In the 1960s, Jay Sebring made a giant leap from middle-class Michigan boy and Navy veteran to stylist to the stars, tooling around Hollywood in his Shelby Cobra convertible and jetting off to cut the hair of Paul Newman, Frank Sinatra and more.

A charismatic entrepreneur, Sebring saw the value in shucking the standard crew cut for more fashionable options for his high-profile clients. Steve McQueen, it was reported, even paid him $3,000 to come to the set to fix his hair.

Friends and patrons included not just Sinatra and Newman but Quincy Jones and Jim Morrison. He has long been said to have been an inspiration for his client Warren Beatty’s movie Shampoo.

Sebring was in the middle of that thriving career when, in the early morning hours of Aug. 9, 1969, a band of homicidal maniacs now known as the Manson family murdered him and four others, including actress Sharon Tate, who was eight and a half months pregnant.

The massacre was instantly infamous — as much a source of horror as of horrified fascination by the public.

Sebring was killed alongside Tate, the wife of director Roman Polanski, as well as coffee heiress Abigail Folger; her boyfriend, aspiring screenwriter Wojciech Frykowski; and recent high school graduate Steven Parent, who was visiting a property caretaker.

Sebring was training in martial arts with his friend, the budding icon Bruce Lee, and tried to fight off the killers as he attempted to protect Tate, his friend and former fiancée, as she pleaded for the life of her son. (Leno and Rosemary LaBianca were slain the next day by Manson’s acolytes.)

In a new interview with PEOPLE, Sebring’s nephew Anthony DiMaria says he wants to restore a significant figure in history “whose identity and legacy was stolen from him in the exploitation of his own slaughter.”

Anthony DiMaria.

Courtesy of Anthony DiMaria

DiMaria was 3 years old when his uncle was murdered but still has fond memories of Sebring playing with him as a child.

He also remembers how Sebring became fodder for true crime and pop culture, including a Saturday Night Live sketch in 1979 with Bill Murray playing Sebring in a rock opera about the Manson murders.

“It is quite surreal to have a very private, personal family tragedy be played out on platforms of entertainment globally,” DiMaria says.

This summer, he published an in-depth biography of his uncle, Jay Sebring: Cutting to the Truth, co-written with Marshall Terrill. The book is a companion and follow-up to a star-studded documentary by the same name in 2020.

The projects came about as DiMaria tried to make sense of the public’s perception of his uncle and what he had been told by his own family.

Sebring, born Thomas John Kummer on Oct. 10, 1933, was the oldest of three siblings. As a young man, he left his home and joined the Navy — serving in the Korean War — but decided that his future was in California and out of the military. He had earned a reputation for cutting hair in the service and wanted to build a company that would change the way men thought about their style.

From left, Jay Sebring on set of Bullitt with Steve McQueen.

Courtesy of Anthony DiMaria

He was a “cool cat” according to his nephew, and he adopted a new name — Sebring, after the Florida racetrack — that reflected a new life in the fast lane.

Among his achievements as a stylist: Morrison’s iconic tresses and Newman’s look on Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

But his work went beyond that. He became buddies with Lee and is credited by both Lee’s widow, Linda, and Lee’s biographer with launching the Asian actor’s career at a time when major opportunities were limited. Sebring became so well-known that he had a cameo in a 1966 episode of the Batman TV series as celebrity stylist “Mr. Oceanbring” and played a fancy barber who cut the main character’s hair in an episode of The Virginian, a long-running Western show.

“His life story is a roadmap to the American dream,” DiMaria says. “Here’s a young man who, after four years in the Navy, is 23 years old and comes to California with only a sleeping bag, his clothes and … ideas.”

“Tragically, Jay’s destiny was hijacked and his legacy was obscured by prisms of exploitation, greed [and] fear in the aftermath of one of the most notorious murders in history,” DiMaria says, adding his uncle was ahead of the pack when it came to today’s multibillion-dollar industry.

“But most people don’t know who to credit for that.”

That credit, DiMaria says, belongs to Sebring.

Instead of his accomplishments, DiMaria believes, “People treat the murders like a cash grab” and Sebring’s real life has taken a backseat.

“One of the things that remains is the distortion, not only of the facts and what happened in these historical events but also in the victim blaming and the marginalization and downright slander of the victims,” he says.

Even Time didn’t initially let the facts get in the way of a good story, DiMaria says.

In the magazine’s Aug. 22, 1969, issue, an article with no byline erroneously reported that “Sharon’s body was found 𝓷𝓾𝓭𝓮. Sebring was wearing only the torn remnants of a pair of boxer shorts. One of Miss Tate’s breasts had been cut off. She was nine months pregnant and there was an X cut on her stomach. Sebring had been sexually mutilated and his body also bore X-marks.”

None of that was true, according to testimony and forensic reports.

From left, Sharon Tate, pregnant with her first child with husband Roman Polanski and pal Jay Sebring.

Courtesy of Anthony DiMaria

DiMaria says there are only two people alive today who witnessed what actually happened that night: Patricia Krenwinkel and Charles “Tex” Watson.

Watson, after shooting 18-year-old Steven Parent outside, went into Tate’s rental home. It was there that he shot and stabbed Sebring after Sebring charged Watson. From forensic evidence and court testimony, Sebring fought back as best he could.

Decades later, on March 29, 2024, DiMaria wrote to Watson at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility near San Diego to ask him three questions:

Why did he fire at Sebring? Did he know Sebring before that night? Did he or Manson ever identify directly or know their victims by name?

Watson replied in an email dated April 9, 2024, that he’d never met Sebring or heard of him before the killings and that Manson didn’t mention anyone either.

And so why, DiMaria asked in another email, did Watson — who was armed with a gun, knife and considerably larger than Sebring — claim at a parole hearing that he had gotten scared when Sebring fought back?

Watson stuck to his story, replying, “I shot him because of the danger posed.”

From left: Jay Sebring’s niece Mishele, sister Peggy and nephew Anthony DiMaria at a 2011 parole hearing for Tex Watson.

Courtesy of Anthony DiMaria

DiMaria continues to fight to keep the remaining convicted killers in prison. In 2023, Leslie Van Houten became the only Manson family member involved in the murders to be paroled. Susan Atkins died of cancer in prison in 2009; Manson himself died of natural causes while incarcerated in 2017.

Watson and Krenwinkle, though, remain behind bars. Krenwinkle was recommended for parole in May, as she has been in the past. California Gov. Gavin Newsom has not yet weighed in, though he reversed a previous recommendation.

“Decades later, it feels like I can’t escape the people who took my uncle from us,” Mishele DiMaria, Sebring’s niece, 44, tells PEOPLE.

“Even in the safety of our own home the faces of these killers pop up on our screens, glamorized,” she continues. “Influencers and singers wear Manson T-shirts as if the killers are something to be celebrated.”

Quentin Tarantino, whose hit film Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood dramatized Manson’s crimes with a different ending, was interviewed in DiMaria’s 2020 documentary and reflected on facts and fiction.

“Jay isn’t just a character from my piece and not just a character from true crime,” he told DiMaria. “They were living, breathing people who were alive. He was your uncle.”