Sharon Tate and the Manson Murders

by Greg King

  Throughout the hearing, Atkins denied both her prison statements to Graham and Howard concerning her active participation in the deaths of Gary Hinman and the Cielo Drive victims; claimed she lied at both her Grand Jury testimony and during her murder trial testimony; and was only now telling the truth that she had stabbed no one nor helped kill them. The Parole Board members seemed hesitant to accept this explanation, especially in view of the multitude and enthusiastic abundance of Atkins’ statements in the past to the contrary.19

  By 1996, Atkins had several other problems which caused Board members concern. She had been found guilty of attempting to illegally use one of the institution’s computers to compose a letter protesting legislation which would end inmates’ conjugal rights, then lying about her violation. Members were also concerned that she had been dropped from her group psychotherapy class for lack of attendance. In both cases, Atkins attempted to blame her counselors and those at the institute.

  This refusal to accept responsibility for her own actions, in addition to her selective memory where her crimes were concerned, led to unfavorable psychiatric reports. Dr. Robert B. McDaniel, Staff Psychiatrist, noted Atkins’ “inclination to overcompensate,” and “tendency to minimize” her participation in the crimes. The doctor further noted that Atkins “maintained what appeared to be an artificially cheerful demeanor.”20

  The psychiatric report noted both a “history of polysubstance abuse” and “anti-social personality disorder” present in Atkins. “While drug abuse and anti-social personality would set the stage for someone involved in criminal behavior,” the psychiatrist wrote, “it does not explain, in my opinion, the extreme cruelty and viciousness involved in the crime.” Summarizing McDaniel’s report, Board Member Carol Cantu declared to Atkins: “When he questioned you about some of your feelings, he said that you tended to view this in other terms rather than her instant crime, and rather reluctant to describe it in any detail. ‘The most she would describe was feeling that while she did not stab anyone, that she was guilty of not somehow halting the senseless slaughter that was to ensue.’ And the doctor felt that upon review of the C-file [Atkins’ incarceration history], that you were more involved than you’re willing to discuss. He also felt that you; in some situations, some instances, you tended to minimize or completely avoid certain topics.… And he feels that your tendency to minimize and avoid discussion of the crime and certain aspects of the crime is indicative of a pattern in which you rather skillfully and deftly deflect away from sensitive topics, that this would suggest that you’re very adroit in conversation, diverting attention away from sensitive issues, that this would obviously reduce your level of discomfort, but may slow down your progress in psychotherapy. Psychiatric conclusions, he feels that the diagnosed psycho pathology, such as anti-social behavior, drug abuse, is related to your criminal behavior, that you have psychiatrically deteriorated slightly in the interval of three years ago. However, he does comment that you have matured considerably in the last twenty-five-years of incarceration. And in a less-controlled setting such as a return to the community, you can be considered at risk for deterioration for the following reasons. He believes that you continue to deny the seriousness of your crime, and that you do not deal with problems directly, but deflect them away during conversation.”21

  After the trials, when it became obvious that she faced the remainder of her life in prison, Atkins changed her stories, blaming all of her actions on Manson and on the drugs she took at the ranch. The simple fact is, even before she met Manson, Susan Atkins was a heavy drug user, with a criminal record. Whatever her protests, she possessed enough free will to flaunt her participation in the crimes while incarcerated in Sybil Brand Institute for Women, at a time when she was no longer under Manson’s control, and continued to do so for several years thereafter. Numerous psychiatric reports have declared that she remains a probable danger to society, and that she demonstrates strong anti-social behavior.

  Atkins’ later version of events stood in dramatic opposition to both her previous accounts and those of the other participants in the crime. According to Atkins, as she and Watson stood in the living room with a terrified Sharon Tate, they began to argue whether to kill her or take her with them to have her baby. When Atkins protested against ending her life, Watson screamed, “Get the fuck out of the house!” and Atkins fled, standing alone on the front lawn as Watson himself stabbed the pregnant actress to death.22

  As manipulative and selective as Atkins was with her memory, it is nothing when compared with Charles “Tex” Watson, the man who admittedly stabbed Sharon to death. Watson never once expressed remorse for the crime, until it became convenient to do so under the guise of his own religious experience. Incarcerated at Folsom Prison after his trial, he began to work in the dispensary. In 1975, he declared that he underwent a religious experience and was born again. Conveniently, he managed to get his autobiography, Will You Die for Me?, into bookstores just before his first parole hearing in 1978.

