Born: January 24, 1943
Died: August 9, 1969
“Mother, mother . . .”
Those were Sharon Tate’s last words.
On August 9, 1969, when police were summoned to the Benedict Canyon house Roman Polanski rented for his wife, the actress the eight months pregnant woman had already been stabbed to death. The woman who got her first big break as a secretary on an episode of The Beverly Hillbillies, the woman who helped Valley of the Dolls become a camp classic, the woman who measured in at 36-22-35, the cover girl whose favorite lip makeup was Vaseline (she kept jars of it in her car), was gone. Besides Tate and her unborn son, the carnage included hair stylist friend Jay Sebring (1933-1969), mountain-grown coffee heiress Abigail Folger (1943-1969); her boyfriend Wojciech Frykowski (1936-1969) and Steven Parent (1951-1969), who was leaving the property after visiting his friend, caretaker William Garretson.
For a town that is rarely shocked, Hollywood was terrorized. The infamous Manson Family had paid a visit to 10050 Cielo Drive. Fanatic Charles Manson was the leader of “The Family,” a group of followers who believed what he preached and prophesied: that a race war was inevitable, and that blacks would triumph against whites and wipe them out. Manson preached to his “Family” that they would hide in a hole in the desert until the Black and White Holocaust was over, then they would then have dominion over the world, with Manson emerging as Jesus Christ, ruling as one of five co-prophets-the other four prophets being The Beatles!
Scary stuff. What’s scarier is that the unemployed ex-con didn’t actually commit the carnage. He instructed his followers to “totally destroy everyone . . . as gruesome as you can;” he (and his “family members”) received life in prison for masterminding these murders and the murder of a husband and wife two days later. In a jailhouse confession, Manson member Susan Atkins?who was promised immunity from prosecution-claimed that it was she who actually stabbed Tate to death. Restraining Tate while her friends were brutally butchered before her eyes, Atkins said she coldly told the terrified actress that she would be murdered and that there was nothing she could do about it. As Atkins repeatedly stabbed Tate, the dying actress cried out in anguish for her own mother. Atkins confessed that she then tasted Tate’s blood, and used a towel dipped in Tate’s blood to write DEATH TO PIGS on the wall and PIG on the front door.
Manson, Corcoran State Prison inmate No. B33920, has been denied parole 11 times. He will be eligible again in 2012. Other family members remain behind bars, aging and dying little each day as they live with the memories of their horrific crimes.
Tate and her unborn baby boy named Paul Richard Polanski are buried in Holy Cross Cemetery, Culver City, California.
Morbid Curiosity, By Alan W. Petrucelli