LOS ANGELES, Sept. 6 – It has been 19 years now, but people still come around once in a while to stare, take snapshots, ask questions.

They haven’t forgotten the Tate-LaBianca murders, or the other Manson family killings, or the places where they occurred.

Donald (Shorty) Shea disappeared one day back in 1969 from the Spahn Ranch — the rugged acreage atop the Santa Susana Pass where Charles Manson and his homicidal band lived for a time amid broken-down sets once used in Western movies. Police believe Shea, who worked on the ranch as a wrangler, was decapitated and buried somewhere on the property. His remains have never been found. According to Frank Retz — a 75-year-old former German cavalry officer — the ranch has since been divided into at least three parcels, one of which he owns.

The place is hard to recognize today. The movie sets are long gone — burned in a brush fire — and the land, except for oaks, chaparral and picturesque rock formations that attracted the movie makers, lies empty.

But every so often, people stop by the gate Retz has built at the entrance to the now-fenced property to have a look.

“Whenever there’s something in the newspaper, there they are,” Retz said.

Gary Hinman, a musician who became acquainted with Manson during Manson’s unsuccessful attempts to make a name for himself in the music world, was found tortured to death in his small, shingled, hillside home in Topanga Canyon.

That place, too, is all but unrecognizable these days. Archie Nagel, 97, a painting contractor, bought the modest, 700-square-foot home in 1981. Over the years, he has added about 3,000 square feet to the original structure, replacing shingles with stucco and landscaping the entire property.

Nonetheless, the curious still show up.

“Maybe once a year, people come around, ask if this is the place,” Nagel said.

Businessman Leno LaBianca and his wife Rosemary were found hacked to death in their attractive, Spanish-style home in the Los Feliz district. For some reason, the street number has changed, but the two-bedroom, single-story, hillside home still looks much as it did in 1969. Irineo Yuvienco, an Anaheim dentist who is the latest of several people who have owned the place since then, has piled a bunch of concrete blocks on what was once a pristine front lawn. He said he plans to use them soon to build an addition to the home, which is now occupied by renters.

“People still stop by and take pictures,” he said.

Probably the most famous victims of the Manson clan were actress Sharon Tate, the pregnant wife of film director Roman Polanski; Abigail Folger, heiress to the Folger’s Coffee fortune; Jay Sebring, a hair stylist who had once been Tate’s fiance; Wojciech ( Voytek ) Frykowski, an associate of Polanski’s in the film industry, and Steven Parent, a teen-ager from El Monte.

The five were found stabbed, shot and bludgeoned to death in an expensive home above Benedict Canyon that Polanski and his wife were renting from Rudolph Altobelli, business agent for such show business stars as Katharine Hepburn, Henry Fonda and Sally Kellerman. Folger, Sebring and Frykowski were guests in the home; Parent had been visiting a man who lived in a guest house on the property.

The 4,600-square-foot home and three acres of grounds are virtually unchanged today, although barbed wire fencing has been added to the hillside up which the murderers crawled to gain access to the property, and all signs have been removed indicating the street address and the identity of the occupants.

Tax records indicate the property still belongs to Altobelli; neighbors say the place has occasionally been rented to others.

Unlike the other sites, the neighbors say, few curiosity seekers stop by these days, perhaps because of the remoteness of the property and the lack of signs.

None of those interviewed who live, or have lived, on property where some of the most brutal murders in Southern California history took place said they had any qualms about residing there.

“It was a long time ago,” Nagel said. “It doesn’t bother me at all.”

By ERIC MALNIC