By Nikolas Schreck

Life’s twists and turns, you may have noticed, have a way of coming full circle in the most unexpected ways. When exploring that unfathomable black hole in the spacetime continuum we know as the Tate-LaBianca case, I’ve seen this pattern of synchronicities and eternal returns border on the mind-boggling.
Consider if you will, as Rod Serling might have put it when introducing an episode of The Twilight Zone, how my interactions with the on-screen reel life and the off-screen real life of the late great actor Ferdy Mayne led to a decisive turning point in my understanding of the Tate-LaBianca murders. In honor of the karmic debt I owe to Herr Mayne for his groundbreaking assistance in my research, this, what would’ve been his 99th birthday, makes a fitting occasion to offer a few observations on the oddity of it all.