by Greg King
Alice LaBianca, Leno’s first wife, had spent that Sunday at the beach with her children. Late that night, the telephone rang. Leno’s eldest daughter Cory took the call. She hung up the telephone and turned to her mother.
“Suzan just called,” she said slowly, “Suzan just called.”
“Well, so?” Alice asked.
“She said dad’s been shot.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Alice replied. “Who’d want to shoot your father? Call her back. Did she leave her number?”
The LaBiancas, however, were unable to reach Suzan Struthers. “We didn’t know what it was all about,” Alice recalled. “My stomach was just in knots, wondering what had gone on.” Alice’s brother quickly phoned the police, who acknowledged that there had been a homicide in the neighborhood, but refused to confirm any details. “It was five or six hours later,” Alice continues, “while we were all keeping vigil all night, before we heard from one of Leno’s very close friends, who happened to be in the police department. He called and told us what had happened. He said it was pretty awful. From that moment on, we didn’t turn on the news, we didn’t look at a newspaper, we didn’t do anything, because we didn’t want to know what awful thing had happened to Leno, because the children loved him dearly, and he was a very good father to them. I’d loved him dearly.”43
“Leno had just had his forty-fourth birthday when he was murdered,” says Alice. “He was the financial expert as well as the President of Gateway Markets, and when he was murdered, it left the company without a knowledgeable leader. The creditors took it over six years after his death. Leno’s mother died of a broken heart soon after.”44
Although the police tried to keep many of the details of these crimes from the press, the leaks were sufficient enough to raise questions. Two different sets of murders in Los Angeles, on two different nights and in two different locations. Both sets of victims were wealthy. There was no apparent motive in either set of crimes. Both sets of crimes had been committed with terrible savagery. Victims in both sets of murders had been stabbed repeatedly, with apparently similar weapons. There was no evidence of robbery at either crime scene. And, at both crime scenes, the killers had left messages printed in the victims’ own blood.
“I don’t see any connection between this murder and the others,” Los Angeles Police Department Inspector K. J. McCauley told reporters. “They’re too widely removed. I just don’t see any connection.”45 As much as the LAPD tried to deny any linkage between the murders on Cielo Drive and those on Waverly Drive, however, the evidence seemed to indicate that both crimes had been committed by the same set of killers.
Chapter 32
“You Wouldn’t Believe How Weird These People Were.”
Sharon had died with a slight, almost wistful smile on her face, a perverse mockery of the brutal wounds which had savaged her body. Her half-open eyes stared vacantly, a stream of tears having washed a path through the trickle of blood which had escaped from her lips. Her long, honey-blonde hair was still partially tucked into the nylon noose twisted round her neck, its strands matted with crimson.
Her body had been logged into the admission books at the downtown Los Angeles Medical Examiner’s Office early that Saturday afternoon. A photographer circled the metal table, every flash illuminating a new, horrific wound, before the body was stripped of its blood-spattered bikini panties and bra, and carefully washed. The autopsy would not take place until the following day, Sunday, and her body was stored in a refrigerated drawer until that time.
