Manson Visited Tate Residence, Witness Reveals
Thursday, October 22nd, 1970
LOS ANGELES, Oct. 22 – Charles Manson visited Sharon Tate’s rented estate less than five months before she and four others were murdered there, the owner of the property testified Wednesday at the Tate-LaBianca trial.
Rudy Altobelli, who then lived in the guest house of the $200,000 estate and rented the main house to Miss Tate, said he was packing for a trip to Rome when Manson came to the door on March 23, 1969.
Altobelli said he knew Charlie because he had met the would-be songwriter in the early summer of 1969 at the Sunset Blvd. home of Dennis Wilson, member of a musical group called the Beach Boys.
The witness, a personal manager for entertainers, said he was showering that day when he heard his dog bark. He said he went to the front door with a towel wrapped around him and found Manson standing inside the screen door.
Altobelli said Manson asked for the address of Terry Melcher, actress Doris Day’s son and a record producer, who had leased the front house for nearly three years.
After a brief conversation in which he told Manson he did not know where Melcher lived, Altobelli said the defendant left, commenting that he too was planning to make a movie.
That same evening, Altobelli said, he visited briefly in the main house with Miss Tate, Voityck Frykowski, Abigail Folger, Jay Sebring — all victirns in the Aug. 9, 1969, murders — and Shahrokh Hatami.
Hatami, the blonde film star’s personal photographer, testified earlier that he was at Miss Tate’s home filming her as she packed for a trip to Rome.
As he looked out a front window that day, Hatami said, he saw a short, thin man with long hair and a stubble of a beard enter the grounds.
Hatami said he challenged the man and told him to take the “back alley” if he wanted to visit the guest house. He said he was certain Miss Tate also saw the man from the doorway of the front house.
The Iranian-born photographer picked Manson’s picture from a photo lineup of male Manson “family” members as the one who most resembled the man he saw. But Hatami stopped short of positive identification.
Superior Judge Charles H. Older denied prosecutor Vincent T. Bugliosi’s motion that Manson be brought to court from a holding room to face Hatami.
But when Bugliosi made the same motion Wednesday with Altobelli on the stand, Older ordered a face-to-face confrontation and Manson was brought into the courtroom for the first time in 10 days.
Manson and co-defendants Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten were removed from court on Oct. 7 for creating disturbance. Since then, they have listened to the proceedings from nearby rooms through speakers.
The slight, long-haired Manson was clean shaven when he returned to the courtroom and stood facing Altobelli. The witness identified him.
Manson said nothing as he was led from the room.
After the defendant left. AItobelli testified that on March 24, 1969, he flew to Rome with Miss Tate, who, by coincidence, was going to Italy to start a motion picture.
He said he last saw the actress alive early in July, 1969, when he had dinner with her and her husband, producer Roman Polanski, in London.
Altobelli explained under cross-examination that he met Manson when he went to Wilson’s house and listened to a tape recording of the defendant’s music.
He testified he had particular reason to remember Charlie because acquaintances had talked about Manson’s philosophy and way of life.
The day’s last witness, Charles D. Koenig, testified that on Dec. 10, 1969, he found a wallet belonging to Rosemary LaBianca in the back of a toilet at a service station in Sylmar.
Koenig, then an attendant at the station, said he called police when he opened the wallet and found a driver’s license belonging to Mrs. LaBianca, a name he knew from news reports of the murder of her and her husband. Leno.
The state’s key witness, Linda Kasabian, testified early in the 19-week-old trial that at Manson’s instruction she placed the wallet in a women’s restroom the night the LaBiancas were killed.
According to her story, Manson hoped the wallet would be found by a black woman, so that the Tate-LaBianca killings could be blamed on the blacks.
Prosecutor Bugliosi contends one of the motives for the seven killings was Manson’s wish to start a black-white race war.
The prosecution is expected to call another 15 to 17 witnesses, a process estimated to take about two more weeks.
By JOHN KENDALL
I didn’t realize how extensively Rudi Altobelli was involved in this case, aside from being the owner of 10050 Cielo Drive. Strange coincidence that he actually met Manson at Dennis Wilson’s house in the summer of ‘68 (obviously not 1969, as referenced above). An equally odd circumstance is that Sadie’s cell mate Ronnie Howard had also previously visited the estate as a prospective renter. Very weird. As they say “small world”!
One thing they don’t mention is that Altobelli was also quite abrupt with Charlie when directing him to immediately vacate the premises. This obviously didn’t settle well with the shaggy, diminutive intruder who undoubtedly preserved the incident in his memory banks. Manson had been to the house on previous occasion/occasions. I believe one of Terry Melcher’s associates once saw him there, crouching in the kitchen. This occurred during Melcher’s occupancy, even though he denied ever welcoming Manson into his home. In his testimony, Melcher was careful to minimize his involvement with the family even though he was designated as one of the “golden penetrators”, a trio of vaunted “swordsmen” who apparently had various degrees of carnal knowledge with Charlie’s girls. This group included Wilson and Gregg Jakobson as well.
The “movie” Manson mentioned he was making must be a reference to the documentary that Melcher had expressed interest in producing about the family. Some tripe about music and the hippie movement. Melcher was just stringing Charlie along, making promises and commitments that he had no intention of following up on. Apparently he figured that Charlie would eventually just “go away”. How wrong he was!