Los Angeles (AFP)

A tour guide specializing in Hollywood's famous deaths, Scott Michaels is familiar with America's passion for the macabre news. But he admits himself surprised at the fascination that continues 50 years later the murder of Sharon Tate in the hands of the followers of Charles Manson.

"It's really unprecedented, I've never seen such an interest," he told AFP in the museum he created in Los Angeles, called "Dear Missing."

"I organize additional visits, two to three more each week, it's crazy," he continues.

These tours lead tourists to Cielo Drive, a winding road embedded in the vegetation that overlooks the upscale neighborhoods of Beverly Hills. This is where Sharon Tate, the wife of director Roman Polanski, was stabbed to death in the early hours of August 9, 1969. The actress was only 26 years old and was eight and a half months pregnant.

Last year, one of Scott Michaels' clients was none other than director Quentin Tarantino, then in the middle of a documentary search for his movie "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood", which uses Sharon's murder as a backdrop. Tate and four other victims in the mansion of Cielo Drive.

These bloody crimes had literally terrorized Hollywood at the time, and made headlines around the world.

Charles Manson, who appeared at his trial as a hallucinated guru and drug addict with an appalling power of persuasion, ordered his followers to commit murders in white-populated areas in the hope of triggering racial conflict in the United States. United States.

It was with these instructions that Manson's disciples, one man and three women, entered the house occupied by Sharon Tate. The actress is played in Tarantino's film by Margot Robbie, who portrays a playful and innocent young woman, a portrait that has only heightened public interest in the tragedy.

"Sharon was beautiful (...) She has become this kind of symbol of absolute good, while Manson embodies the exact opposite," said Michaels, who appears in the credits of "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" as as technical adviser.

Charles Manson died in a California jail in 2017, but his bloody legacy has survived him.

- "Glamor and monsters" -

According to the testimony, Sharon Tate will have begged her killers to spare the child she was carrying. When they entered the property, Roman Polanski was in Europe but four people who were with her were also slaughtered.

Even though the Scott Michaels museum presents a large number of "souvenirs" related to different affairs, such as the death of Janis Joplin or the unresolved murder of the "Black Dahlia", the crimes of "the Manson family" are for him a case apart.

"It's my favorite business, it sounds horrible, but it's true, I have to admit," he says, noting how much this whole story is full of "rock stars, movie stars." , glamor and monsters. "

Peggy Miles, 56, was born in western Los Angeles, not far from the scene of the crimes she visits with Scott Michaels. And she is convinced that this slaughter has changed the Americans' perception of the hippie counterculture: strange or annoying, it has taken on a dangerous, even an evil stance.

"It made the hippies really scary," she recalls. At the time, many neighbors installed gates or bought firearms, and she was no longer allowed to go to school alone.

In the same bus she finds Lauren Kershner, 28, obsessed with the worship of Manson since adolescence and devouring books devoted to the subject. "I am especially in Los Angeles for the 50th anniversary" of the murders, recognizes the young woman, fascinated by the grip that the guru exercised over his followers.

For the guide, this obsession with the details of the case is not surprising. "I never get tired of reading or talking about things," he smiles.

Scott Michaels named this visit "Helter Skelter" (4 hours, 85 dollars). This is the name of a Beatles song, whose White album inspired Manson's mystique: he was convinced that the record, and this song in particular, contained "subliminal" messages announcing an apocalyptic war between Whites and Black.

© 2019 AFP