The Straight Satans weren’t the only ones he invited to the ranch for that reason.

The dynamic of the group further changed, this theory alleges, when Manson invited the motorcycle gang known as the Straight Satans to live on the ranch, to enjoy the female company in exchange for protecting the rest of the group from the Black Panthers. So he comes up with a strategy of saying, if everyone’s willing to commit these violent acts, it will bond us together, and no one can tell on anyone.” “At that point, Manson has two problems: First, he’s worried that Black Panthers will take revenge for the drug dealer he believes he’s murdered, and second is that anyone in the group can rat him out. “Manson said, ‘Now we gotta fend for ourselves because the Black Panthers are going to kill us,'” says Day. After, as fear of outsiders and retaliation intensified, Manson warned the ranch residents that the Black Panthers - a group to which he believed Crowe belonged - were going to come after them. The two men fought and Manson shot Crowe in the stomach Manson believed he’d killed Crowe, though he hadn’t.ĭay identifies this moment as a turning point. The threat led Manson to go to Crowe’s Hollywood apartment. Charles Manson was put on the line, and Crowe threatened to come kill everyone unless he got his money back. Crowe called Spahn ranch to look for Watson. Watson had stolen money from another dealer, Bernard Crowe. The story, as Day tells it in his book, is this: Charles “Tex” Watson was a drug dealer in Los Angeles who lived at Spahn Ranch with Manson and his followers.

Get your history fix in one place: sign up for the weekly TIME History newsletter Rather than looking at grudges or hidden messages, this story starts instead with a botched drug deal that took place that July 1. The theory that Day describes in his book revolves around events that were known 50 years ago, but are not as well known today as the Tate murder is.

“There’s this whole underlying story people don’t know,” says Day, who, 50 years later, hopes to set the record straight.

What did helter skelter mean