Where were you 14,610 days ago yesterday? More simply, do you know where you were 2,087 weeks ago yesterday? The date was August 9, 1969 and rising actress Sharon Marie Tate Polanski was at home at 10050 Cielo Drive in suburban Los Angeles, over eight months pregnant with baby, Paul Richard, enjoying an evening with friends. It was a Saturday, the weather was nice and Roman Polanski was out of the country on business, Italy, I believe.
There was a special ambiance about the canyons above Hollywood in the late ’60’s, a peculiar bohemian atmosphere tempered by the more stabilizing influences of fame and fortune. In Laurel and Benedict Canyons, the hustle of city life seemed strangely remote, sheltered by the high hills and tall trees which lent a slightly rustic, woodsy feel to the areas. Narrow roads curved through the canyons, branching off into narrow roads which, in turn, led to cul-de-sacs and driveways lost deep in the trees.
Benedict Canyon lies to the east of Hollywood, just above Beverly Hills and Bel Air. This area had always attracted Hollywood celebrities: Pickfair, the legendary home of Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks,Sr., was located in Benedict Canyon, on Summit Drive; Harold Lloyd’s fabled estate Green Acres perched along the top of a hillside just down the Canyon; and, overlooking the Polanski’s new house, at 1436 Bella Drive, stood Falcon Lair, Rudolph Valentino’s Spanish-style mansion. A mile or so from the beginning curve of Benedict Canyon Road, on the left hand side, Cielo Drive wound up into the steep hillside, past houses lining the roadway, and smaller drives and streets leading off to hidden mansions. Near the end, just before the road climbed back along the top of the mountain, two smaller streets opened up off to either side. On the right, Della Drive curved steeply up the side of the hill and around into the northern depths of the canyon. On the right, just opposite the entrance to Bella Drive, an unmarked cul-de-sac twisted sharply back up the rugged mountain. It was a narrow road, wide enough for only one car. To the right, the steep, wooded mountain rose higher; on the left, there were several houses, including a white Spanish-style mansion set at a curve in the roadway and a modern cottage perched on concrete supports at the side of the hillside. A few wide spaces, to allow motorists to pass each other, opened out to provide a spectacular view of the canyon below, before the narrow road finally came to an abrupt end at a chain-link gate centered in a similar batten-board fence stretching from the cliff to the slope of the mountain. This was the gate of 10050 Cielo Drive, The Polanski’s new home.
For both Sharon and Roman the move to Cielo Drive marked a new chapter in their lives. Busy decorating her new home, Sharon finally began to return to her former carefree self, convinced that things between her and Roman were certain to improve. On their first night at 10050 Cielo Drive, Sharon and Roman camped out, celebrating their new home and toasting the beginning of a new future, in her radiant contentment and happiness. Sharon christened 10050 Cielo Drive her “love house.”
A month after moving into 10050 Cielo Drive on February 15, 1969, the Polanski’s threw a large housewarming party for a hundred friends. The evening was warm, the swimming pool glowed like a giant turquoise stone set in the soft lawn, the elaborate array of lights along the rail fence glowed, as did the lights of the city behind. Guests included John Phillips, Warren Beatty, Peter Fonda, Tony Curtis and Danny Kaye. Midway through the festivities an altercation erupted between Roman’s agent William Tennant and three uninvited guests, Harrison Dawson, Tom Harrigan and Billy Doyle, all acquaintances of both singer Cass Elliot and Roman’s boyhood friend Voyteck Frykowski. The three men, who had arrived with invited guest Ben Carruthers, soon became drunk and Doyle got into a shoving match with Tennant after stepping on his foot. Angrily, Roman Polanski threw them out of the house. With the tense atmosphere, John Phillips and his wife Michelle decided to leave early, at the invitation of film director Roger Vadim and his wife Jane Fonda. From 10050 Cielo Drive, the two couples went to Vadim’s Malibu beach house, where, joined by Warren Beatty, the carried on a small, private party until dawn.
Both Sharon and Roman were planning to be out of the country for an extended period of time and had decided to sub-lease 10050 Cielo Drive to English director Michael Sarne, who had recently completed Myra Breckenridge, agreed to rent the house until the middle of the summer, when Sharon was due to return. But, before he was to move in, Sarne discovered a house on the beach in Malibu more to his taste and declined the Polanski house.
Roman’ friend, Voyteck Frykowski volunteered to stay in 10050 Cielo Drive until summer. With him, he brought his live-in girlfriend, coffee heiress Abigail Folger.
