd meet up Dennis in his Ferrari, Steve and his Mustang smoke weed, drop acid and calibrate their engines before dragging up California's iconic Route 1. The two got on great. Steve could care less about the Beach Boys or who Dennis was. The two had common interests. And Dennis was easygoing and obviously didn't give a shit about who Steve McQueen, the movie star, was. The guy knew a lot about fast motorcycles, faster cars, and even more about fast women. And that suited Dennis, who was in the market for some advice. The gonorrhea was killing him. At least it felt that way. Anyway. Charlie's girls were becoming a real pain. Literally. Dennis had no idea which one he contracted the STD from. Cinderella or Katie or Marnie or Sadie Mae, Gypsy or Blue, Yellow or Yellowstone or whatever her real name was. They all had it. And the Billy ended up forking over to the Beverly Hills doctor for the penicillin shots was upwards of $1,000. It wasn't just the clap. Charlie and his girls had sapped Dennis of about $100,000 in cash, food, clothes, you name it. After all, he was a famous rock star and they had nothing. And they were basically sand people. Dennis had been to their place out in Death Valley, the old movie ranch owned by that blind, pervy cowboy, George Spahn. It was bleak. Other than some ramshackle old sets to sleep in, there was next to nothing there except privacy, which was of course needed for Charlie and his girls, the family, as they called themselves, to freak out on lsd, orgy it up and tune in to whatever hoodoo guru vibes Charlie was laying down at the moment. One day, while a record spun on the house stereo, Charlie started preaching how in a good song with the right lyrics, you were transported to the state where you could see yourself and the whole world reflected in a million different ways at the same time. Like the song was a prism. A good song could bring the past back to life or show you the future. Harmless hippie talk. But Dennis thought of his brother's struggles and delusions, trying to make smile and felt that strange chill again. Then Charlie looked at him. The room was rippling. Charlie asked, what if all of life is like that all the time? What if you're the prison? You would have the power to do anything. We would all have the power to know ourselves as God. And all we have to do is just listen. Then he tweaked his finger in his ear violently. And it broke the spell. Charlie Manson was something else, man. Dennis had never seen anything like him except for maybe Steve McQueen. Charlie was born the son of a gangster and Steve the son of a prostitute. They both had charisma for days and a long string of women ready and waiting for them whenever they wanted. But unlike Steve, Charlie didn't know shit about cars other than how to steal them. He didn't really know shit about music either, though he pretended to. He fancied himself a musician anyway. It was part of his whole prophet rap that he laid on anyone who would listen. And in the beginning, Dennis Wilson's ears were wide open. Charlie seemed like he was onto something genuinely, like a real guru. Dennis's soulless cousin Mike Love had the Maharishi in transcendental meditation, so Dennis would have Charles Manson in his improvised tantric shtick. It seemed like a good deal for Dennis. Besides, Manson had better pussy than the Maharishi. So Dennis encouraged Charlie and his music. And Charlie was eager to tap into Dennis music industry connections. And this was at a time when the Beach Boys had set up their own record label, Brother Records, with a distribution deal with their major label Capitol Records, in order to promote and sell more cutting edge and experimental art artists. Dennis thought Charlie would be a great fit. His brothers Brian and Carl did not share his enthusiasm and neither did Bruce Johnston or Al Jardine. And of course for Mike Love, Charles Manson was a hard no. But Charlie wouldn't be dissuaded. He and his girls went on living at Dennis place, partying, pawning all Dennis shit off for cash. When he wasn't looking, two of the girls wrecked one of Dennis cars, which was not insured. It was a parasitic shit show. By the end of the summer, Dennis Wilson had been milked by the freeloaders to the tune of 100 grand. Despite all of this, and for reasons nobody really knows, perhaps because of the power and influence of Charles Manson's personality, or because of the sheer amount of LSD Dennis was taking at the time, Dennis tried setting up Charlie with his influential friend and producer, the Birds, Terry Melcher. Dennis brought Charlie up to Terry's Place at 10050 Cielo Dr. In the Hollywood Hills where Terry was living with his movie star girlfriend Candice Bergen for an audition. Terry heard Charlie sing and play. He was not impressed. Like Mike Love. For Terry Melcher, Charles Manson was a definite pass. Manson was pissed, embarrassed. Dennis was positive, as usual. And there would be other producers, producers, other opportunities, he assured Charlie. But Charlie seemed twitchier than usual. We'll be right back after this.
