L.A. in the Time of Charles Manson

Immediately behind the beach, often for several miles at a stretch, stands a solid wall of houses, most of them architecturally boring, all of them grotesquely expensive and utterly vulnerable to wind and wave. Immediately behind these houses runs the Pacific Coast Highway, a roaring speedway that all week long is crowded with commuters and house-shuddering trucks, and on weekends carries bumper-to-bumper traffic to and from the public beaches. And on the inland side of the coast highway, facing the villas of the wealthy, rises a succession of fast-food stands, dry cleaners, bakeries, beauty parlors: one Malibu real estate agent calls it “a maritime slum.”

In such a setting, celebrities are exposed to every criminal who comes down the pike. Tape decks are stolen from their cars, and sometimes the cars themselves are ripped off. Not long ago Michael Landon’s $135,000 Ferrari was snatched from in front of his house. And homes are regularly broken into. Larry Hagman’s house, which stands less than 50 feet from a guardhouse, has been robbed twice in recent years. Two years ago someone broke into Linda Ronstadt’s villa, slashed her pillows and left a note stabbed to her butcher’s block. It read: “I shall return.”

Worse things have happened. The daughter of a leading Malibu family was recently raped in her garage. In 1981-82, according to Los Angeles police, 32 women were raped and six people were murdered in Malibu. What’s more, bodies of people murdered in other parts of L.A. are not infrequently dumped in the sea off Malibu and in the mountains behind it.

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