Music played during Manson murders

[snopes]

Comment: One rumor I've heard is that the Beatles song, Helter Skelter,
was playing while the Manson "family" committed the Tate/Polanski murders.

Another conflicting rumor is that the Mamas and Papas song, Twelve-Thirty,
was playing and the song (on a single 45, looping) was still playing when
a detective investigated the home the morning after the murders.

This second rumor seems less likely. The author of this rumor seems to
think that the words were written to describe the murders -- The young girls
murdered in the Benedict canyon at 12:30 -- even though the song was written
over a year before the murders.

Is there any truth to either rumor?

[barbrainey]

I never heard any of these. The Beatles' song, "Helter Skelter" was partly the inspiration for the crimes of the Tate-LaBianca murders, and Manson would play the Beatles' "White" album to his Family. This album contained the "Helter Skelter" song.

I have never heard that any music was being play at the Tate residence though.

B. A. Rainey

All I can think of is...

This is a song Charles Manson stole from the Beatles. We're stealing it back!

[Vendicare]

There is a great website for case info that seems to be down right now, but the website has police mentioning that the Mamas and the Papas song was playing when they first arrived. The lyrics to the song include, "Young girls are coming to the canyon".

I can see the group playing a record that was "cued up", but I can't imagine them bringing theme music along with them.

The website I mentioned is "The Sixties, Manson, and Helter Skelter". I will try to link if I can get it to go back up.

[Lainie]

When the White Album was remastered and released on CD for the first time, SNL's Weekend Update did a "news story" that included a quote from Charles Manson -- something to the effect of "Now that I hear it again, with the remastered audio, I guess they weren't talking to me after all."

[nancyfancypants]

I've read pretty much everything there is to read about the Manson case (did a case study of him many, many moons ago). The answers are no the killers did not play music during the murders, and 2) no, there was no music playing when the detectives arrived. In fact, the maid (who arrived at house first and discovered the bodies) and the first police to arrive remarked about how quiet it was.

I do remember something about a boy who was staying in a house/room outside was playing music really loud the night of the murder and didn't hear anything. Maybe that is part of how this rumor got started. That and the fact that Helter Skelter was written at the crime scene. Charles Manson was obsessed with the race war he thought The Beatles were telling him to start and he was friends with one of The Beach Boys on top of being a musician (of sorts) himself, so there was a lot of music involved in the story, but it wouldn't have made a lot of sense for them to go to the trouble of leaving a boombox at the scene playing a sound. You have to remember that they didn't have recordable CDs back then that you could just push repeat on, so it wouldn't have been as simple to make sure that a song was playing when the police arrived. They would have had to have recorded hours and hours of the same song on a tape and hope that it was long enough to still be playing whenever the police got there.

[Cervus]

Originally Posted by MiddleEye

You have to remember that they didn't have recordable CDs back then that you could just push repeat on, so it wouldn't have been as simple to make sure that a song was playing when the police arrived. They would have had to have recorded hours and hours of the same song on a tape and hope that it was long enough to still be playing whenever the police got there.

My 60's-era record player automatically repeats if the record-stacking lever is up and there's no records stacked. It will just play the same side over and over. In 1969, if you wanted to have a certain album or 45 playing when someone walked in a room, there would be no reason to record anything to a tape; record players often had a repeat mechanism that allowed you to "loop" side A or B as long as you wanted.

This did not happen at the crime scene, but it was indeed possible if they had wanted to do so.

Oh yeah, I had forgotten they said it was a 45 'til you said that. I was thinking a tape player. I remember that my record player (not sure what year it would have been) also had a repeat.

Carrying a record player with you when you're trying to sneak in and murder someone also isn't really too realistic though. Somewhere around here I have a singer record player that is supposed to be portable. It sits in a suitcase type of box and has a lid with a handle that snaps on and you attack the speakers to the sides and it's as heavy as hell. Not easily portable at all. I mean, you could do it if you really, really were determined too, but not likely.
But like you said, it didn't happen anyway.

[Cervus]

I interpreted the OP to mean that the record was on the Tate's record player, since pretty much everyone has a stereo in their home. The Manson family would not have even needed to bring their own 45; the Tates could have owned it in their collection and someone chose to put it on the stereo. (Again, none of this happened, but that's the way a more fleshed-out rumor might describe the events.)

Yeah. That's true.

[MisterGrey]

FWIW, Vincent Bugliosi does not mention any music or records being played in his book Helter Skelter.