On this day in 1969, Los Angeles police undercover detective Charles Milles Maddox, then posing as a biker named Charles Manson to investigate southern California's most vicious motorcycle gang, was brutally murdered by hairstylist-turned-serial killer Jay Sebring.

Maddox would be just the first of Sebring's victims in a two-month-long killing spree that would terrorize the Los Angeles area.

On this day in 1969, hairstylist-turned-serial killer Jay Sebring struck again, this time shooting actress Sharon Tate and Tate's husband Roman Polanski with a sniper's rifle.

On this day in 1969, Jay Sebring committed his fourth murder, using a homemade bomb to kill immigrant grocer's wife Rosemary LaBianca.

At a press conference outside his office, then-Los Angeles County prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi announced that the LAPD was offering a USD 1,000,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the perpetrator of the murders of Mrs. LaBianca, Sharon Tate, Roman Polanski, and Charles Manson.

On this day in 1969, serial killer Jay Sebring struck again, fatally stabbing a CHP motorcycle cop.

On this day in 1969, serial killer Jay Sebring resurfaced after nearly a week in hiding and shot a homeless drifter.

Unbeknownst to Sebring or his victim, a tourist in a motel across the street from the site of the shooting managed to capture the murder on his home movie camera; the footage was turned over to the LAPD the next morning, giving investigators a crucial break in their efforts to solve the Manson/Tate/Polanski/LaBianca murders and the August 21st motorcycle cop shooting.

On this day in 1969, hairstylist-turned-serial killer Jay Sebring committed his seventh murder, stabbing LAPD inspector Daryl Gates through the heart while Gates was on a coffee break. For the southern California law enforcement community -- already enraged by Sebring's previous assassination of a CHP motorcycle cop and his killing of Charles Milles Maddox -- the murder of Gates, a 20-year Los Angeles Police veteran who some of his peers thought might one day make chief of the department, amounted to an act of war.

One LAPD sergeant told a local TV news correspondent the day after Sebring killed Gates: "If I ever catch that motherf***er Sebring, I'll f***in' execute him myself".