August 10, 1969 - LaBianca End
Leslie and Katie made their way through the unlocked French door and were met by the oh, so large but friendly LaBianca dog. They saw Tex standing guard over Leno who was still seated in the couch. Tex's trusty bayonet was pointed at Leno's throat.
The trio headed for the kitchen to plan the evening's actions. They talked in whispers not entirely unheard.
"You and Leslie go into the bedroom where the woman is and I'll deal with the guy."
"Are we supposed to kill her?" asked Katie, knowing full well what the answer would be.
"Yes."
Leno obviously overheard and called out. "What? What are you going to do? I'll give you whatever you want!"
Leno knew now this was going to be more than a mere robbery. He attempted to rise from the sofa, his wrists still bound behind his back with Charlie's leather thongs. Tex saw Leno struggle to rise. Like Jay Sebring the night before, Leno was becoming more of a hassle than he was worth.
Before Leno could say another word, Tex marched back in and pushed Leno to the carpet, his body falling diagonally between the couch and the coffee table. Tex dropped to his knees and ripped open Leno's pajama top, the buttons flying in all directions. Tex thrust the bayonet deep into Leno's chest eight times. The blood flew as a fountain, staining the over-turned couch cushion and soaking the carpet below.
Leno LaBianca, age 44, would soon be dead. A life half lived.
Leno was the secret owner of nine race horses, Kildare Lady being the most famous. He owned and operated the thriving family-owned Gateway Markets grocery stores. At the time of his death, Leno was in debt, most likely from his gambling habit, to the tune of $230,000.
When Rosemary heard Leno's guttural sounds, she yelled, "Leno! Leno! What are you doing to my husband? Leno!"
Rosemary grabbed the bedside lamp she was tethered to and flailed it at her captors. Rosemary wasn't going down without a fight. Hence, the wrist tying in front may have been a bad move on Tex's part.
Leslie grabbed the lamp and flung it on the bed. Katie forced Rosemary to the ground, between the bed and the dresser, her eyes facing the rug. Leslie kneeled beside Rosemary. Katie straddled her. Raising her Buck knife high, and with all the force she could muster, Katie sliced into Rosemary's left cheek, then repeatedly stabbed her collarbone. Her thrusts so hard, in fact, Katie bent the blade, rendering it useless. Regardless, Katie had penetrated both lungs and severed Rosemary's spinal cord via a stab to the back of her neck.
The girls switched positions. It was Leslie's turn to do some damage.
But as much as they tried, neither girl brought death to the poor woman. Katie yelled for Tex to come and finish the job. Tex marched in, rolled Rosemary over, then rolled her back, stabbing her eight times with the bayonet. All eight were fatal blows.
Rosemary, pulling herself along the rug, was undoubtedly her last ditch effort to reach Leno. Sadly, her heroic effort was in vain. Rosemary LaBianca died, but she went out fighting. We should all be so courageous in front of pure evil.
Katie's knife useless now. She walked into the kitchen intent on finding a Buck knife replacement. She opened various drawers and finally found the utensil drawer of her dreams. It's anyone's guess if at that moment she remembered the Beatles White Album about a fork and knife in bacon. But a fork and knife she found to properly carve up the gasping "Pig" in the living room.
The fork was a 10-inch carving fork. The knife, a 9.5-inch serrated steak knife. Katie undoubtedly smiled, thinking, Perfect.
Making her way back to the living room, she kneeled beside her new Piggy project, grabbed the knife with both hands, and stabbed Leno's stomach four times, ripping through his small bowel and colon.
Leno was a big man, six feet tall, weighing 220 pounds. Katie's killing efforts were still coming up short.
Dropping the knife on the carpet, she held the carving fork and punctured his bare chest fourteen times with seven jabs. Afterwards, she left the fork deep inside his chest, up to the tine bifurcation, she later said, so she could "watch it wobble back and forth" with the man's labored breathing.
Katie still didn't bring death.
