Bugliosi begins by recounting that five people were murdered between midnight and 3 o’clock in the morning on Saturday, August 9, 1969, at 10050 Cielo Drive, a house near the Beverly Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles. Film director Roman Polanski was renting the house from talent manager Rudi Altobelli. Because the house was isolated, there were few witnesses to the murder. The nearest neighbors later reported gunshots and screams, but the incident was not reported at the time.

At 8 o’clock that morning, housekeeper Winnifred Chapman discovered the bodies of Sharon Tate (age 26), Jay Sebring (age 35), Abigail Folger (age 25), Voytek Frykowski (age 32), and Steven Parent (age 18). Tate was a rising actress married to Roman Polanski. She was eight months pregnant. Sebring was a well-known hair stylist and Tate’s former lover. Frykowski was a friend of Polanski who was dating Folger, a social worker and heiress to the Folger coffee fortune. She discovered Tate and Sebring in the house and the other two in the yard. When she attempted to call the police, she found the line dead. On her way to contact the nearest neighbor, Chapman discovered the body of Parent in a white rambler.