Sharon Tate and the Manson Murders

by Greg King

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  Sharon Tate and the Manson Murders

  Greg King

  DEDICATION

  To Chuck and Eileen Knaus

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  1•Italy

  2•California Girls

  3•Forquet

  4•Jay

  5•Eye of the Devil

  6•Roman

  7•Fearless Vampire Killers

  8•The Beautiful People

  9•Don’t Make Waves

  10•Valley of the Dolls

  11•All Eyes on Sharon Tate

  12•The Imperfect Couple

  13•Marriage

  14•A Troubled Marriage

  15•Cielo Drive

  16•Pregnancy

  17•The Hippie Messiah

  18•Beginnings of the Family

  19•Wilson and Melcher

  20•Spahn Ranch

  21•The White Album

  22•The Storm Builds

  23•Murder

  24•Thirteen Chairs

  25•Voytek and Gibby

  26•Sharon Alone

  27•The Last Day

  28•“Now Is the Time for Helter Skelter”

  29•Cease to Exist

  30•“That’s How the Day Went … Hell”

  31•The Second Night

  32•“You Wouldn’t Believe How Weird Those People Were”

  33•The Investigation

  34•The Trials

  35•The End of the Manson Family

  36•“I Will Fight As Long As I Am Alive.”

  37•“I Promised My Mom Before She Died That I Would Continue On…”

  Epilogue

  Image Gallery

  Source Notes

  Bibliography

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Prologue

  It stands in a far corner of the park, high on a green hillside dotted with monuments. Meandering stone paths cleave past an imposing grotto, where candles burn before a statue of the Virgin. Here, the lawn levels out, reaching to an exquisitely manicured hedge; beyond, the city bustles with life, the Hollywood Hills rising sharply in the distance. In this tranquil spot, undistinguished from its neighbors, lies a small, brightly polished black marble plaque. To one side sits a stand for an American flag; in the grass before it, a vase is sunk deep in the ground. Even after thirty years, it is nearly always full of fresh flowers. Those who come to satisfy their morbid curiosity are not disappointed. Below them, embedded in the lawn, is the tombstone:

  OUR LOVING DAUGHTER &

  BELOVED WIFE OF ROMAN

  SHARON TATE POLANSKI

  1943–1969

  PAUL RICHARD POLANSKI

  THEIR BABY

  Although only twenty-six when she died, Sharon Tate, like other stars whose lives were cut tragically short—Rudolph Valentino, James Dean, and Marilyn Monroe—stands as a twentieth century icon. On the edge of stardom, she was violently cut down, screaming, crying, pleading with her murderers, left to die in an exclusive Hollywood mansion whose front door had been smeared with an ugly epithet written in her own blood. The ultimate irony is that Sharon Tate only received that fame because of her gruesome end. Her death one hot summer night in 1969 changed America forever. It touched a raw nerve in a country disillusioned, shocked by the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Robert F. Kennedy and Malcolm X. The Manson Murders scared the hell out of an entire nation torn apart by war and shattered by riots. In the media frenzy which surrounded—and still envelops—the Manson murders, the victims were nearly forgotten, relegated to second place behind their notorious killers. “Murder in Hollywood,” writes Mikita Brottman, “is a far more frequent, more brutal, and more talked-about event than it is anywhere else in the world. The glamour and tinsel, the beautiful people and daring love affairs have their dark side—the realm of greed, lust, jealousy and shame. As long as there is a celebrity elite living in an illusory world of sparkle and style, as long as Hollywood fuels dreams of a glamorous, sexually charged, thrill-packed universe, there will continue to be intolerable pressures, violence and catastrophe.”1

  To many, Sharon Tate remains a minor character in an American saga of mass carnage, counter-culture, and insanity, a cast member whose glittering orbit encompassed the elite of Hollywood’s movie and music worlds, but whose beautiful surface cloaked a dark reality. To her family and friends, however, Sharon Tate, remains an unforgettable presence, a vibrant ghost whose beauty, gentle spirit, and love cannot be erased by the passage of time.

