3311 Waverly Drive (Los Angeles, California) | place with historical importance, murder site

 house, place with historical importance, murder site

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3311 (formerly 3301) Waverly Drive, in Los Feliz.

House where Rosemary and Leno LaBianca were murdered by members of the Manson family, in the early morning hours of August 10, 1969. Manson's original target had been the LaBianca's next-door neighbor Harold True, who Manson had made acquaintance with over a year earlier while attending a party at True's residence. At the last minute Manson feared murdering True could be easily traced to him, so he decided to attack the residents of the home next door, the LaBiancas.

The LaBiancas had just returned home from Lake Isabella to pick up Rosemary's son Frank from a vacation, and to retrieve Leno's boat, which he had taken up to the lake earlier that week for Frank and his friends to use. Frank was having a great time at the lake, so the LaBiancas agreed to let him stay another day and return home with friends. Rosemary went to bed in the master bedroom and Leno had just fallen asleep on the living room couch when Manson and his crew broke into the house and woke them, tied them up, robbed them, and eventually stabbed the couple to death.

The bodies were found the next day when Frank returned home in the middle of the day and found all the window shades in the house still drawn, and his stepfather's car parked on the street with his boat still hitched to it. Feeling alarmed, he went to a pay phone and called his older sister who soon arrived at the house accompanied by her boyfriend. The kids went into the house and found Leno LaBianca dead in the living room, and immediately called police.

The crime was at first determined by police to not be linked to the murders at the Tate-Polanski home in Beverly Hills just a few night prior. Later in August 1969 some of the Manson Family members were arrested for car theft, and while in jail family member Susan Atkins bragged about her involvement in several murders, including the Tate and LaBianca crimes, to other inmates. These inmates informed prison officials and Atkins and the rest of the family were eventually convicted of the murders.