Early in the morning of August 9, 1969, members of Charles
Manson’s cult killed five people in movie director Roman
Polanski’s Beverly Hills, California, home, including
Polanski’s pregnant wife, actor Sharon Tate.

The savage crimes shocked the nation and turned Charles
Manson into a criminal icon.

Roman Polanski

Manson has been the subject of numerous movies and books,
including the best-seller Helter Skelter (the title is a reference
to a Beatles’ song of the same name, through which Manson
believed the group was sending secret messages to start a
race war). Manson died in prison in 2017 at age 83.

In a national response, President Donald Trump
ordered all U.S. flags to be flown at half-staff
until Aug. 31, 2025, in memory of the victims
of Wednesday’s shooting at the Minneapolis
church.

On April 16, 2007, 32 people died after being gunned down
on the campus of Virginia Tech by Seung-Hui Cho, a student
at the college who later died by suicide.

The Virginia Tech shooting began around 7:15 a.m., when
Cho, a 23-year-old senior and English major at Blacksburg-
based Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University,
shot a female freshman and a male resident assistant in a
campus dormitory before fleeing the building.

Police were soon on the scene; unaware of the gunman’s
identity, they initially pursued the female victim’s boyfriend
as a suspect in what they believed to be an isolated domestic-
violence incident.

However, at around 9:40 a.m., Cho, armed with a 9-millimeter
handgun, a 22-caliber handgun and hundreds of rounds of
ammunition, entered a classroom building, chained and locked
several main doors and went from room to room shooting
people. Approximately 10 minutes after the rampage began,
he died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

The attack left 32 people dead and more than a dozen wounded.

Cho Seung-hui, the Virginia Tech gunman who killed 32
people before turning the gun on himself. Photograph:
AP

On November 18, 1978, Peoples Temple founder Jim Jones led
hundreds of his followers in a mass murder-suicide at their
agricultural commune in a remote part of the South American
nation of Guyana.

Many of Jones’ followers willingly ingested a poison-laced punch
while others were forced to do so at gunpoint. The final death toll
at Jonestown that day was 909; a third of those who perished were children.

Jim Jones (below) was a charismatic churchman who established
the Peoples Temple, a Christian sect, in Indianapolis in the 1950s.         
        
        
        
        
        
        
       

Fitz Duke, who lives in nearby Port
Kaituma village, stands in front of
a nondescript memorial stone, the
only sign of the grisly Jonestown
massacre.