  By the beginning of 1943, America had weathered thirteen months of involvement in the Second World War. After two years of isolationist debate mixed with patriotic fervor and European pleas for assistance, Japanese bombers at Pearl Harbor made the decision that President Franklin Roosevelt had avoided and thrust the United States into the conflict. In the Pacific, the combat made headlines: Lieutenant James Doolittle’s bombing raids on Tokyo; the intense naval battles at Coral Sea and Midway Islands, and the Battles of Guadalcanal. Slowly, surely, allied forces were turning the equation against the Japanese troops. American soldiers were ferried across the Atlantic on passenger liners converted to troop ships to combat the Axis powers. Here, the land battles were drawn-out, grim. In Russia, thousands died during the prolonged battle of Stalingrad before the Soviets finally managed to surround the German Sixth Army and force a surrender. Hitler’s blitz devastated London. Then the Allied forces retaliated, their bombs wreaking catastrophic destruction across Germany. For a week, Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill met at Casablanca, to discuss plans for the Allied land invasion of Europe, a move that would begin the following year at Normandy on June 6, that was to be known as D-Day.

  Life on the American home-front was a mixture of war frenzy and fervent optimism coupled with an ominous foreboding of the unknown. Few failed to believe in an eventual Allied victory, but the deaths of husbands, brothers, sons, and fiancés brought the horrors of war into the living rooms of America. Daily life was completely subjugated to the war effort. As rationing took hold, hundreds “gardened for victory,” and housewives incorporated meatless Tuesdays and Fridays into their weekly menus. Sugar, shoes, coffee, and cheese were precious commodities. When not engaged in creative household-planning, women manned the welding stations and operated heavy machinery at the industries that provided the ammunition, planes, and ships needed to win the war. At the same time, there was a giddy recklessness—a frivolity hastened by the terrible uncertainties of the conflict in Europe and the Pacific. Late into the night, young lovers jitterbugged and lindy-hopped to the music of Glenn Miller and the Andrews Sisters. A certain sentimentality crept into popular culture, where “The White Cliffs of Dover” and “I’ll Be Seeing You” perfectly captured the unsettled mood of life on the edge of the abyss. It was also a time of romance. Young women, unsure whether they would see their suitors again once they went off to fight, eagerly embraced whatever fleeting moments of happiness they might find as war brides.

  Paul James Tate was eager for life. A twenty-one-year-old native of Houston, Texas, he had watched the ominous rumblings from Europe with growing interest. Most healthy young men found it difficult to resist the excitement of war, and Tate, filled with patriotism, had joined the ranks of the United States Army. A dark-haired, handsome man whose short stature masked a surprising presence, he was intrigued with the burgeoning field of military intelligence. Through sheer det
ermination and long hours of work, he would eventually rise through the ranks to that of colonel. Tate had a knack of impressing those he met with his honor, dedication, and loyalty, although he remained something of an enigma, silent and reserved, traits which worked well in his assigned career of military intelligence. But he was also a man with a sense of purpose, whose determination in pursuit of his goals proved attractive to the impressionable young women he encountered.

  Undoubtedly, some of this had worked well in his quest of Doris Gwendolyn Willet, a pretty, twenty-year-old who was, like himself, a native of Houston. Although as she grew older, Doris had a tendency to stoutness, as a young woman, a friend recalls, she was “really beautiful, very, very attractive.”2 From a solidly middle-class background, Doris was raised as a southern belle, gracious and charming. Her genteel manner and soft, melodic voice were powerful tools when she chose to focus them, and her attentions were always genuine.