In late March, Sharon was scheduled to fly out of Los Angeles for Europe. The day before she left, Sunday, March 23, Sharon spent the afternoon posing for a dozen new publicity photos. In the late afternoon, Jay Sebring, along with Voyteck and Abigail, arrived to have a farewell dinner with Sharon. While the four friends were chatting the photographer, Shahrokh Hatami, noticed a strange man walking across the front lawn. He seemed unsure of where he was, but something in his manner seemed smug to Hatami.
Hatami walked out onto the front porch to confront the man. Standing in the shade of the porch as a short, casually dressed, long-haired man who appeared to be in his mid-thirties. The man said he was looking for someone, a name Hatami could not later recall, perhaps Terry Melcher. Sharon popped her head round the door and walked out onto the front porch. “Who is it, Hatami?” she asked. Sharon watched as the stranger walked back across the lawn and down the dirt path to the guest house before she returned to the dinner party inside. A few minutes later Hatami saw the man walk back along the path and up the driveway toward the gate.
The stranger that Sharon had watched walk across the front lawn of her house that Sunday evening was the same man who, just four months later, would order her death, Charles Manson.
In her final days in London, Sharon did a photo shoot for the British fashion magazine Queen. She finished reading Thomas Hardy’s novel Tess of the d’Urbervilles, which she left for Roman to look at, explaining that she thought it would make an excellent motion picture.
Sharon was eight months pregnant when she left London, too far for any commercial airlines to fly her. Instead, Roman booked her into a stateroom on the ocean liner Queen Elizabeth 2. At first, Sharon wanted to wait the week of so Roman said he needed to finish up his script, and accompany him back to America. It appears that initially they were both slated to travel together on board the ocean liner but, at the last minute, Roman changed his mind. Sharon was angry, but there was nothing she could do.
On their last night together in London, Sharon and Roman went to a party at a restaurant overlooking the Thames. The following morning, they drove to Southampton, where they wandered over the vessel before last call was sounded.
“Okay, go now,” Sharon told Roman, wiping tears from her eyes. As le later recalled, Roman began to cry, and held his pregnant wife . He was overcome with the feeling that something tragic was about to happen. Finally, he walked down the gangway and climbed into his borrowed Alfa Romeo for the drive back to London. With his pregnant wife safely on her way home, however, Roman quickly returned to London where, he later admitted, he decided to “call Victor Lownes, have a ball, see some girls.” It was the last time Roman ever saw Sharon.
Early in the evening of August 9th, Jay Sebring made dinner reservations for Sharon, Abigail, Voyteck and himself at El Coyote, a fashionable Mexican restaurant on Beverly Boulevard. The four drove down the Canyon to the restaurant, where, after a fifteen minute wait at the bar, they were seated and had dinner. Around a quarter to ten, they finished their meal and left.
It was dark by the time they returned to 10050 Cielo Drive. The lights on the property were fixed to a timer; as they drove through the gates, the yellow bug light on the side of the garage and the Christmas lights strung across the split rail fence bordering the lawn glowed in the night. Landscape lights, positioned around the lawn and behind the shrubbery, cast eerie shadows against the house as the foursome followed the flagstone walk across the lawn to the front porch.
Abigail went off to the bedroom she shared with Voyteck and changed into a mid-length white nightgown. Sometime after returning, she took a fairly large dose of the MDA Voyteck had purchased a few days before.
Abigail talked to her mother on the telephone and them climbed into the antiqued, carved bed nestled in a corner of her bedroom.
Voyteck was in the living room, listening to the stereo in the hall closet. He, too, had taken MDA on their return to `0050 Cielo Drive, and dozed off on the long couch. The only light in the living room came from the small table lamp on the deck.
At the southern end of the house, Sharon and Jay had retired to her bedroom. After returning from the restaurant, Sharon changed out of her mini dress, revealing bikini panties and bra which she had worn all day. It was still hot outside, eighty degrees at eleven, and she was uncomfortable. She still wore her gold wedding band and a pair of gold stud earrings. Sharon kept the refrigerator at 10050 Cielo Drive stocked with Heineken, Jay’s favorite beer, and he had grabbed on one their return. He sat on the edge of the bed, talking with Sharon, and smoking a marijuana joint he had brought with him. Beyond the open windows of the bedroom, the lights of the swimming pool shimmered in the night.
