The summer of 1969 haunted everyone in Hollywood — including Frank Sinatra.
The late singer’s hairdresser, Joseph Paris, recalled how the star was among those targeted by Charles Manson and his followers after masterminding the gruesome murders of pregnant actress Sharon Tate and six others.
Paris recently wrote a memoir, “Hairman of the Board,” which details his friendship with “Ol’ Blue Eyes,” who passed away on May 14, 1998, at age 82.
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“He [got] two Doberman Pinschers for his house in Los Angeles,” Paris told Fox News Digital about how Sinatra responded to the news of the slayings.
“He had iron gates [installed],” he recalled. “The hairdresser [Jay Sebring] got killed, who used to cut everybody’s hair in Las Vegas. And Sharon Tate got killed. So, this was serious stuff.”
“He was concerned about his well-being,” said Paris. “He had some security ride shotgun. He always had a .38 when he traveled for his own protection because people would jump on stage… they couldn’t control themselves. They were such fans, especially if they had two or three drinks. And in Vegas, everybody drank.”
Sinatra had good reason to worry about Manson, the hippie cult leader who became the hypnotic-eyed face of evil across America. According to Paris, Sinatra, along with Elizabeth Taylor and Steve McQueen, “somehow made nutcase Charles Manson’s hit list.”
“Frank began traveling with a beautiful, silver, .38-caliber, snub-nosed pistol that he’d received as a gift,” Paris wrote.
Manson was a petty criminal who had been in and out of jail since childhood. In the ‘60s, he portrayed himself as a charismatic guru who embraced runaways and lost souls. He went on to order his loyal disciples to butcher some of L.A.’s rich and famous in what prosecutors said was a bid to trigger a race war — an idea he got from a twisted reading of the Beatles song “Helter Skelter.”
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Before the killings, the so-called family established a commune-like base at the Spahn Ranch, a ramshackle former movie location outside Los Angeles. It was there where Manson manipulated his followers with drugs, oversaw orgies and subjected them to bizarre lectures.
He had musical ambitions and befriended rock stars, including Beach Boy Dennis Wilson. He also met Terry Melcher, a music producer and the son of actress Doris Day, who had lived in the same house that “Rosemary’s Baby” director Roman Polanski and wife Tate later rented.
But by the summer of 1969, Manson had failed to sell his songs. He alleged that Wilson took one of his songs, “Cease to Exist,” revised it into “Never Learn Not to Love,” and recorded it with The Beach Boys without giving him credit.
On Aug. 9, 1969, Manson’s followers slaughtered five of their victims at Polanski and Tate’s home: the actress, who was nearly nine months pregnant; coffee heiress Abigail Folger; celebrity hairdresser Jay Sebring; Polish film director Voityck Frykowski; and Steven Parent, a friend of the estate’s caretaker. Polanski was out of the country at the time.
The next night, a wealthy grocer and his wife, Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, were stabbed to death in their home across town.
The killers scrawled such phrases as “Pigs” and a misspelled “Healter Skelter” in blood at the crime scenes. Manson was arrested three months later.
WATCH: FRANK SINATRA WAS ON CHARLES MANSON’S HIT LIST AFTER SHARON TATE’S MURDER: BOOK
Paris told Fox News Digital that at the time, a local newspaper had published a list of celebrities Manson wanted his followers to target. Sinatra was among them.
“That was no secret,” said Paris. “[And] after they found [Tate] dead and blood writing on the walls, this was some lunatic for sure. Just a horrible human being.”
“Everybody who was on that list has something to worry about, because there’s a lunatic out there planning your death with five other psychos,” he said. “There are some sick people in this world. [But] when somebody says they’re out to kill you, and they make an announcement of it, what are you supposed to do? Hide? Put on a bulletproof vest? That’s enough to drive you crazy.”
According to a report from the University of Missouri — Kansas City School of Law, Manson follower Susan Atkins claimed to another inmate, Virginia Graham, that she and other Family members had a list of celebrities they had “planned to kill in the future.” They included Richard Burton and Tom Jones, as well as Taylor, McQueen and Sinatra.
“Through an inmate friend of Graham’s, Ronnie Howard, word of Atkins’s amazing story soon reached the LAPD,” the report read.
Manson and Atkins, as well as Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten, were found guilty and sentenced to death. Another defendant, Charles “Tex” Watson, was convicted later. All were spared execution and given life sentences after the California Supreme Court struck down the death penalty in 1972.
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Another Manson devotee, Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, tried to assassinate President Gerald Ford in 1975, but her gun jammed. She served 34 years in prison.
Over the decades, Manson and his followers appeared sporadically at parole hearings, where their bids for freedom were repeatedly rejected. The women claimed they had been rehabilitated. Manson said prison had become his home.
In 2017, Manson died of natural causes after nearly half a century in prison. He was 83.
For years, it had been speculated that Sinatra had ties to another family — the mafia. He was even tracked for over 40 years by the FBI, History.com reported. According to the outlet, while Sinatra always denied he was connected to the mob, he did interact with famous gangsters, including Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana, with whom he was close friends.
Paris scoffed at the claims.
“Who were the nightclubs owned by? Bishops and priests?” he told Fox News Digital. “If you had to work for somebody in a nightclub, were you supposed to say, ‘You’re not my friend, goodbye?’ Or ‘You’re providing a living for me and my children?’ I don’t believe it was bishops and cardinals that owned the nightclubs years ago.”
“So much for the wise guys, because he was not a mafia member,” Paris stressed. “He did not support the mafia. He was an Italian who had a heart of gold.”
Today, Paris hopes readers will get to see a new side of Sinatra, the man he knew, through his book.
“He treated me like royalty,” said Paris. “I was a kid from Brooklyn who didn’t graduate from school, who went to work as a butcher thinking that was going to be my life… But with Sinatra, life was always an adventure.”
