Fans can now own a piece of true crime history as the front door to the infamous Sharon Tate “Murder House” is scheduled for a September auction.
The Crime
Actress Sharon Tate was brutally murdered in her Beverly Hills home on the evening of August 8, 1969, in a crime so horrific it shocked the nation.
Tate, who was 8 1/2 months pregnant at the time, was killed by members of the Manson Family, a cult led by Charles Manson. Manson family members used Sharon’s own blood to smear the word ‘Pig’ onto the front door of 10050 Cielo Drive, the residence she shared with her husband, Roman Polanski.
In total, five people were slaughtered at the Cielo Drive residence: Sharon Tate, Steven Parent, Abigail Folger, Jay Sebring, and Wojciech Frykowski.
The Door
How did the door to this home find its way to the auction block? The story’s a circuitous one that includes Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor. Julien’s Auctions, the firm handling the sale, explains more on the official listing:
The home found its final resident in 1992 when Nine Inch Nails member Trent Reznor rented it while working on his sophomore album, Downward Spiral. Creating an at-home studio dubbed “Le Pig” (a reference to when Manson family member Susan Atkins gruesomely wrote “Pig” in the blood of the deceased actress on the front of the door during the 1969 murders), Reznor recorded the album and lived in the home until having a conversation with Tate’s younger sister, Debra, in which he had an epiphany.
Reznor was allegedly overwhelmed with empathy for Debra and moved out of the home in 1993; he installed the front door in a studio in New Orleans before abandoning the property.
The Auction
The listing from Julien’s Auctions describes the door as “[a] white, cottage-style front door” with “nine glass window panels on the top, a center ledge, a brass knob, and a gold-tone lock.” Julien’s Auctions also notes that “the front of the door appears to have been repainted.”
The auction is set to begin at 10 a.m. Pacific on Sept. 6.
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