Restless Souls

by Alisa Statman

  Father O’Reilly stepped away from the pulpit. Everyone prepared to leave. Dad took my hand before leading our row toward the casket. Each of us took a rose from the family spray. One by one, we stepped up to where Sharon rested. I followed Dad’s lead and placed my rose on top of the coffin. He moved ahead, until I pulled my hand from his. One way or another, I needed to say good-bye. Imagining where her face might be, I leaned over to kiss the wood. “I love you,” I whispered.

  I was halfway down the aisle when a wailing cry froze the procession. With her body draped across the top of the casket, Mom cried out, “This can’t be the end!”

  Terrified that my mom was going to die of sorrow right then and there, I raced to help her. “Mama, please don’t leave me, don’t go with Sharon, I need you, too,” I pleaded while my arms entrapped her.

  My father’s grip lifted both of us from the coffin. Mom collapsed into his body, pulling me with her. When others came to help, I shrugged them off as they tried to separate us, afraid that if I did let go, I’d never see her again.

  From the rear window of the limousine, I watched Dad until the car rounded the corner and he disappeared. He was staying with Roman to ride across town for another funeral.

  On account of Jay’s open-casket service, Dad refused to let me go, insisting it would tarnish my memory. I was devastated. As with Sharon, I wanted to say good-bye to him. Instead, a car whisked me away to Robert Evans’s house, where everyone would gather after both funerals.

  While producing Rosemary’s Baby, Bob Evans developed a lasting friendship with Roman and Sharon. In a kind gesture, he made all the plans to hold the funeral reception at his home.

  The drive through his estate captivated me the instant we crossed a barrier of airy eucalyptus trees. We passed gardens that were impossibly green while the rest of Los Angeles suffered the August drought. Endless beds of brilliant flowers led the way to a palace fit for any fairy-tale princess.

  Competing for attention in front of the house was an ancient tree with branches that seemingly spread for miles beyond its trunk that could have easily housed Snow White and the dwarfs.

  To satisfy the expected Hollywood guests, tables had been set up near the pool, and a banquet of food overflowed the tables. Music misted down from the trees while waiters circulated with drink trays. Had it been for any other occasion, this would have been a fantasyland to luxuriate in. As it was, I wanted to escape.

  The sound of a television drew me into a screening room at the opposite end of the pool. Inside, the air conditioner blasted against flames blazing in the fireplace. A rerun of Bewitched played on the screen, coaxing me to ignore my parents’ warning about watching television.

  What better way to forget my troubles than to watch a show, that with a twitch of the nose anything could change. If only it was that easy.

  Two months ago, we moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Four days ago, my biggest concern was making sure that I had cool clothes to wear at my new school. Since then, I’d discovered the harsh reality that life wasn’t that simple, and I felt betrayed that my favorite TV characters had led me to believe otherwise.

  A picture of Sharon filled the screen. In an instant of confusion, I thought that she had found a way to communicate with me from heaven. The next picture was of the front of her house. A man wheeled a stretcher with a body bag on it. There was a rise in the center of the bag. I tried to block out what must lay beneath it. Every instinct told me to run from the room. Unfortunately, I stayed, eager for an explanation for my sister’s death.

  “It’s been a day of farewell to the victims of a shooting and stabbing rampage that included actress Sharon Tate and four others,” a man reported. “There was talk of drugs and a mad killer, but the Los Angeles police report no developments in the search for the killer or killers that cut the telephone lines to the home in Benedict Canyon and carried out what police are describing as a methodic and ritualistic mass murder. All five victims died of multiple stab wounds, gunshots, and bludgeoning. Miss Tate and Jay Sebring were found in the living room, bound together by a white nylon rope. Tate, in her bikini bra and panties, was hung before her death.”

  All I had left of Sharon were memories. The images that flashed across the screen shredded them. Spattered blood covered the front porch, mounded bloodied sheets were spread on the lawn, and a dead boy was showcased in a car. Investigators ripped apart Jay’s beloved sports car looking for evidence. Police officers captured Sharon and Gibbie’s dogs. And hearses lined the driveway like limousines waiting to pick up the famous.