  Paul and Doris had married on 25 January, 1942. If the complexities of the war shadowed their happiness together, such thoughts had been dispelled that summer when Doris learned that she was pregnant. It was not the most opportune time for a baby. The Tates were unsettled, with Paul’s military career at its beginning stages, and the outcome of the war still uncertain. There was no promise that the situations in Europe or the Pacific might not worsen and lead to a new military assignment, leaving Doris alone to care for the baby. And yet this very uncertainty also meant that the time Paul and Doris had together was precious. With no guarantee for their future, the Tates happily anticipated the birth of their first child.

  One day before the Tates’s first wedding anniversary, on 24 January, 1943, Doris gave birth to a healthy daughter. They named the baby Sharon Marie. Fair-haired, with large, hazel eyes and chubby cheeks, Sharon easily captivated those around her, and her proud parents rarely missed an opportunity to show off their new daughter. And everyone who saw the infant agreed that Sharon was an unusually beautiful baby. Comments and compliments from family, friends, and strangers alike prompted Doris to make a rather unusual move: when Sharon was only six months old, her mother read about a beauty contest, the Miss Tiny Tot of Dallas Pageant. Ordinarily, both Paul and Doris Tate shunned such activities. But because of the urgings of friends, Doris entered a photograph of her daughter in the contest. “It was a whim,” she later declared.3

  When the judges examined the photograph, they saw a happy, beaming infant, her chubby head crowned with thick golden curls. Her white dress and black patent-leather shoes were impeccable. It was the rosy picture of good health and contentment the judges had been seeking.

  They selected Sharon as winner, and she received the first of the many beauty titles she was to accumulate throughout her short life.

  Sharon was two-years-old when the Second World War ended. The sense of relief and exaltation was palpable, yet life remained filled with remnants of the conflict. Rationing continued, soldiers returned home maimed and unable to work, and the threat of Hitler was replaced with the growing menace of the Soviet Union. There were more personal concerns as well. The United States was in the midst of a devastating polio epidemic. With thousands of children in danger, Paul and Doris could only hope that fate would not strike down their only child.

  While she managed to escape from the dreaded polio epidemic, Sharon was subject to the usual childhood bouts of chicken pox and measles. She was active, her mother recalled, with “a wilfull streak which often led to accidents.”4 Her body later bore evidence of her adventures and mishaps—scars from cuts, broken glass, and a large scar Sharon received when, at age five, she fell atop a piece of corrugated tin on which she had been playing.5

  As parents, Paul and Doris Tate were a study in opposites. Sharon’s later friends would recall Doris as warm, loving, and energetic. She doted on her daughter, and spent hours with young Sharon, teaching her to sew and embroider, dress her dolls, and help in the kitchen. The Tate family was not wealthy, but Doris was careful to ensure that Sharon’s white dresses were always spotless and crisp, her hair neatly combed and tied with colorful ribbons, and her patent-leather shoes polished.

  Paul Tate, on the other hand, was a quiet man, serious and, following the traditions of the day, something of an imposing presence within the Tate household. Accustomed to army discipline, Paul, in the words of a former school friend of Sharon’s, “expected the same standards in his own house.”6 Because he was often away on assignment, his infrequent periods with his family assumed much significance to Sharon. Although she adored him, Sharon found her father’s unbending seriousness something of a strain.

  These two conflicting wills—her attentive, affectionate mother, and her quiet, sober father—pulled at Sharon throughout her childhood and youth. Doris Tate’s demonstrative nature only heightened the difference between her and her husband. Indulged by one and always aware of the authority of the other, Sharon developed into an emotionally dependent, almost obsessively shy child.

  The transient nature of the military also had a deep effect on Sharon. Her father’s army career, with its changing assignments and frequent moves brought a sense of isolation, and much of Sharon’s childhood and youth followed an unnervingly consistent pattern of new schools, new friends, and new homes. This peripatetic existence brought home the harsh realities of military life. The new house might not really be home for long. The school might be only one in a series, and the friends only temporary. By the time she was sixteen, Sharon had attended schools in Houston, Dallas and El Paso, Texas, San Francisco, and Richland, Washington.