Dr. Thomas Noguchi, Chief Coroner for the City of Los Angeles, performed the post mortem examination, assisted by several deputy coroners. The autopsy began at 11:20 A.M. Sunday morning. Cause of death was listed as “Multiple stab wounds of chest and back penetrating heart, lungs, and liver causing massive hemorrhage.” Of her wounds, four of these were to the chest, one to the abdomen, eight to the back, and one to the back of her right thigh. Her upper right arm and upper left arm both bore defensive stab wounds, obtained in her desperate, futile attempt to fight off her killers and protect the life of her unborn baby. Most of the wounds to the chest and abdomen had penetrated to a depth of four inches, causing massive internal injuries to the liver, lungs and heart. Those to the back had struck her ribs, chipping at the bone.1 On her left cheek, Noguchi noted a small rope burn, suggesting that, prior to her death, she had been hung.2
Barium-sulfate paste was carefully squeezed into each of the wounds, allowing their exact dimensions to be measured and carefully examined in x-rays.3 The knives which had made many of the wounds had been sharpened along not only the cutting edge, but also along the top half of the blade, making them twice as deadly. Portions of her organs were sectioned and saved in formalin; separate jars were labeled and filled with pieces of skin extracted from three of the back wounds to preserve the dimensions of the wound pattern. Her liver, kidneys and stomach were also removed, examined and sectioned. Finally, Noguchi did a vaginal smear, determining as a result that Sharon had not had intercourse within the last twenty-four hours.4
In spite of the fact that she had been pregnant, Sharon had not put on much weight: at the time of her death, she weighed 136 pounds. During the course of the autopsy, Noguchi carefully removed the perfectly formed fetus from the womb. It was a boy, of eight-and-a-half months gestation. The fetus had not been harmed at all by the numerous stab wounds the mother received. Noguchi thought that the fetus probably lived for about fifteen to twenty minutes after its mother’s death before it, too, had died.
The autopsy took three hours. While television broadcasts and the front pages of newspapers round the world had featured film clips and photographs depicting her great beauty, this was not how Thomas Noguchi saw her. For him, Sharon Tate would always be Victim No. 69-8796.
Throughout the afternoon, the autopsies of the other Cielo Drive victims were carried out, revealing the terrible condition of the bodies. Steven Parent had been shot four times: once in the left cheek, twice in the chest, and once on the left arm. He had also been stabbed once in the left hand, a slice which cut deeply between his fingers.
Jay Sebring had been shot once, the bullet penetrating the left side of his chest and piercing his lung. The wound was, in and of itself, fatal. He had been stabbed six times, wounds primarily to his left chest, causing massive internal hemorrhage to the aorta. He had also suffered a defensive stab wound to his left hand. His face bore mute witness to the brutality of his death: repeated kicks and blows had broken and flattened his nose, and caused ugly swellings below his right eye and cheek.
Abigail Folger had been stabbed twenty-eight times, and died from massive blood loss. While the stabs to the chest and aorta had caused death, several wounds to her lower right stomach had resulted in an open wound, some six inches long, through which her intestines protruded. Her face had also been violently slashed. Her left cheek was sliced by a diagonal incision, running from her hairline to her mouth, some six inches long. It continued across her lips and curved just above her chin. A second slice, running several inches, crossed her upper left chin.
Voyteck Frykowski had struggled hardest for his life. He had been shot twice, struck over the head thirteen times with a blunt object, and stabbed fifty-one times. The blunt-force trauma to his head had left his skull smashed in several places. Several of his stab wounds were to the back; nearly a dozen to the chest; sixteen wounds to his upper left arm; and eight to his left leg, as if they had been administered while he lay on his right side on the lawn. Noguchi noted that many of the stab wounds were post-mortem, inflicted as Voyteck was already dead. “In my entire experience,” wrote Noguchi, “I had never seen such savagery applied to one person.”5
The mournful parade of funerals took place on Wednesday, 13 August. Victor Lownes, under police escort, had gone up to 10050 Cielo Drive to select a dress from Sharon’s closet to bury her in. “It was very quiet, no one around except for a few policemen,” Lownes recalls. “I remember walking up the walk and t