  Warm memories of that house chilled to sinister ones. Why hadn’t I listened to my parents? I ached to run to my mother’s comfort, but I was equally hell-bent on not adding to her worries.

  The sun’s reflection off the pool glared at me as I bolted past a group of Sharon’s friends and into the seclusion of Evans’s boundless garden. A greenhouse at the opposite side looked like the perfect hiding place.

  On a bench within the glass walls, I pulled my knees up to blanket my eyes. I tried to forget the news report by concentrating on the heavy scent of roses.

  It couldn’t have been but a minute before there was a soothing voice. “I miss her, too.”

  I looked up to find a man leaning against the door frame. His hair was blonder than when we had met at Sharon’s house. I couldn’t remember his name, but it didn’t matter because I saw him as a fairy-tale prince who’d come to save me from evil.

  “May I come in?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  He moved so gracefully that he appeared to be gliding toward me. We sat together in silence for a long time before he spoke again. “Have you talked to anyone about your feelings?”

  I shook my head no.

  “Do you want to talk?” he asked.

  I lied with another shake of my head. There was a lot that I wanted to talk about, except I didn’t know how to express my feelings.

  “Fair enough,” he said. “Do you mind if I talk?”

  I merely nodded, but inside I was begging for someone to explain how life would move forward without Sharon.

  “I know what you’re thinking—you could have somehow protected Sharon if you had been with her that night. What you must understand is that there is only one thing your presence would have accomplished. Your parents would have buried two daughters today.”

  He was right; I did feel guilty. I had been staying with Sharon the week before and wished I had stayed longer. Whatever the outcome, I wish I had stayed. I pressed my lips together, defiantly holding back tears.

  He picked up the conversation as though I were an active participant. “I’ve learned a trick that you can try tonight in bed. I close my eyes, and then call out Sharon’s name. Within minutes, she’s there, giving me that dazzling smile of hers. That’s all it takes to find her.”

  He snapped a pink rose from the bush and handed it to me. “Now that you know my secret, I want you to remember that Sharon loved you so much that she’ll never leave your side. Her companionship will be in the scent of every flower you smell, the glow in every sunset you watch, and the caress of every breeze that crosses your path. And just as she watched over you every day as you grew into a beautiful young woman, she will continue to watch over you, and guide you through all of your life experiences.”

  So far, I had not dared to meet his eyes. With his hand, he gently turned my face toward him. His eyes were the clearest, brightest blue I had ever seen. Warm, healing strength flowed from his hand as he whispered, “All you have to do is call her name and she’ll be there. Talk to her every day, because she will need you as much as you need her.”

  His thoughts could not console me so soon; nevertheless, I held dearly to this brief encounter.

  4

  JUST FOR THE RECORD

  Imagine how you would feel if people who never knew or met your daughter professed to be experts on her conduct, knew all about her, and said all sorts of degrading things about her. Much has been
said about Sharon which is just not true.

  —P. J. TATE

  Patti

  “Patti, wake up. The car’s here.”

  I squinted against the glaring light that contrasted the darkness beyond the window. “What time is it?” I asked Sharon.

  “Five o’clock. Come on, I don’t want to be late. The director already hates me,” she said, while dropping some clothes over my face.

  The driver of the station wagon pulled away from the curb, heading west on Sunset toward Beverly Hills and the set of Valley of the Dolls. In the backseat, I rested my head on Sharon’s lap while she rehearsed her lines, “Hi Mel, the door was open. It’s lovely to see you.”

  I giggled.

  “What’s so funny?” she asked.

  “You sound so different when you talk in the movies.”

  She tickled me, “Keep it up and I’ll make you laugh until you pee your panties.”

  In my eyes, there were two versions of Sharon. There was her well-groomed public persona, and then there was my sister with her long, straight hair, no makeup, wearing jeans and a T-shirt.