A hundred feet away, past some low shrubbery, beneath an open, roofed gateway and down a curving flagstone walk, sat the guest house. The previous night, after drinking four cans of beer, smoking two marijuana joints and taking a Dexedrine capsule, caretaker William Garretson had been sick. He slept late on Friday, cleaned the guesthouse and spoke with Dave Martinez, promising to water the lawn over the weekend.
Around seven that evening, Garretson walked down Cielo and Benedict Canyon to Turner’s Drug Store, where he purchased a TV dinner, a pack of cigarettes and some Coca-Cola. As he walked back up the canyon, he noticed the Christmas lights strung across the split-rail fence, sparkling in the distance.
Just after eleven-thirty, eighteen-year-old Steven Parent drove his father’s white 1966 Nash Ambassador through the gate at 10050 Cielo Drive. Six feet tall, with short red hair and glasses, Parent lived with his parents, sister and two younger brothers in the Los Angeles suburb of El Monte. Parent had been something of a loner in high school, focusing his attention on choir. His sister Janet recalls that, “Steve didn’t date much, and he didn’t have many close friends.”
Two weeks earlier, Parent had stopped for Garretson when the latter was hitchhiking in Beverly Hills. When Garretson warned the young man that he lived up in the hills, Parent replied, “That’s okay, I don’t have anything to do,” and motioned him into his father’s Ambassador. During their ride, the caretaker told Parent of his job, mentioning that he looked after a house in which a famous movie star lived. Garretson directed Parent up Benedict Canyon Road,left on Cielo Drive, and then left again on the cul-de-sac to the gate of 10050. Before saying goodbye, he gave Parent his telephone number, and said that the young man should call him if he was ever coming up to the canyon.
Later that Friday night, Parent had indeed called Garretson, saying that he was in the area and asking if he could drop by. Garretson, who had no plans, said yes, and gave Parent instructions on how to operate the electronically controlled front gate. As he walked down the dirt path in front of the main house, Parent noticed, through the open window, Abigail Folger sitting in bed reading, and, a little further on, Sharon perched on the edge of her bed.
He asked Garretson about the identities of the women. Garretson, who had little contact with the residents of the main house, thought that Voyteck Frykowski was Roman Polanski’s younger brother. To Parent, he described Folgers the “younger Polanski’s” girlfriend, while the other lady was Polanski’s wife. Parent burst out laughing. “You mean Polanski has a girlfriend and a wife?” After a bit of explaining on Garretson’s part, Parent finally understood.
Parent had brought a clock radio, hoping to sell it to the caretaker, Garretson, who had been listening to the stereo, turned it off so that Steve could demonstrate his. Garretson listened, but he had no use for the radio. “I don’t need any clocks, man,” he told Parent. “I got clocks all over the place here.”
After drinking a beer with Garretson and calling a friend, Parent decided to leave. As he got up to leave, Christopher, Altobelli’s Weimaraner, began to bark. When Parent asked if anything was wrong, Garretson dismissed it, saying that the dog always barked. Garretson watched as Parent started his walk up the dirt path toward the parking area and his white Ambassador, before he himself closed the door and returned to the living room, to write letters to friends and family back in Ohio.
It was late, just after midnight, when the 1959 Ford with its headlights turned off, took a left and climbed the steep cul-de-sac toward the high gate of 10050 Cielo Drive.
On the other side of the gate, at the end of the paved parking area, Steve Parent approached his car, carrying the clock radio in his hand. The night was quite, warm, the lights of Los Angeles spread out and sparkled below. As he climbed into his car, it is likely that he spotted the foursome, clad in their dark clothes, climbing over the rail fence bordering the parking area; police would later discover paint scrapings from his car on the fence, and crushed pieces of wood still attached to the Ambassador’s bumper.
Charles “Tex” Watson had seen the headlights of the approaching car as he and the women were stashing their bundles of clothing in the bushes next to the gate. “Lay down! Stay here!” he whispered to the women, as he bolted toward the gate and the approaching car.
Parent had his driver’s side window rolled down, to allow him to reach the gate control button. Watson ran upon to the car, a knife in one hand and a gun in the other. Susan Atkins, hiding in the bushes, heard him yell, “Halt!”
Watson thrust his hand into the open window, trying to reach the keys. Parent must have been terrified. He looked at glassy-eyed Watson and pleaded, “Please, please, don’t hurt me! I’m your friend! I won’t tell!” In answer, Watson raised the knife and sliced at the hand. The knife went down, slicing between Parent’s little and ring fingers and running down the length of his palm. His Lucerne wristwatch flew from his arm, its band slashed in half, and landed in the rear seat.
