5 slaughtered in Polanski home

Aug. 9, 1969: A maid arrived at the rented home of director Roman Polanski and his wife, actress Sharon Tate, and found Tate and four others dead, “their bodies scattered around a Benedict Canyon estate in what police said resembled a ritualistic mass murder,” The Times reported.

“The victims were shot, stabbed or throttled,” the newspaper said. “On the front door of the home, written in blood, was one word: ‘Pig.’ ”

Tate, 26, was eight months’ pregnant. The other victims were coffee heiress Abigail Folger, 26; hairstylist Jay Sebring, 35; Polish playboy Voityck Frokowski, 37; and Steven Parent, 18, who had been visiting a caretaker and was found shot to death in his car.

Polanski was in England.

Police initially arrested William Garretson, described in The Times as “the only one left alive on the property -- a 19-year-old houseboy.” When they entered the guesthouse at gunpoint to arrest him, “he was wearing only pin-striped bell-bottom trousers,” the newspaper said.

Nearly four months later, Charles Manson and eight of his followers were picked up in the Mojave Desert in connection with the murders.