On Aug. 8, 1969, Sharon Tate was a beautiful, B-movie actress best known for The Fearless Vampire Killers, Valley of the Dolls and a handful of episodes of The Beverly Hillbillies.

On Aug. 9, 1969, Charles

On Aug. 8, 1969, Sharon Tate was a beautiful, B-movie actress best known for The Fearless Vampire Killers, Valley of the Dolls and a handful of episodes of The Beverly Hillbillies.

On Aug. 9, 1969, Charles Manson turned her into the biggest star in Hollywood.

By a horrible twist of much-documented fate, the 26-year-old starlet became the most famous victim of the so-called "Manson Family" when several followers of the manipulative, magnetic cult leader murdered almost everyone they found at 10050 Cielo Drive, a sprawling but isolated property tucked into a hillside in Los Angeles' Benedict Canyon.

Tate and her husband of a year a half, Rosemary's Baby director Roman Polanski, were renting the property from talent manager Rudi Altobelli for $1,200 a month. Manson, a musician who aspired to worldwide stardom, had been to the house before, when it was temporarily occupied by record producer Terry Melcher, his girlfriend Candice Bergen, who had put up the Christmas lights that were still decorating a fence on the property, and musician Mark Lindsay. After exchanging some sort of discouraging words about his music with Melcher, the 34-year-old Manson, who stood all of 5-foot-2, left with a grudge. Melcher and Tate had spoken on the phone about the lease transfer that previous February, but they had never met in person.

Susan Atkins would later say that she and Patricia Krenwinkel, Charles "Tex" Watson and Linda Kasabian were dispatched to Cielo Drive to kill whatever "piggies" were at the house.