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Word, word, word.
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Is brought to you by LifeLock. When you visit the doctor, you probably hand over your insurance, your ID and contact details. It's just one of the many places that has your personal information, and if any of them accidentally expose it, you could be at risk for identity theft. LifeLock monitors millions of data points a second. If you become a victim, they'll fix it, guaranteed, or your money back. Save up to 40% your first year@lifelock.com podcast terms apply. The knife flashed out of Charlie's pocket in an instant. Charlie waved it all around the room, crazy like a shithouse rat. He aimed it at the vocal booth and then wheeled it towards Dennis, right next to him in the control room, pressed it to his throat. The blade was warm on his neck. The fear was cold in his veins. Dennis froze and felt that now familiar Charlie chill. Ride his spine. If I hear one more fucking note from you, I swear, man. Respect the prism, fuckers. He then put the knife away. Everyone acted as if this was somehow cool, Dennis included. This shit. Charlie's twitchiness. It had doomed his shot at a record deal with Terry Melcher, who had seen right through his psychodelic manic guru act. Pulling knives in the studio, neglecting advice from seasoned rock stars who for some reason believe in you were clear indicators of what a pain in the ass working with this dude would have been for someone like Melcher. But the clincher was that Charles Manson just wasn't very good. He could barely sing and play guitar at the same time. He wasn't practiced in anything really, other than bullshitting. And Terry Melcher was a pro. He knew better. Fuck this guy. But Dennis Wilson wasn't so easily dissuaded. In the summer of 1968, he went back and forth between wanting to do right by Charlie to getting Charlie and the girls out of the of his life. Steve McQueen was firmly advising Dennis to walk away. Knives to the throat aside, no pussy was worth a hundred grand in a rotting package. Dennis was slow to listen. He brought Charlie and the girls into the studio to try to get something down himself. It was nothing short of a nightmare. The recording session devolved into an orgy, the results of which were captured on tape and to this day have never been heard. And aside from occupying a rather large swath of music history's collective imagination, they are buried somewhere deep in the Beach Boys vault. They Cease to Exist, which was the title of the Charles Manson song Cease to Exist that Dennis Wilson decided to purchase off of his wild eyed guru friend in one last desperate attempt to propel the grifter profit out of his life of hippie squalor and into music industry stardom. Cease to Exist, a simple folk blues number that Manson penned about, well, who the fuck really knows, was purchased by Dennis Wilson for $100,000 in a BSA motorcycle that Charlie coveted for use at spahn ranch market. 200 grand out the window into Manson family coffers. Dennis brought the track into record with the Beach Boys, passing it off as an original song that he'd written. Once they had the track in the studio, Dennis, unusually engaged in the process, got down to arranging and producing the track with his brothers Brian and Carl and the rest of the group. They modified the feel from a traditional blues to something more pop, more of a psychedelic ballad that only the Beach Boys and their tremendous harmony singing along with Brian's arrangement prowess could pull off. They altered Charlie's lyrics. Cease to Exist became Ceased to Resist. And a bridge was added to avoid the monotony of Manson's original. Finally, the title was changed from the bleak Cease to Exist to the hippie zeitgeist sounding Never Learn Not To Love. And the results were pretty stellar. The track is, in a couple of words, fucking awesome. It was featured as a B side to the December 1968 Beach Boys single Bluebirds over the Mountain. It was later featured on the Beach Boys album 2020 the A side charted and the B side was met with positive reviews. But Charles Manson was not impressed. In fact, quite the opposite. He was furious. He was incensed that Dennis Wilson, hippie stoner, surfer twat that he was, would change his lyrics. Who the did Dennis Wilson think he was? Charlie gave him specific instructions on how the Beach Boys would record his song. The song had a message, man. The song had meaning. It was supposed to change minds, melt hearts. It was part of the master plan. Couldn't they see that? Didn't they know that? Of course they didn't. Fucking celebrity cunt sheeps sucking at the tee to the establishment, trying to pretty his song up and weasel their way into the purse of teenage America's mom. They changed his fucking lyrics, man. And his rhythm. And the title was changed as well. And whose idea was it to add a fight bridge? Must have been Dennis's halfway brother, Brian. And to top it all off, he wasn't even credited. Dennis was listed as a songwriter and that tore Charlie up. But what really pissed him off, what really got his gears grinding, was the fact that the track wasn't even the A side, it was the B side. An afterthought, a bit part, a walk on greatness adjunct, a sideshow, A side car drafting along next to Steve McQueen. 