  The Sharon I identified with slouched when she sat down, bit her nails to the skin, and chewed on her lower lip when she was nervous. Her natural voice had a high timbre and a slight Texas drawl that thickened when she was excited or tired. There were days when her clumsiness got the best of her, like when she managed to break her leg getting out of bed. Balancing a checkbook was a challenge she didn’t care to master. Overcoming her shyness was a constant yet well-hidden strain. She had a knack for making a mundane story interesting and loved to make people laugh. As headstrong as a person could be, once she made a decision, an army couldn’t change her mind. Even so, she never forced her views on others. Instead, she’d respond, “Really? Hmmm.”

  On the set of Valley of the Dolls, I sat next to Sharon in the makeup trailer as the vanity crew transformed her. They applied a heavy base makeup; first a lighter color to conceal her scars and freckles, then a darker one to emphasize the contours of her face. Black liner soon rimmed her eyes, topped by false lashes. The makeup artist brushed a deep brown color into her light brows. They pulled her natural hair back to hide it beneath a long blond fall.

  Two hours later, the finished product stood before me in a skintight gold-beaded dress with her back straight, her chin held high, and a voice that was two octaves lower with the hint of a European accent. Everything was false, from the top of her head to the lifts under her breasts, to the red nails on her fingers. It was Sharon the movie star.

  WITHIN WEEKS OF Sharon’s murder, another image of her emerged in the press, THE QUEEN OF THE HOLLYWOOD ORGY SCENE; A DABBLER IN SATANIC ARTS.

  While the media stories surrounding Sharon’s death gained momentum, I searched to find a daily rhythm in my life.

  The 12:10 bell rang, signaling lunchtime. It was my third week at the new school and I hadn’t made a single friend. As if my parents had made a mistake when registering me for school, my name around campus was Sharon Tate’s Sister. The reaction of my classmates varied; some stared, some whispered, some looked on with pity, while others with fear. None extended an inviting smile.

  As usual, I took my lunch to a table separated from the rest of the kids. I tried to keep focused on my peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but I couldn’t help noticing a group of laughing girls watching me. One of them waved. “Hey, Patti, come here.”

  My instincts told me something was wrong, but my need for friendship won out, so I risked the encounter. When I was close enough, I saw why they were snickering. They had a magazine spread out on the table. THE SHARON TATE ORGIES: SEX, SADISM, CELEBRITIES. Along with the story were seductive publicity pictures of Sharon. On a rehearsed cue, the girls lobbed questioning stones at me.

  “Are you as big a slut as Sharon?”

  “Did you go to the orgies?”

  “How many guys did you fuck?”

  “Did your sister really do it with dead people and animals?”

  In a burst of tears, I ran from the girls, the lunch area, and the school. I kept running, I didn’t know where—it didn’t matter, because I was running from life, and I never wanted to stop. I hated them all for trying to turn Sharon into a monster.

  In the aftermath, Mom found me a block from home, sitting on the curb. I’d stopped running only because my lungs screamed in protest, but the stream of tears ran on. She knelt beside me. “I’ve been worried sick about you.”

  “I’m sorry. Sometimes it just hurts so bad that I can’t stand it.”

  In the past, Mom always had the answers to bandage my wounds. This time, all she had to offer was a comforting hug.

  Doris

  Since the police couldn’t solve Sharon’s murder in a timely fashion, others tried to. Speculation about the motive appeared in newspapers and magazines with bold titles: WHY SHARON HAD TO DIE; BLACK MAGIC RITUALS; DRUG DEAL GONE BAD; VOODOO GOONA GOONA WENT BERSERK; WILD PARTIES THAT LED TO THE MASSACRE; LIVE FREAKY, DIE FREAKY.

  Joe Hyams authored an article entitled WHY SHARON HAD TO DIE. Though he’d only met Sharon once, he gave readers the misconception that he was a good friend, and then hawked stories to anyone willing to pay; the higher the amount doled out to him, the more outlandish his tales became.