  Watson has continued his prison ministry in the various institutions in which he has been jailed. He participated in the prison chapel programs, trying to convert the criminal populations at Folsom and San Luis Obispo. Eventually, he received his own credentials as a minister. None of this has mattered to the parole boards. He has consistently sat before them and pleaded his case, declaring that, although he was guilty of the murders, he committed them only because of the influence of both drugs and of Manson. During one of his parole hearings, he admitted, “As far as me taking the lead role, I was the male at the crime, but at that time I did not consider myself a leader, I considered myself a follower of Charles Manson, carrying out his orders.”23

  Such an assertion stands in stark contrast to the evidence of Watson’s crimes. His own narrative provides a stunning indictment of his culpability as leader. The pages of Will You Die for Me? reek of his responsibility on the night he killed Sharon: “I told the girls …,” “I shot him …,” “I told Linda …,” “I crept to the front door …,” “I kicked him in the head …,” “I ordered Sadie …,” “I stabbed him.…”24

  No one that night acted except on Watson’s instructions. He cut the telephone lines; he killed Parent; he told Kasabian to search for an open window; he cut the screen to the dining room window, crawled inside and let the girls in; he ordered them to search the rest of the house; he killed Jay; he ordered Atkins to kill Voyteck; he killed both Frykowski and Abigail Folger; he stabbed Sharon Tate. Her personally killed both Leno and Rosemary LaBianca. Parole boards have always found the manner of the crimes, as well as Watson’s eager participation in them, sufficient grounds for his continued incarceration. In addition, his denial of ultimate personal responsibility for his actions, as Susan Atkins has continued to do, does not bode well when examined by the board members. The fact that Watson, like Atkins, came into the Manson Family with a heavy previous involvement with drugs and a predisposition toward criminal acts, has mitigated against his pleas of innocence. Similarly, the fact that, after the murders, Watson left the Family on his own, without informing Manson, because he had simply had enough, speaks volumes about his ability to control his own actions at the time when the crimes were committed.

  In 1990, a psychiatrist wrote that it had only been “during the last three years of one-on-one therapy that he began to truly experience a sense of deep remorse, both for the crime victims and for the families of the crime victims.” When a troubled parole board member asked Watson what, then, he had been feeling the previous eighteen years, he replied, “Well, its not that I haven’t experienced that before, but there’s been things happening in my life over the last few years that have really brought it home more so.” He said that, since becoming a Christian in 1975, it had been “great to know that I have been forgiven by God for what I’ve done. But I think sometimes we can hide behind that, and the last three years I’ve had the opportunity to really see myself in a new light in the sense that I’ve opened myself up to really lo
ok at the crime through other people’s eyes other than just my own.”25

  This devastating revelation made the board members uneasy. They kept prodding him for answers, asking why it had taken eighteen years for him to begin to feel real remorse. Clearly irritated, Watson replied that, “At the time of the crimes, the people we killed weren’t human beings to us.” “I’m sorry,” one of the board members said finally, “but you talk as if you’re from another planet.”26

  While he campaigns for release, Watson remains a dangerous man. Continued psychiatric reports have declared him a potential threat to society. A 1982 report referred to him as “a walking time bomb,” with an incredible degree of repressed hostility and a high potential for violence.27 Five years later, another psychiatric report declared that he was “able to demonstrate no real responsibility for the offenses and cannot comprehend at an effective level feelings of remorse.”28 His 1990 report flatly asserted that he suffered from a borderline personality disorder with an unpredictable level for potential violence.29 In 1993, rather than submit to questions from a new hearing board concerning his financial dealings and fearing that he would be relocated to another prison, Watson voluntarily waived his right to parole, stipulating to his unsuitability.30

