Picture Doris Day. Blonde. Sunny. America’s sweetheart. Now picture Charles Manson. That’s how close this story gets.
Manson walked out of federal prison in California in 1967 and ended up in Los Angeles with a guitar and a plan to become a rock star. He wasn’t delusional about it — serious people listened. Neil Young heard him play and recommended him to his own record label. The Beach Boys‘ Dennis Wilson picked up two of Manson’s followers hitchhiking in Malibu in 1968 and ended up inviting Manson into his life.
He let Manson and his followers live at his house on Sunset Boulevard for months. He called him “the Wizard.” He was so impressed he got the Beach Boys to record one of Manson’s songs — “Cease to Exist” — and put it on their 1969 album 20/20 as “Never Learn Not to Love.” Manson didn’t get a credit.
Through Wilson, Manson got to the introduction that mattered most. Wilson introduced him to Terry Melcher — Doris Day’s only son and one of the most powerful record producers in Los Angeles. Melcher had made the Byrds. He worked with the Beach Boys. He co-wrote their hit “Kokomo.” He was exactly who Manson needed to know.
Related: The Zodiac Killer Claimed 37 Victims and Taunted Police Between 1968 and 1974; His Last Coded Message Sat Unsolved for 51 Years and What It Said Is the Strangest Part
At the time, Melcher was living at 10050 Cielo Drive in Benedict Canyon with his girlfriend, actress Candice Bergen. Manson came to the house. He auditioned. For a while, it genuinely seemed like something could happen — Melcher was interested in Manson’s music and even talked about making a documentary about his commune. Then Melcher watched Manson get into a violent confrontation at a party and decided he’d seen enough.
“A Mother’s Intuition, and It May Have Saved His Life”
Melcher told his mother what had been going on. He told Doris Day about the man he’d been spending time with — “his brandishing of knives, his zombie followers,” as Beach Boys co-founder Mike Love later wrote in his 2016 memoir Good Vibrations — and that Manson had been to the house on Cielo Drive. Doris Day told her son to get out. Melcher moved out in January 1969. Love wrote: “A mother’s intuition, perhaps, and it may have saved his life.”
The house’s owner leased it to Roman Polanski and his wife Sharon Tate. On August 8, 1969 — eight months after Melcher moved out — Manson sent his followers to 10050 Cielo Drive and told them to kill everyone inside.
Tate, who was 26 and eight months pregnant, was murdered along with four others. Manson had visited the house after Melcher moved, asked for him by name, and was told he was gone. Melcher spent the rest of his life wondering whether Manson sent them there for him — or whether he’d already known Melcher wasn’t there and simply didn’t care. He was never sure. Friends said he was deeply paranoid for years after the murders.
Keystone-France / Getty Images
The house kept collecting history. In 1992, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails rented 10050 Cielo Drive and turned it into a recording studio. He named it “Pig” — after the word Susan Atkins had written in Sharon Tate’s blood on the front door the night of the murders. He recorded most of The Downward Spiral there.
He didn’t fully understand what he was doing until he met Sharon Tate’s sister Patti, who asked him: “Are you exploiting my sister’s death by living in her house?” He moved out in December 1993 and took the front door with him. The house was demolished in 1994.
Bettmann / Getty Images
Leslie Van Houten — 19 years old at the time of the murders, the youngest of Manson’s followers convicted — walked out of a California prison on July 11, 2023, after serving 53 years. Charles Manson died in prison on November 19, 2017. Terry Melcher — Doris Day’s son, the man whose mother may have saved his life without knowing it — died on November 19, 2004. They share the same death date. Nobody planned that either.
🎬 SIGN UP for Parade’s Daily newsletter to get the latest pop culture news & celebrity interviews delivered right to your inbox🎬