o the porch and seeing pools of blood all over the place. And ‘Pig’ on the door in Sharon’s blood.” There was blood all over the place—in the living room, in the bedroom. I went through the closet in a hurry—I just wanted to get out of there.”6 He eventually settled on a blue and yellow Emilio Pucci print mini dress, which had been one of her favorites.7 This was taken to Cunningham and O’Connor, the funeral home handling the arrangements. Once she was dressed, her body was carefully placed in a satin-lined silver casket; also in the coffin, wrapped in a shroud, lay her unborn baby, Paul Richard Polanski. On Roman’s instructions, the casket was closed; the only person to view Sharon’s body after it was placed in the coffin was her father.8
She was buried at the Holy Cross Memorial Cemetery at Baldwin Hills in Culver City, overlooking Los Angeles near the San Diego Freeway. Her grave was located on a bluff near a serene grotto, just up the hill from that of actor Bela Lugosi. A memorial service was conducted in the cemetery chapel by a friend of Sharon’s family, Father Peter O’Reilly. Sharon had frequently gone to Mass at Father O’Reilly’s Catholic Church, and he had known her well. Some two hundred persons attended the service, including John and Michelle Phillips; Peter Sellers; Kirk Douglas; Robert and Peggy Lipton; Warren Beatty; Yul Brynner; James Coburn; and Lee Marvin. Even in his drug-induced stupor, Roman noted the absence of one of Sharon’s friends, actor Steve McQueen, who, fearful of the unknown killers, had remained away. “I never forgave him for that,” Polanski later commented bitterly.9
“Black-clad,” recalls Joan Collins, “the celebrity mourners, many of whom were weeping uncontrollably, looked strangely out of place under the azure sky.”10 A hundred members of the press, kept away from the chapel, still managed to capture the agony of Roman Polanski and Sharon’s family with their long lenses. As the silver casket, covered with white and pink tea roses, was carried into the chapel, Roman, dressed in black and his eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses, followed behind, clutching the arms of Sharon’s mother Doris and a family doctor. Sharon’s two sisters, Debra and Patti, their heads covered, like that of their mother, with lace mantillas, walked with their father Paul. “I will never forget the scene,” Doris Tate later recalled. “The mourners couldn’t all get inside, and the crowd was standing outside the little chapel, where flowers lined the walkway to the road.”11
“I had never been to anything so sad, so horribly unreal,” remembers Michelle Phillips. “It seemed totally unbelievable, overwhelming. I remember at one point I just went out of the church, walked to the lawn, and laid down on the grass, staring up at the sky. I couldn’t handle what was happening.”12 Through his own tears, Father O’Reilly said, “She was a fine person, and we were in no small measure devoted to her.… Goodbye, Sharon, and may the angels welcome you to heaven, and the martyrs guide your way.”13
Later that afternoon, a service was held for Jay Sebring at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale. This time, Steve McQueen did attend, along with Henry Fonda, James Garner, Warren Beatty and John and Michelle Phillips. “We had a bottle of Crown Royale in the car,” Michelle Phillips remembers. “By the time we got to Jay’s service, I think I was probably drunk. I just couldn’t face the reality of what had happened to Sharon and Jay. It was an awful period for all of us.”14
No one knew what to expect, and a sense of unreal tension hung in the air. Neile McQueen recalled, “Steve carried a gun in his breast pocket. Just in case. At the church at Forest Lawn I was shocked to find Jay in an open casket. But considering his violent death, the morticians had done a masterful job. As we sat waiting for the service to start, a strange man climbed up to the altar where Jay’s body lay and began a bizarre chant. Nobody knew who he was and it galvanized everyone present to attention. Warren Beatty, who was sitting next to me, was ready to throw me onto the floor, fearful that some sort of altercation was about to occur. He was aware Steven had a gun and was concerned what might happen if anybody opened fire. But somebody removed the man who was chanting in front of Jay’s body and order resumed.”15 Later, his body was buried in Southfield, Michigan.
Abigail Folger’s body was returned to San Francisco, for a Catholic requiem mass that same morning at Our Lady of the Wayside Catholic Church in Portola, followed by interment at a nearby cemetery, while Steven Parent was buried by his family in El Monte that afternoon. Voyteck Frykowski’s body was cremated; on 29 August, his ashes were finally returned to his native Poland, where he was interred in the St. Josef Cemetery in Lodz.
The day before her funeral, Sharon finally received in death what she had worked so hard for in life: stardom. Eager to cash in on the prevailing interest in her murder, distributors rushed to reopen Valley of the Dolls and The Fearless Vampire Killers. These were soon followed by some of her other films, all sharing one common factor: in death, Sharon’s name was billed in large letters, before the films’ titles. No one in Hollywood ever paid so great a price for fame.