61 triumph bullshit. Charles Manson played second fiddle to no man. Charles Manson was the fucking man and the goddamn son of man all at the same time. When Charlie heard the song on the radio, he hightailed it over to Dennis's new place. By now Dennis had taken his buddy Steve's advice and moved out of his Sunset Boulevard home, abandoning it to Charlie and his girls, stopped paying rent and and was just waiting for their inevitable eviction. He knew how pissed off Charlie was about the song and wanted no part of Manson in his short temper. The knife to the throat in the studio was one thing, but there were rumors going around that were particularly unsettling to Dennis. The internal chattering and whispering of the Manson family that he picked up here and there, losing further and further touch with reality. Charlie's vision of seeing prophecy see in music had led to a bizarre obsession with the Beatles so called White Album, which was just released the month before. Now Charlie had a manic focus on producing a record of his own. Dennis didn't understand it, but it reminded him very much of Brian's mental health struggles. Only Brian Wilson was a much gentler soul. Charlie tracked Dennis down at his new Palisade's apartment. He stormed the front steps and began beating on the door incessantly. Dennis was in no mood. He'd been up for days, high on cocaine and the comedown had left him in a coke funk, depressed, dejected, hungover, missing his wife Carol, missing his kids, his little boy and his toddler daughter, bummed about the current state of his band, blown way the fuck off the charts by the White Album, pissed off as always at Mike Love, and above all, ornery at the lack of transcendent sex he was missing out on now that he'd extricated himself from the Manson family. He opened the door non plus to find just what he'd expected. Wild eyed Charlie Manson standing there in front of him doing his I'm so crazy thing. What do you want, Charlie? Charlie was quick to the point. He pulled a bullet out of his pocket and held it up to Dennis's face. You see this man? You see this? Dennis said nothing. He was a bit wild eyed himself at this point, fed up with Charlie's act and too damn hungover to be scared. Yeah, so what? You see this man? This bullet, man? This is for you. And every time you look at it, man, I want you to think of how nice it is your kids are still safe. It was the mention of his kids that set him off. Something in him snapped and Dennis Wilson proceeded to kick the shit out of Charles Manson. First a right to the face. Charlie fell back on his ass, stunned into stillness. Dennis went full feral Papa Bear kicking Charlie in the gut, in the ribs, in the head. Charlie tried getting up while backing away on the ground, crab walking backward from Dennis whose kicks were endless by now. Dennis guests, the remnants of the previous night's coke party. His friends Terry Melcher and some others were up out of their stupors and behind Dennis and the the doorway taking in the scene. Their friend, the passive beach bum hippie beating the snot out of the angry guru dwarf. Then they were laughing. Dennis finally stopped. Charlie got up. Dennis said nothing. Charlie stared at him, wounded, betrayed beyond angry. His eyes widened and pulled back deeper into his sockets. The corners of his lips pulled themselves back into a demonic half smile. He raised his eyes over Dennis's shoulder and saw Melcher and a few others in the doorway, smiling, stifling their laughter, save for a few escaping giggles and darting eyes to avoid contact with the angry violent dwarf who'd just gotten his ass kicked by a hungover pacifist. For Charlie, the humiliation was quick and cutting and way worse than the pain of the beating itself. Charlie began walking backwards. He shouted to Dennis, you're a Thief. And up toward Melcher, but to no one in particular. What are you looking at? You don't know me. You can't know me. Don't look at me like that, man. Don't feel sorry for me, man. I don't need your pity. I don't take pity from no pigs. That's all you are. Little piggies in your polyester pants, condescending down to me. But you don't know me, man. I'm God. I'm the devil. But you will know me. You will all know me. You can count on that. I'm going to see you all later, man. You can count on that. I'm going to see you later. Terry Melcher had to get out of the house on Cielo Drive. It had bad jujub breakup vibes. He and actor Candice Bergen had their torrid, passionate affair. But now they'd fallen out. Melcher needed a change of scenery. He needed someone to take up the lease. And if Terry and Candace had been Tinseltown's golden couple in their time at Cielo Drive, it was fitting that the new tenants would be heirs to that throne. Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate. Roman Polanski, in 1969, was the hottest filmmaker in the Western world after directing Rosemary's Baby. His earlier films proved he had unsettling insight into lives lived with barely contained trauma. But Rosemary's Baby was his most terrifying portrait yet. A beautiful bride glowing with child, slowly, hauntingly revealed to be the victim of a demonic conspiracy to unleash hell on earth. A true nightmare. It freaked America out. Wherever all that darkness came from, it more than paid Roman's bills. And off screen, his life seemed picture perfect. Sharon Tate, his beautiful bride, was gaining a foothold in the industry of her own as an actor. And she was pregnant with their first child when they got the keys to the new place, Terry and Candy's old place up on Cielo Drive, it felt like a coronation. Together, they would cross the threshold into their transcendent new life. They signed the lease on February 12, 1969, and moved in the following Saturday, the 15th. But just six months later, on August 17, 1969, when Roman ascended the driveway to his Benedict Canyon home for the last time, he was in shock. He needed to gather some items before going into hiding. Disappearing was necessary. There were no arrests, no leads, no answers. He was both a suspect and a victim. As such, the spotlight was white hot. Walking toward the front door, he was outside of himself. Autopilot, his stomach one big knot, his eyes set back Deep in his sockets, weighed down by heavy bags, his backbone steeled for what he could not believe. He was about to witness the the crime scene. There were detectives, crime lab techs, a photographer he had asked to accompany him. There was zero faith in authorities. Roman would gather his own clues and take them to a psychic for evaluation in hopes of uncovering the killers. Savages. Roman stopped on the front step. The sight of it was too much. Immediately he took a knee. There on the doorway, what he could only presume was his wife. Wife's blood. The letters P I G pig. The knife the killer had used to stab his wife, his eight and a half month pregnant wife, was taped around its handle to prevent any fingerprints from being discovered should the knife ever be found. It was a small knife, a buck knife with a 3 quarter inch diameter blade. A tiny knife that made for a lot of blood. Roman noticed the stains, deep brown stains on the carpet upon entering his home from where the blood had pooled. He followed smaller blood stains on the floor into his living room. And there was the sofa, out of place with an American flag draped over its backside on the floor. On the other side of it, another stain so brown, so deep in the carpet, it could only be from an unimaginable amount of blood. Please don't hurt me. You can take me hostage. Don't hurt my baby. No. The knot in Roman's stomach tightened. The steel in his spine stiffened. Solid. He looked up to the rafters. There was the white nylon rope the detectives told him about hanging down over the wooden ceiling beam. Slack at the moment, having done its job. Tie the up around the neck. Do it. Shut the that up. Move, move, move, move. Tie the other end of the rope around her neck. Do it. Do it. Go ahead and do it. The killers took one end of the rope and wrapped it around Sharon Tate's neck. Then took the other end of the rope and wrapped it around the neck of her best friend and ex lover, Jay Sebring's neck. Jay was still deeply in love with Sharon. Roman knew this, but cared. Little Jay was a pajama boy, his station barely higher than that of service industry worker. Roman was one the of Hollywood's most in demand directors. Jay Sebring and his fancy shears were really no threat at all. But the rope at the end of his neck. Every time Jay struggled, every time he winced, moaned, tried to crawl away, the rope threatened to choke out the woman he loved. At the other end of it, Roman Polanski's wife, crying, mumbling, pleading for mercy. Jay stayed still on the floor. He tried calm, he tried reason. And the killers were not listening. Sharon pleaded some more. The big one, the one the others are calling texts. He began kicking Sharon in the belly, directly impacting her unborn baby. Sharon cried. Jay protested. His words meant nothing. Roman took a beat, turned away, closed his eyes, opened them, looked out of the window to the back lawn, orange crime scene pylons marking the exact points where the the bodies fell. Two of them, Gibby Folger and her lover and Roman's bud from back in