L.A. Police to Probe Tate-Type Massacre
Wednesday, February 18th, 1970
LOS ANGELES, Feb. 18 – Los Angeles police Tuesday said they would investigate similarities between the so-called “ritualistic murders” of three persons in North Carolina and the massacre murders of actress Sharon Tate and six other persons.
Although refusing to elaborate on how close the two murder cases compared, Police Inspector Peter Hagan, handling the Los Angeles investigation, said there were definite “similarities.”
Hagan said his department would enter the picture after North Carolina authorities.
Capt. Jefferey MacDonald was wounded and his family killed after being terrorized and attacked by three men and a blonde woman who held a candle as the four were stabbed.
MacDonald, a Green Beret narcotics therapist, was stabbed in the arm, chest and stomach. His wife Colette, six months pregnant, was stabbed to death in her bed, as were the couple’s daughters, Kimberly, 8, and Kristen Jean, 2.
The children died in their separate, toy-cluttered bedrooms of the apartment on the Ft. Bragg Base. The killers screamed “acid is great, kill the pigs, hit ’em again,” as they attacked, MacDonald said.
The word “pig” reportedly was scrawled in blood in the home. The same word was written in blood on the front door of the home of the actress in Benedict Canyon, and “death to pigs” was scrawled on the refrigerator door at the home of market owner Leno La Bianca. Everyone in the two homes had been shot or stabbed to death.
Six persons charged with the murders, including the alleged mastermind, Charles Manson, are in jail, although two are out of state.
Hagan, pointing out that a court order prevents him from talking about the case, said, however, many psychiatrists and psychologists have held there is a “law of suggestion” present in highly publicized crimes. The “law,” he said ofttimes causes persons in other parts of the country or world to attempt to duplicate such crimes.
Meanwhile, in county jail, Manson earlier said “similar” crimes have occurred throughout the state and nation, but police have kept the “similarities” quiet. Manson contends the Tate-LaBianca killers are still at large.
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