  Her mother Doris later recalled Sharon’s early years as “perfectly normal and happy.”7 On the surface, she seemed not unlike other girls her age, but Sharon guarded her inner-thoughts. Although always ready to join her friends, she rarely confided her feelings to others. The itinerant nature of her life resulted in an armor of self-protection, and it took exceptional circumstances for her to break out of her self-imposed barriers.

  Sharon later referred to herself as “a very quiet child … kind of introverted in a way. I was constantly looking to do things a little differently. Like, I would dress my dolls backwards, or the minute I got a new sweater, I would change all the buttons on it, or embroider something on it.”8 Such behavior suggests more than a hint of artistic repression; Sharon was intensely creative with a lively imagination, but her energies seem to have been channeled into acceptable outlets. Paul Tate, with his military precision and efficiency, was a practical man, and this taste for useful activities appears to have been copied by his daughter.

  The worsening of international relations in the 1950s and the deepening of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union meant that Paul Tate was increasingly involved with his duties in military intelligence. Doris remained the strongest presence in the house, even when Sharon was joined by two sisters, the dark-haired Debra Ann, born in 1952, and blonde Patricia Gaye, who arrived in 1957. Sharon assumed the role of older sister with ease, helping her mother with their care and playing with them for hours on end. Sharon, in fact, seemed happiest when at home with her family. Although she joined friends for picnics and parties and sleep-overs, she far preferred her days spent at the side of her mother. During their afternoons together, Doris instilled a love of domesticity, teaching Sharon to cook favorite Southern recipes she in turn had learned from her mother, Ruth. Sharon became so adept, in fact, that in high school she won several baking contests, and, for a time, considered becoming a professional chef. 9

  Cooking classes were one of the few courses which Sharon pursued with vigor. She also expressed some interest in becoming a beautician following her enrollment in a high school course.10 But Sharon’s enthusiasms were fleeting. Friends remember that, although she occasionally expressed some interest in literature or art, Sharon rarely made any significant impressions in any of her classes. “She was a good student, but nothing special,” her mother would recall.11 She was certainly not bookish, at least as far as her schoolmates
knew, and no one can recall any lasting aspirations on her part other than to marry and have children.

  Above all, Sharon was an intensely self-controlled child. Some of this reflected the military environment in which she was raised. She adored her parents, but she also knew that the best way to win their approval was to meet expectations.

  By the time she reached high school, Sharon had begun to attract the attentions of any number of potential suitors. From her birth, she had been exceptionally pretty, but, as she developed into a young woman, her great beauty became apparent. While Doris Tate indulged her daughter’s love of immaculate clothes and carefully styled hair, she also warned Sharon to guard against too much pride for fear that her appearance would affect her amiable nature. “Pretty is as pretty does,” she told Sharon. “And if you do nasty things, all the prettiness will go out of you.”12

  Doris Tate need not have worried. Sharon was the very model of innocence and virtue, and her rapidly maturing appearance preceded her own awareness of her physical charms. Sharon would later recall how, on one occasion, she came out of her room in a rather revealing nightgown. Doris looked her over and announced sternly, “Now, Sharon Marie, you button up that nightgown when you come out of your bedroom. Daddy’s home.”13

  Paul Tate was transferred several times. For a few months, the family lived at Alameda, California, awaiting a permanent assignment. Then, in 1958, Paul Tate was posted to Camp Hanford, near the Tri-Cities in Washington State.

  Sharon was fifteen when her family moved to Washington. By this time, she had blossomed into a stunning beauty, with a generous figure, large, gentle eyes, abundant golden hair and long, shapely legs. For the first time, she took an active interest in members of the opposite sex, and saw in the returned smiles and bold winks that the feelings were mutual. Schoolboy crushes, innocent and flattering, were shyly encouraged with downcast eyes and pale blushes. Yet she rarely dated, preferring to be admired from afar.