What would you do if you found out that the closest-to-reality version of your dream house was on the market, you had the funds to purchase it, but a grisly murder (or several) had taken place there? Would you disregard any possible "bad vibes" and lay your money down? Would you make the deal, thinking the complex history would be a great conversation piece or might inspire dark creative forces? The latter is what Nine Inch Nails frontman and founder Trent Reznor did in the early 1990s, when he bought 10050 Cielo Drive (pictured above).
Otherwise known as a murder site chosen by Charles Manson, the sprawling ranch house in Benedict Canyon, Los Angeles was rented by film director Roman Polanski and was where his wife Sharon Tate and five others were brutally stabbed and killed. As the world eventually learned during the trial, on August 9, 1969, members of Manson's “family” showed no mercy as the pregnant Tate and her friends begged for their lives. Manson instructed his followers to make the scene “as gruesome as you can,” and they complied dutifully, stabbing Tate sixteen times and writing "Pig" on the door of the house with her blood.
Perhaps to convince the public that the house could still be a homey and viable property, Hollywood agent Rudy Altobelli, the owner of the house, moved in several weeks after the murders and lived there for 20 years. Altobelli eventually sold the house for $1.6 million.
The last resident to inhabit 10050 Cielo Drive was Trent Reznor. He had a recording studio built there, which he named “Le Pig” after the Manson family's bloody scrawls. Reznor recorded The Downward Spiral there as well, which happens to have two tracks with the word "Pig" in their titles.
After a chance encounter and conversation with Sharon Tate's sister in which she asked Reznor if he was exploiting her sister's death, Reznor had a change of heart about the house and soon sold it. In the year following the sale, the house was razed. A new mansion, given different Cielo Drive address numbers, was built in its place.
http://crime.about.com/od/serial/p/barone.htm