  In prison, Watson has married, and, through conjugal visits, fathered four children. His wife and children are financial dependents of the State of California. Additionally, he founded a corporation, Abounding Love Ministries, or ALMS, through which he allegedly funneled much of the money he receives in donations back to his wife. This led to a California State Fraud Investigator’s raid on the house where Watson’s wife and children lived. The state suspected that Kristen Watson had lied to authorities about her income from ALMS, committed perjury and filed false applications for financial aid in a deliberate attempted to defraud the Medi-Cal fund from which she received regular payments each month.31

  Watson has kept himself carefully insulated, refusing to do interviews and cooperating only with members of the Christian community who have embraced him. On his website, he has recently declared, “I’ve learned that it doesn’t do any good to beat myself up with guilt.” On the question of forgiveness, his position is clear: “I’ve been marked in the eyes of man as a murderer and God has protected me. But the mark has been removed in God’s eye, and in the eyes of all those who love Him.”32 With this deft move, Watson managed to shift the onus of forgiveness from himself to the grieving families of the victims.

  Rather than accept responsibility for his actions and the consequences, he has manipulated the issue of repentance to suit his own ends. According to Watson, it is he who is enlightened, forgiven by God; he prays that the families of those he killed can be similarly imbued with the spirit of forgiveness. If they do not forgive him, they have somehow fallen short of the beatific grace he himself claims, and do not share in the Christian fullness he promotes.

  “The Mansonites and their supporters,” writes Dr. Clara Livsey, “continue to try to convey the idea that a great injustice has been inflicted on them, that they really have gotten an unfair deal from the judicial system. Their idiom is cautious, but listening to them one gets the impression that they believe society is the loser because they are in prison instead of being free, leading normal and constructive lives.…”33 She points out the subtle attempt to re-direct the finger of guilt away from those responsible: “It has been said of the Mansonites who participated in the Tate-LaBianca murders that they have suffered enough, that they will bear a stigma for the rest of their lives. In other words they are thus presented as the victims of their own actions.”34

  Whether Watson or Atkins converted to Christianity, whether Krenwinkel now realizes the errors of her past, whether Van Houten feels genuine remorse for her participation in the murder of Rosemary LaBianca, the needs of society—and the desire of society for retribution in the deaths of the innocent victims they killed—have not, according to Doris Tate, been met. The justice system exists to serve four distinct purposes: to remove from society those who pose a threat to the safety and well-being of others; to impose a deterrent factor on society which would mitigate against the commitment of any future crimes; to rehabilitate criminals if possible and address the reasons for their crimes; and to provide retribution on behalf of society against those who have transgressed the established laws. “I don’t care what lawyers for Atkins or Watson argue,” she said. “I don’t believe or care that their clients no longer pose a threat to society. They still owe a debt to society, and that debt is retribution. That’s all society has left to take from them. Society didn’t take their lives, like they took my daughter’s life, and for that, they should be grateful.”35

  Writing of Watson and Atkins, Dr. Clara Livsey declared: “The way in which these two prostitute religion is shocking, yet it has served them well in attaining a great deal of publicity and good connections. Each has written books that tell their own self-serving account of their lives and their criminal activities. The pair, who have no qualms in proclaiming that Jesus is their attorney, work assiduously towards being paroled not just—they claim—to enjoy a free life, but because humanity is awaiting their ministrations.”36

  Manson himself has been cynical of the jailhouse religious conversions of his former Family members. “If, in fact, they are as sincere about Christianity and as strong in religion as they were sold on drugs and deceit during the time our lives ran parallel,” Manson wrote, “then God has got two very devoted disciples. But if, on the other hand, they are with their God as they were with me, they are still going to do just as they please.”37