Poland, Wojtek Verkowski. Roman knew his old friend wouldn't have given up without a fight. Roman could imagine the horror, the drama of it all, the killers taking a beat, surmising their progress to that point, what they'd done, what they're about to do, looking at their victims near dead, literally at the end of their row, and then looking at each other as if to question their own steel, their own metal, their own purpose. Just what in God's holy hell were they even doing? And why in the unholy were they even there? Sharon, Jay, Gibby, Wojtek. Through their fear and fleeting moments of clarity, they wondered the same things in the name of Christ, what was happening? And then, as if to answer God himself, the big one, Tex looked down at Sharon and spoke with undeniable purpose this I'm the devil and I'm here to do the devil's business. There was a brief calm in the living room as they bled out, Sharon on one end of the rope, Jay on the other, whimpering softly. Their inevitable killers, Tex and the small witchy chick, the one they called Sadie, pacing, whispering to each other on the floor, tied up with towels, sat a severely beaten Wojtek Frykowski and his girlfriend Abigail Gibby Folger. And then Wojtek freed himself and rose up. Sadie caught the move and stabbed Wojtek in the thigh. They struggled. Sadie stabbed Wojtek three more times. He tripped, got to his feet with the quickness and went at Sadie, grabbing her by the back of the hair and flinging her around and around. Sebring screamed. Tech shut him up with a bullet to the head. Somehow Sadie freed herself from Wojtek who along with Gibby beat it out to back the the killers were on them in no time, straddling them each on the freshly manicured grass, stabbing them relentlessly in a full on manic LSD inspired anti establishment, take no prisoners, leave no recognizable features rage. Wojtek Frykowski was stabbed 51 times, beaten over the head with the butt end of Texas. 22 Buntline revolver and shot twice. Abigail Folger was stabbed 28 times. Four to the face, one in the air, five in the neck, two in the stomach, two in the back, one in the arm, one in the shoulder, one in the other arm, two in the thigh, one on the hand, two on the wrist and six others peppered elsewhere about her mangled 25 year old body. Roman snapped to and re entered the living room. It was almost unrecognizable. The rearranged furniture, that fucking American flag, the blood stains jarring, sucked him in. Sadie got down on the ground next to Sharon, tried looking her in the eye, stared. Tech shouted down at her, do it. For Christ's sakes do it. Sadie continued to stare. Sharon whimpered some more, fearing for her unborn baby, thinking of her own mother whispering to her mother. Mother. Sadie tried piercing Sharon's closed eyes with her own demonic gaze. Tex could take it no longer this he pounced and began stabbing maniacally. Sadie took her cue and joined in almost immediately. Together they stabbed Sharon 16 times. Sharon Tate, 8 1/2 months pregnant, was dead along with her unborn son. Roman broke out of the haze of horror. There were too many people around the crime scene, his house, to get fully caught up in the trauma of what had happened just days earlier. He collected some personal items and resolved to catch his wife and unborn child's murderers with or without the help of authorities, and bailed a few days later while on the road with the Beach Boys in support of their album 2020, the one with the Charlie Manson song that Dennis had bought and reworked as his own. Dennis got the call. There was a murder at Terry's place, the one Roman was now renting. Sharon was dead. So was Jay. Could he come home? The LAPD would like to ask him some questions. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page@gracelandpod.com if you're listening as a Disgraceland All Access member. Thank you for supporting supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to Disgracelandpod.com membership members can listen to every episode of Disgraceland Ad Free. Plus you'll get one brand new exclusive episode every month, weekly unscripted bonus episodes, special audio collections, and early access to merchandise and events. Visit disgracelandpod.com membership for for details, rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and Facebook Disgracelandpod and on YouTube@YouTube.com Disgracelandpod Rocka Rolla He's a bad, bad man. New season, new chaos in college football. Big stage, big opportunity this Labor Day weekend. The wildness lives on ABC, ESPN and the AllNew ESPN app. What a way to start, featuring top 10 teams like Clemson, Notre Dame, Alabama and LSU. And Bill Belichick's debut at North Carolina. It's so special, these teams collide. Don't miss a lineup filled with electric matchups. Welcome back to Collins Football Kickoff Week, presented by Modelo. Labor Day weekend on ESPN and abc. Also available to stream on the all new espn Apple.