In reaction, Parent pulled down his arm. Watson aimed the .22 caliber Buntline through the open window and fired four shots in quick succession. One shot went cleanly through Parent’s descending left arm, another through his life cheek, exiting out of his mouth and crashing into the dashboard. Stunned, Parent was unable to move. The other two shots hit him in the chest. He slumped toward the space between the front bucket seats, covered in spreading blood. Parent became the first of what Watson would later refer to as “impersonal blobs.”
On the other side of the gate, some 100 feet north of 10050, was 10070 Cielo Drive. Mr. and Mrs. Seymour Nott, the residents, had just finished hosting a dinner party. At midnight, they said goodnight to their guests; as they stood on their doorstep, the Notts could see the gate of 10050 and the yellow bug light burning on the side of the garage, as well as the string of Christmas lights along the split-rail fence. They were just getting ready for bed when Mrs. Nott heard four shots, all in rapid succession. She thought that they came from the direction of 10050 Cielo Drive, but was not certain. She listened for a few more minutes. Hearing nothing further, she went to bed. She later estimated the time as about 12:30 a.m.
The four shots apparently had not been heard in the main house at 10050. The stereo in the hall closet was on, playing moderately high level, but it, along with the curious echo patterns in the canyon itself, was apparently enough to buffer the shots from the drive.
Watson reached inside the Ambassador, turned off the ignition and the headlights and motioned for the women in the bushes to join him. He flopped the car into neutral and, together, the four of them pushed the car down the driveway. Watson felt that the car would be less conspicuous if it was parked away from the gate. They left it parked at an odd angle, to the left of the drive, about twenty-five feet beyond the gate.
According to Linda Kasabian, on watching Watson shoot Parent, she immediately went into a state of shock. “My mind went blank,” she recalled later. “I was aware of my body, walking toward the house.” The four walked past Jay Sebring’s black Porsche and Abigail’s red Firebird parked next to the split-rail fence at the end of the drive. They followed the curve of the flagstone walk across the front lawn. Watson noting “the shimmering lights of the whole west side: of the city below.
They stopped at the front porch. The white Dutch door was closed, the carriage lights on either side shining brightly. Watson told Kasabian to go round to the rear of the house and check to see if any of the windows or doors were open. She went off, but, still horrified at the shooting she had just witnessed, walked past the two open windows of the freshly painted nursery-to-be, pst the rear entrance door, and as far as the French door to the living room, before returning to the front lawn. On telling Watson that everything was locked and closed, he walked to the multi-paned dining room windows, stood in the flower bed behind the neatly trimmed hedge, and, with his knife, made a long, horizontal slash through the screen, allowing him to reach up inside and remove it. He set the screen at the side of the window and slipped his fingers into the crack, raising it up enough to allow him to hoist himself over the ledge and into the dark room. Once inside, he walked through the room to the entrance hall and opened the Dutch door leading to the front porch. As the women walked toward him, he pulled Kasabian aside, telling her to go back to the gate and wait there, to watch incase anyone approached the estate. Atkins and Krenwinkel disappeared inside the house; before Kasabian turned to leave, Watson ominously whispered that she should “listen for sounds.”
Watson, Atkins and Krenwinkel entered the living room. A table lamp on the desk filled the room with dim light. In front of them stretched a long, beige couch whose back was draped with an American flag. Although there would be speculation to its measurements later, Mrs. Chapman told police investigators that it had simply been placed on the back of the couch as a decorative touch a few weeks earlier. (Mrs. Couch was the maid).
When they walked round the couch, they saw for the first time that there was a man asleep there. It was Voyteck Frykowski. Watson stood over Frykowski and said, “Wake up!” Voyteck stirred, looked up at the curious trio gathered in the darkened living room, and asked “What time is it?” “be quite!” Watson answered. “Don’t move or you’re dead.” “What do you want?” In response, Watson kicked him in the head, and Frykowski fell back against the couch, stunned.
“I’m the devil,” Watson chillingly announced, “and I ‘am here to do the devils business.” According to Susan Atkins, his tone was disturbing, “guttural.”
Watson told Atkins to look for something with which to tie up Frykowski. She looked through several rooms, finally grabbing a towel from the linen closet in the hallway. When she returned, Watson told her to tie Frykowski’s hands. “I did the best I could with the towel,” Atkins recalled, “but I knew it wasn’t very secure.”
