LaBianca Murder House

Author: Jewls Krueger

The LaBianca murders were the second of two nights of killing carried out by members of the Manson Family in August 1969. On the night of August 10, supermarket executive Leno LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary, were killed inside their hilltop home in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles. The attack came a little more than a day after Family members had murdered actress Sharon Tate and four others at a home in Benedict Canyon. Together the two crimes became known as the Tate-LaBianca murders, and they remain among the most studied cases in American criminal history.

The LaBiancas

Leno LaBianca was 44 at the time of his death. He was president of Gateway Markets, a small Southern California grocery chain, a business tied to the wholesale and grocery interests his father had built. Rosemary LaBianca, 38, co-owned a high-end women's clothing shop called the Boutique Carriage and was a successful investor, reportedly worth several million dollars by the time she died.

The couple married in 1960, and each had children from earlier marriages. In 1968, Leno bought the home on Waverly Drive, which had been his childhood home, from his mother. In the months before the murders, Rosemary told friends she believed someone had been entering the house while the family was away, noting that objects had been moved and that the dogs were sometimes found outside when they should have been indoors.

The Manson Family

Charles Manson was a career criminal and would-be musician who gathered a group of mostly young followers, known as the Family, at Spahn Ranch outside Los Angeles. He preached an apocalyptic race-war theory he called Helter Skelter, borrowed from a Beatles song, and told his followers that a wave of killings would help set it off. On the night of the LaBianca murders, seven Family members were in the car: Manson, Charles "Tex" Watson, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, Linda Kasabian, Leslie Van Houten, and Steve "Clem" Grogan.

The Murders

On Saturday, August 9, 1969, Leno, Rosemary, and Rosemary's daughter Suzan drove to Lake Isabella to pick up Rosemary's 15-year-old son, Frank, who had been vacationing with a friend. Frank decided to stay another day and ride home with his friend's family. The three others began the drive back to Los Angeles that evening. After dropping Suzan at her apartment and stopping at a newsstand at the corner of Hillhurst and Franklin, where Leno bought a paper and a racing form, the couple reached home around 1 a.m. on August 10. Rosemary, unsettled by news of the Tate killings the day before, went to bed. Leno fell asleep on the living room couch.

Shortly afterward, Manson directed the group to the house, which sat next door to a home where he had attended a party the year before. Manson and Watson entered first, woke Leno at gunpoint, and bound the couple, placing pillowcases over their heads. Manson then left with Atkins, Kasabian, and Grogan, ordering Watson, Krenwinkel, and Van Houten to carry out the killings. Watson killed Leno in the living room while Krenwinkel and Van Houten attacked Rosemary in the bedroom. Before leaving, the killers wrote "Death to Pigs," "Rise," and a misspelled "Healter Skelter" on the walls and refrigerator in the victims' blood.

The Discovery and Investigation

The bodies were found the next evening, August 10, when Frank returned home and noticed the curtains drawn and the doors locked, which was unusual. He contacted his older sister, Suzan, who came with her boyfriend and discovered the bodies. The LAPD did not initially connect the LaBianca scene to the Tate murders, and on August 12 the department publicly stated there was no link between the two crimes. The case broke later in 1969 after Susan Atkins, jailed on unrelated charges, began telling cellmates about her role in both killings.

The Trial

The trial of Manson, Atkins, Krenwinkel, and Van Houten began in June 1970, with Linda Kasabian testifying for the prosecution in exchange for immunity. On January 25, 1971, all four were found guilty of first-degree murder. Each was sentenced to death on March 29, 1971. Tex Watson was tried separately and convicted later that year. After the California Supreme Court struck down the state's death penalty in 1972, the sentences were commuted to life in prison. Manson died in prison on November 19, 2017. Susan Atkins died in 2009. Leslie Van Houten was paroled on July 11, 2023. Patricia Krenwinkel, now the longest-serving female inmate in the California prison system, and Tex Watson remain incarcerated.

The House Today

Unlike the Tate house on Cielo Drive, which was demolished in 1994, the LaBianca home still stands. The single-story, two-bedroom home was built in 1922 and sits on a hilltop in Los Feliz, just south of Griffith Park, with wide views of the city. The property's street number was changed after the murders, a common step for infamous addresses. In 2019, Zak Bagans, host of the Travel Channel series Ghost Adventures, bought the home for close to its asking price, reportedly with plans to film a project there. That plan was scrapped, and Bagans listed the property the following year. It sold in 2021 for roughly $1.875 million.

The home is private property. Please be respectful of the current owners and neighbors, stay on public roads and walkways, and do not trespass under any circumstances.