Once Sharon was laid to rest, the speculation began anew: who had killed her and her friends, and, perhaps more curiously, why? The uncertainty weighed heavily on everyone around her. Not only did the chance remain that the killers might strike again, but, for Roman, Doris and Paul Tate and their surviving daughters, it was impossible to begin the healing process as long as the questions remained unanswered. Fearful for their safety, Doris took Debra and Patti back to Texas, where they stayed with relatives, away from the glare of the media. “We didn’t know who did it,” Doris Tate recalled. “If they wanted to kill one, they could kill another.”16
The situation was made even worse by the ceaseless press attention, speculation and erroneous reporting which was a consistent feature of the months following the murders. Everyone who had known Sharon in life seemed to want to talk about her in death, and often unfavorably. Rumors of wild orgies and massive drug dealing at 10050 Cielo Drive became legion. Those who did remember her kindly were largely ignored in the sensationalistic rush to dig up anything potentially “relevant” to a possible motive.
In an attempt to stem the tide of speculation, Roman’s friend and business partner Gene Gutowski released a statement to the press on Monday, 11 August:
“Roman Polanski is understandably too overcome by grief and shock to speak to the press. In speaking to me and other friends, however, he has expressed some thoughts which I feel should be made public. Nobody or anything can give him back his lovely wife and the unborn child or his dear friends Voyteck Frykowski, Jay Sebring and Abigail Folger, who were murdered so brutally by some sick person or persons.
“Mr. Polanski wishes to make it very clear that there was no rift between his wife and himself as some irresponsible journalists here have suggested even before the tragedy. I personally know how devoted to each other they were … the few weeks they were separated they phoned each other every day; last time Roman phoned her a few hours before she was murdered. The reason that Sharon went to California ahead of Roman was to avoid a long air journey in her last full month of pregnancy. In fact, she traveled by sea. Roman had to stay behind in order to accept in person the Donatello Award in Taormina from the Italian Government and to finish off work on a new screenplay. He planned to join Sharon in Hollywood this week … she was planning a birthday party for him on Monday, the 18th. In the meantime, he asked Voyteck Frykowski, an old friend from Poland, and Abigail Folger to stay in the house in Cielo Drive with Sharon. I doubt if anyone knows Roman better or has been closer to him in the last five years than I have. Not only are we working partners, we are also close friends as were Sharon and my wife.… I was with him when he first met Sharon, when they fell in love. I was his best man at their wedding a year and a half ago. They were a storybook couple, deeply in love and expecting a much-wanted baby.”17
But such pronouncements did little to fill the public appetite for gossip. “You wouldn’t believe how weird these people were,” a detective on the case commented to a reporter from Life magazine. “If you live like that, what do you expect?” He was referring to th
e prominent rumors of sex and drugs circulating about the residents of 10050 Cielo Drive—and Jay Sebring and Voyteck Frykowski in particular. But Sharon’s family was horrified, reading the words of a detective on their daughter’s murder case saying, in effect, that she herself had brought about her own death through some imagined lifestyle. Very quickly, the victims ceased being victims, and soon became the catalysts of their own deaths in the eyes of many on the scene. “The same abject details are cited again and again,” the same reporter noted, “always proving something different, until one collects an impression of the victims murdered again and again by relays of fresh marauders.… The rumors read like a graph of community paranoia. Every story promotes the murders into assassinations, crimes of logical consequence in which some vision of the victims’ way of living makes them accomplices in their own deaths.…”18
Joe Hyams wrote in one article that Sharon had been a student of black magic and voodoo and the occult. Another writer reported that he had attended a black mass at Jay’s house. He said Sharon greeted him at the door and led him into a dark, candlelit room filled with people in white robes where he was handed two goblets. “One contains wine, the other rat poison,” Jay is alleged to have told him. “Take your pick.”19