  Chapter 36

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

  After Sharon’s funeral, Roman Polanski remained in Los Angeles, staying with friends as he dealt with the emotional ordeal of cleaning out 10050 Cielo Drive and dispersing her things. During the investigation into the crimes, he undertook his own search for those responsible for her murder. The announcement of the arrest of Manson and his Family members brought him no relief, no sense of satisfaction. Everything in Los Angeles—the circle of friends he kept, the city, the lifestyle—reminded him of his loss. Taking a few belongings with him, he returned to London, where he lived in the Eaton Place mews house he had shared with Sharon. “After Sharon’s death,” he said, “everything seemed so futile. Nothing made sense. Nothing. I had difficulty finding anything worthwhile.”1

  Roman’s first film after Sharon’s death was a new production of Macbeth. English writer Kenneth Tynan worked with Polanski on the screenplay. Tynan, who had known both Sharon and Roman during their earlier London residence, noted that his friend seemed distressed, emotionally drained. During the filming of the murder of Macduff’s wife and children, Polanski supervised as make-up artists swabbed the young actor playing Macduff’s son with blood. When Tynan asked if stab wounds would really result in so much blood, Polanski replied, “You didn’t see my house in California last summer. I know about bleeding.”2 When it came time to smear blood across the four-year-old girl playing Macduff’s daughter, Polanski asked casually, “What’s your name?” “Sharon,” she replied.3

  Victor Lownes also had a hand in the film, getting Playboy Enterprises to provide financial backing for the project. It was a hard period for Polanski, and he threw himself blindly and passionately into the film. Although the film, which opened in late 1971, was widely regarded as a critical success, the violence and blood contained in it sent reviewers running to their typewriters, to churn up armchair analysis of how deeply Sharon’s murder had affected Polanski. Roman himself was indignant at the comparisons. “You have to show violence the way it is,” he declared in an interview. “If you don’t show it realistically, then that’s immoral and harmful. If you don’t upset people, then that’s obscenity.”4

  Polanski followed Macbeth with several other critical successes, the most famous of which was his epic Chinatown, starring Faye Dunaway and his friend Jack Nicholson. It was at Nicholson’s house, not far f
rom his old residence at 10050 Cielo Drive, that, in March, 1977, Roman had sex with thirteen-year old Samantha Geimer, a would-be model and actress. He was arrested and pled guilty to sex with a minor on August 8, 1977, the eighth anniversary of Sharon’s murder. Although Roman claimed that he had not known the girl was under-age, the judge ordered him to under-go psychiatric testing, and sentenced him to a period of time at the California Men’s Prison at Chino. He was due to stand trial the coming winter, but slipped out of Los Angeles and out of the country before he could be apprehended. He fled to Paris, where he was born, and spent his time in the capitals of Europe, often creating more scandalous headlines, his romance with fifteen-year-old actress Nastassia Kinski generating a good deal of publicity for both of them.

  During his European exile, Polanski directed his remarkable version of Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles. Before she had sailed from England in July, 1969, Sharon had left her husband a copy of the book to read, saying she thought it would make a great film. Polanski had originally envisioned it as a vehicle for Sharon. In the end, the film starred Polanski’s new girlfriend, Natassia Kinski. Released in 1980, it bore the poignantly simple opening dedication, “To Sharon.”

  Polanski remains in exile; charges are still pending against him in California, and it is unlikely that he will ever return to Los Angeles. He is thus unable to visit the grave of his wife or his unborn son. Occasionally, he telephoned Sharon’s parents, with whom he remained in touch. Only rarely did they meet. “For a while, I couldn’t bear to see him because in my state of denial I would always expect to see Sharon with him,” Doris Tate admitted.5 But these rare meetings formed Roman’s only connection to that part of his life with Sharon.

  In his autobiography, Polanski wrote: “There used to be a tremendous fire within me—an unquenchable confidence that I could master anything if I really set my mind to it. This confidence was badly undermined by the killings and their aftermath.… I doubt if I shall ever again be able to live on a permanent basis with any woman, no matter how beautiful.… My attempts to do so have always failed, not least because I start drawing comparisons to Sharon.… I shall always remain faithful to her till the day I die.”6