22, 1969, description of the crime scene mischaracterized Tate’s wounds and her state of undress she was wearing bikini-style sleepwear, the slashings did not result in the full removal of one of her breasts, and crime scene photos do not show evidence of the deliberate carving of an “X” on her stomach. Though Tate’s death was attributed to stabbing, a coroner testified that she was hanged as well though early reports indicated otherwise, the rope found around her neck did serve that purpose. The original version of this article mistakenly failed to acknowledge errors made in the original TIME reporting on the murder of Sharon Tate. Read the first story from 1969, here in the TIME Vault: “Nothing but Bodies” Though Tate has since regained some of the fame she once had in her own right-as the subject of a Mad Men conspiracy theory that failed to pan out, for example-her name and Manson’s would forever be linked. Los Angeles police were able to pin the crimes on “a mystical, semi-religious hippie drug-and-murder cult led by a bearded, demonic Mahdi able to dispatch his zombie-like followers.” That cult leader was Charles Manson. By the end of the year, however, the rumors coalesced into a real case. Within days, two more bodies turned up at a “carbon copy” crime scene, thought to be the work of a copycat killer.
Rumors swirled, first about a caretaker for the property and then about the “sex, drug and witchcraft cults” that had some reported ties to the “offbeat” Hollywood crowd of which Tate and Polanski were part. In later decades, experts on the case would single out this part of TIME’s coverage as particularly exaggerated.
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In fact, however, the coroner’s testimony at the murder trial would make clear that she received multiple chest wounds, including around the breast, but it was not “cut off” and her stomach was not carved. “She was nine months pregnant, and there was an X cut on her stomach.” Tate’s sleepwear was skimpier than first acknowledged, and “ of Miss Tate’s breasts had been cut off, apparently as a result of indiscriminate slashing,” TIME added. Bullets filled the ceilings and blood covered the floors. Tate and the victim to which she was tied, Jay Sebring, had been repeatedly slashed. Even decades later, the description is not for the faint. It turns out the crime was “far bloodier and grimmer” than the police had initially admitted, TIME reported in the following week’s issue. Their terror only increased when the full extent of the horrific scene came to light. Shocked Hollywood denizens began to hire extra body guards. Bugliosi prosecuted all the accused in the Tate-LaBianca murder case and got his book. “The brutality of the killings shocked even homicide-squad detectives,” TIME noted. I am listening now the Description of the murders of Sharon Tate.