Joan Didion wrote in "The White Album," her book on the era, that "many people I know in Los Angeles believed the '60s ended abruptly on Aug. 9, 1969." Sketchy details began emerging that day from a gruesome murder scene in exclusive Benedict Canyon. The fenced estate had been the home at various times of Henry Fonda, Candice Bergen and, more recently, Roman Polanski, the hot young director of the previous year's film sensation, Rosemary's Baby