  In one instance, Hyams said, “Sharon and Roman were in the habit of picking up strangers on the Sunset Strip and bringing them home for orgies. The way they lived, I saw the murders coming.” In another story, he insisted Sharon told him she’d taken more than sixty-seven LSD trips, and “used marijuana liberally, even when she tossed her salads.” Hyams also claimed that during many intimate conversations with Sharon, they’d talked about sex in the movies. Falsely quoting her, he wrote, “Sharon told me, I wouldn’t mind it (nudity) one bit. In fact, I’d enjoy shocking the hell out of those Midwestern audiences.” He underscored his conclusion, “She shocked them all right.”

  Sharon’s close friends refused comment to the media; everyone else had a story to tell and the rumors rolled through Los Angeles with a relentless force.

  Alex Sanders, the self-proclaimed king of the witches, insisted he initiated Sharon into witchcraft while working with her on Eye of the Devil, offering publicity stills of Sharon in a pentagram as his proof.

  Popular astrologer Jim Slaten announced, “Sharon Tate was too involved with animal sacrifice, and they were afraid that she was going to draw too much attention to them.”

  Adamantly convincing when he sold his story, Slaten was inconclusive about who “they” were when the police questioned him for specifics.

  Truman Capote appeared on The Tonight Show to share his theory. “Oh golly, it’s sort of a fantasy. Of the five, I happen to know four. My feeling is it was committed by one person . . . and this person left an hour before the murders. . . . Something there triggered an instant paranoia and hatred in him. He goes home and comes back with a knife and gun.

  “He rings the bell and walks inside. He ties Sharon and Jay together so that if they moved either way they’d strangle themselves. At this point Frykowski and Abigail Folger decide to run for it. He kills them. He then proceeds to kill Sharon and the hair boy (Jay) in a systematic rage. As if after an intense sexual experience, I think he went someplace and slept soundly for two days.”

  Capote didn’t expound on what upset the killer, nor did he explain how anyone in a rage kills systematically.

  Actor Dennis Hopper said that filmed orgies and whip-tying rapes were the order of the day at Sharon’s house. The Los Angeles Free Press quoted Hopper: “They had fallen into orgies, sadism and masochism and bestiality, and they recorded it all on videotape.” Later in the interview, Hopper revealed, “The police told me that three days before they were killed, twenty-five people were invited to that house for a mass whipping of a dealer from the Sunset Strip who’d given them bad dope.”

  If the police had knowledge of those events, they didn’t write it in their investigative reports. Perhaps they had a better u
nderstanding that a woman who’s eight months pregnant has limited stamina for orgies and whippings.

  The country speculated on who’d been the initial target for the murders. Some thought it was the work of the mafia or the Polish underground. Others felt it had to be a drug burn. And still others insisted the murders were the result of the macabre films that Roman made. Everyone had their theory; after all, decent, innocent people weren’t murdered in their own homes—not without good reason.

  Newsweek reported, “Nearly as enchanting as the mystery, was the glimpse the murderers yielded into the Hollywood subculture in which the cast of characters played. Gossip about the case is of drugs, mysticism, and offbeat sex—and for once there may be more truth than fantasy in the flashy talk of the town.

  “Some suspect that the group was amusing itself with some sort of black magic rites as well as drugs that night, and they mention a Jamaican, hip to voodoo, who had recently been brought into Frykowski’s drug operation. Indeed, there is speculation that the murders resulted from a ritual mock execution that got out of hand in the glare of hallucinogens.”

  In a Life magazine story, Barry Farrell’s headline read: IN HOLLYWOOD THE DEAD KEEP RIGHT ON DYING and the column continued with the words, “You wouldn’t believe how weird these people were. . . . If you live like that, what do you expect. . . . Their circle may have been friendly enough to protect them in their lifetimes, but now, in their posthumous notoriety, rumor had revealed them to all as connoisseurs of depravity, figures torn from a life that was pure de Sade, with videotape machines in the bedrooms.”

  In two other articles, Dial Torgerson, a writer for the Los Angeles Times, audaciously summarized Gibbie and Woytek’s lives in a couple of paragraphs. “A defector from Poland, [Frykowski] mingled with the Parisian underworld then came here and, some said, dabbled in illicit narcotics trade. He drank chilled vodka by the water tumbler, drove too fast, smoked marijuana, and took mescaline.