Pissed now more than perturbed, Katie brought death the only way she knew how. With the serrated steak knife back in her blood-soaked hands, Katie drew the knife deeply from right to left across Leno's throat. Blood instantly spurted everywhere. She severed Leno's right carotid artery and penetrated his trachea. When she was done, Katie left the knife embedded five inches, up to the hilt, in the left side of his neck. She retrieved her bent Buck from her back pocket and confidently carved the word "WAR" into Leno LaBianca's stomach, later saying, "This is one Pig who won't be sending his kid off to war."
Her work done, Katie surely grinned. She had finally brought death to a Piggy. Yet, when asked by the Board of Prison Terms in one of her countless parole hearings, "Do you remember seeing any blood?" She replied, "No. Not really."
Katie got up and went onto the artistic blood writing portion of the evening. Knowing war wasn't a Hinman copycat word, Katie looked to the coffee table for a blood writing instrument to better finish the job. She found a white paper — maybe Leno's racing form — in among the LA Times Sports section Leno had been reading. Katie grabbed it, scrunched it up, folded it in half, and dipped it into the blood pooling on the carpet below Leno's neck wound.
The living room walls would be her second canvas.
She ripped a tapestry off of the north-facing wall, and above some family pictures and paintings, wrote the words, "Death to Pigs." On the south wall, left of the front door, Katie scrawled the word, "Rise."
Still no paw-print
"Death To Pigs" was not "Political Piggy"
Two victims were not one victim
The weapons used didn't match the Hinman weapons
Hinman had no connection with the LaBianca's or the Tate household, and none of the victims had any connection to the Black Panthers.
Oh well, I guess you can't have everything when you're busy coming off acid trips, snorting speed, and bringing death en masse in a half-assed excuse to bail out Cupid and the girls.
Satisfied, the girls wandered into the kitchen, looking for something to drink. Killing is thirsty work, man!
Oddly, on this night, no one seemed eager to escape for fear of being discovered.
Tex added to the overall "look" of the scene by grabbing another pillow case and doing to Leno what he did to Rosemary, careful not to cover the still-embedded steak knife that was Katie's calling card. The nearby lamp-cord was used, too, but no need to throttle here. Katie had finally done a good job. Tex merely plopped a throw pillow over Leno's body for good measure.
"That's perfect, Katie. That's exactly what Charlie would have wanted." But how ‘bout in other rooms? Wouldn't Charlie want writing in other rooms, too?" Leslie gulped the last of the chocolate milk, dribbling some down her chin. She wiped it away with the back of her hand.
"Yeah, maybe. What about in here? What about that fridge?" asked Katie.
"Yeah, it's huge! Write 'Helter Skelter' from the White Album!" Leslie forgot about the need for Hinmanisms.
Katie rose from her seat, and retrieved her blood-writing "quill," rubbing it along the fridge surface. She wrote, "Healter Skelter," misspelling the British name for a giant amusement park slide, that Charlie had redefined as confusion and war. The words still having zero to do with Panthers or Pigs.
The writing all done, Katie dropped her quill to the floor. The girls left the kitchen to rifle through Rosemary's closet for something less bloody to wear, careful not to trip over her body as they held their impromptu fashion show.
Sure, a lovely palm print was left on the closet's right side door. But on this night, nobody's hand, scalp, or foot got hurt as collateral damage. Safety first for the Family from now on.
The trio washed and dressed, and satisfied the "work" was done to Charlie's liking, the three gathered up their murder clothes, petted all three dogs, and skulked through the side door and down the drive of 3301 Waverly.
No knives lost
Blood writing on the walls
All the Piggies dead
Practice makes semi-perfect, I guess.
Tex had supposedly thrown the bayonet into the Rowena reservoir, the weapon never found. It was the wee hours of August 10, 1969 when the killers hitched a ride back to the ranch, their killing finally done.
But the Family killing wasn't done.
There would be another day, some two-plus weeks from now, that had nothing to do with a Hinman copycat kill. The Family was diversifying, branching out, the enemy-list growing. The spree killers were still unknown and at large to shed more rivers of gore.
And as the August calendar flipped its pages, the public wondered.
Would the blood ever stop flowing in the hills above LA?
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