Frykowski continued to question these invaders, but Watson cut him off, saying, “Another word and you’re dead!” He asked for his money, and Voyteck nodded toward the desk. In fact, his wallet contained only a few dollars.
Watson ordered Atkins to search the rest of the house. She walked into the small hallway leading to the bedrooms at the southern end of the house. The doorway to the corner bedroom shared by Abigail and Voyteck stood open. As Atkins came to a halt, she saw Abigail Folger perched on a pile of pillows against the headboard, reading a book. Noticing the motion in the hallway, Abigail looked up. Like her boyfriend in the living room, she did not express any alarm at seeing this strange girl, dressed all in black, wandering through the house in the middle of the night. Instead, she smiled, and waved. Atkins smiled and waved back. Abigail turned her attention back to her book.
Adjacent to Abigail’s bedroom was a half closed door. Atkins opened it slowly, and peered through the crack. Sharon was lying on the bed, propped up against the headboard; Jay sat on the edge of the bed, his back to the door. Neither noticed the opened door, and continued to talk. Atkins pulled the door closed. As Atkins turned, Abigail again saw the motion, looked up and smiled.
Standing in the living room Krenwinkel suddenly realized that she had no knife. She walked out of the house and back up the driveway, where she found Kasabian kneeling in the bushes near the gate. She took Kasabian’s knife, whose broken handle had been wrapped in tape, and returned to the house.
In the living room, Atkins told Watson that she had found three more people in the house. He grabbed the length of white nylon rope he had brought with him and handed it to Atkins, telling her to re-tie Frykowski’s hands. “I had him put his hands together in a crisscross fashion,” she later testified. “I have never been very good at tying knots, and I wrapped the rope around his hands a couple of times, and I was shaking and everything was happening so fast that I did a very poor job of tying him up.”
When she had finished, Watson told Atkins to go back and get the others. She walked down the hallway to the first bedroom and stepped inside. When Abigail looked up from her book, Atkins stood at the foot, a knife shining in her hand. “get up and go into the living room,” she said. “Don’t ask any questions. Just do what I say.” Abigail did as told, entering the living room with Atkins following, knife held out before her. Krenwinkel stepped forward and cornered the heiress with her raised knife.
Atkins returned to the closed door at the end of the hallway and flung it open. “Come with me,” Atkins said. “Don’t say a word or you’re dead.”
Sharon looked up, startled. The long-haired woman standing in her bedroom doorway, dressed in black and barefoot, held a knife. Without a word, Sharon and Jay rose from the bed and followed Atkins down the hallway. “She was very pregnant,” Atkins recalled, “and with the bikini panties and flimsy top she was wearing, it showed plainly.” Sharon, she later remembered, “couldn’t believe what was happening.”
As Sharon approached the door from the hallway into the living room, she stopped. She looked at Abigail, who stood in the corner by the fireplace, next to another unknown woman dressed in black who held a knife menacingly in front of her. Voyteck lay on the couch, a white rope around his arms. Her gaze finally landed on Watson, Tall, wild-eyed, bushy-haired and bearded. She hesitated for a few seconds. Watson ran forward and grabbed her roughly by the arm, pulling her in to the room. As he did so, he brushed against the light switch, using his elbow to avoid leaving fingerprints, and throwing the hallway into darkness.
“What are you doing here?” Jay demanded. Jay began to protest against the rough treatment Sharon had received, but Watson told him that if he said anything further, he would die. From the couch, Voyteck mumbled, “He means it.”
Watson grabbed the coil of rope from the floor and threw one end over the long ceiling beam which ran the length of the room and supported the loft above. Once the rope dangled from the ceiling, he approached Jay and tied his wrists in front of him. He looped the rope round his neck, pulling it tight, then pushed him down into the lemon yellow armchair to the left of the couch.
Turning to Sharon, Watson took the end of the rope hanging from the beam and wrapped it tightly round her neck. When he had finished, Watson ordered the prisoners to lie down on their stomachs in front of the fireplace. Terrified, Sharon began to cry, “Shut up!” Watson screamed at her.
“Can’t you see she pregnant?” Jay demanded, rising from the chair. “Let her sit down!” He began to move toward Sharon, in an attempt to place himself between her and the unknown man. His effort to protect Sharon proved fatal.
TO BE CONTINUED LATER TODAY
