Record producer Terry Melcher’s connection to Charles Manson is in focus amid renewed conversations about the notorious cult leader’s life after the release of a new Netflix documentary – ‘Conversations with a Killer: The Charles Manson Tapes’. It was directed by Joe Berlinger.
The new documentary explores the brutal 1969 murders of actress Sharon Tate and six others, orchestrated by Manson. The victims of the August 8, 1969 rampage included Tate, the pregnant wife of movie director Roman Polanski ; coffee heiress Abigail Folger; celebrity hairstylist Jay Sebring; writer Wojciech Frykowski; and teenager Steven Parent. At the time, Manson was an aspiring singer and was looking for a recording contract, according to Fox 10 Phoenix. Melcher invited members of the band, and Manson, to parties that he and his girlfriend, actress Candace Bergen, threw at their 10050 Cielo Drive estate in the Benedict Canyon area. Melcher visited Manson in 1969 at Spahn Ranch, which Beach Boys’ Mike Love wrote in his memoir may have been a favor to Wilson.
Supermarket executive Leno LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary LaBianca, were stabbed and killed the following night. During the visit, Manson auditioned for Melcher. “It was filthy and very obvious that there was no talent. He described hearing Manson’s girls singing while he played the guitar. He felt he had to get out. So he tried to make a graceful exit.”
“Through Dennis and some of those gatherings, I met a lot of people with solid connections, including Terry Melcher … and several others who liked my music enough to want to record and market me and my material,” Manson wrote in his 1994 book Manson In His Own Words. “Terry told the LAPD … once he got to [Manson’s place] he just wanted to get the hell out of there,” said Bill Cassara, a retired Monterey County Sheriff’s deputy, in his memoir, according to Fox News.
