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Parent, the fifth victim, was not part of the crowd, and is believed to have been at the scene by coincidence. A quiet boy from a middle-class family, he had become friendly with William Garretson, 19, the caretaker of the Polanski house, who lived in another building on the property. It is doubtful that Parent was at the party. Rather, he may have stopped his car after leaving Garretson's room, witnessed Sharon and Sebring being tortured and slain, and been shot down as he tried to drive off.
Second Slaughter. Los Angeles was still reeling from shock at the gruesome Tate murders when a second multiple murder occurred last week, only nine miles away and 24 hours later. Leno LaBianca, 44, the owner of four markets, and his wife Rosemary, 38, were slashed to death in their secluded home in the Los Feliz area. "It's a carbon copy," reported a policeman upon first viewing the scene, and fears of a maniac running amok quickly spread through the city. Indeed, there were chilling similarities between the two slaughters: the words ''death to pigs" smeared in blood on a wall, the mutilation of victims' bodies, a pillowcase over LaBianca's head and a lamp cord around his neck.
On more thorough investigation, the Los Angeles police decided that the similarities were largely superficial—and perhaps intentional—and that the crimes were probably unconnected except by the publicity given the first one. There were, for example, no sexual overtones to the LaBianca deaths. The lethal weapons, including a meat-carving fork, were left in the LaBianca house. None were found at the scene of the first crime.
Two days after the LaBiancas were killed, a gunman shot and killed William Lennon, father of the singing Lennon sisters, and police reported 29 Los Angeles murders within four days, compared with an average rate of about one a day. Precisely because the Tate murders were so brutishly irrational, Hollywood was seized by fear. Celebrities, including Frank Sinatra and Alan Jay Lerner, hired guards for their families, and several guests at Sharon's funeral packed guns. At week's end, police were still without a firm lead. The most likely theory was that the slayings were related to narcotics. Meanwhile, the police released Garretson, their only suspect, for lack of evidence, and were guarding a Polish emigre who claimed to know the identity of the killer or killers.