Sharon Tate and the Manson Murders

by Greg King

  For Polanski, however, life carried on. After a succession of public affairs, he met Emmanuelle Seigner. Beautiful, with dark hair and classic features, Seigner—like Sharon—was an actress, the product of a distinguished theatrical family. The similarities between the two women were stunning: like Sharon, Seigner’s abilities were widely ignored, her experience comprising roles which called more on her physical presence than her acting talents. As had Sharon, she found the Polish director fascinating. He was double her age when, on August 30, 1989, Roman married Seigner. Four years later, on Roman and Sharon’s wedding anniversary—20 January, 1993—Seigner gave birth to Roman’s first child, a daughter named Morgane. A son, Elvis, followed several years later, finally providing Polanski with the family which Sharon’s death had denied him.

  Ultimately, the final chapter in the story of Sharon’s life and death rests with her mother, Doris, and sisters, Debra and Patti, and the legacy they embraced and championed. It was Doris Tate who, grieving over the loss of her daughter, channeled her pain into the work which she alone could perform for victims. Through the work of her mother and youngest sister, Sharon’s tragic murder has finally taken on a sense of courageous and passionate purpose.

  Following the delivery of the guilty verdicts in her murder trial, Sharon’s family retreated into obscure silence. Doris returned from Houston to Palos Verdes with Debra and Patricia, and the two girls re-enrolled in a local school. Paul Tate, having taken early retirement from the Army to help discover Sharon’s killers, took a job as a private investigator. Doris opened a beauty salon called Tate’s, naming the way she cut hair “the Sebring method.”7

  The sense of normalcy, however, was a horrible charade. According to Doris, she went from day to day, “just hanging in there and going on. I had to continue on for the other children.”8 As much as they tried to shield their daughters, however, neither Paul or Doris could hide the wound Sharon’s death had caused in their lives. “The most painful thing for me was to watch my parents grieve, to watch their hurt and know their hurt,” remembered Patti. “When my mom was alive, I couldn’t help her or my father with their sadness. As a young child, I saw all that and realized that there was so much I couldn’t do. You want so much to help, but how do you help someone who is grieving so?”9

  In the Tate house, a large photograph of Sharon stared down from the living room wall; shelves and tables held other memories. But her name was rarely mentioned. “Talking about Sharon brought up so many memories, and it was almost impossible to separate the good from the bad,” Doris recalled.10 It was easier for Doris to deny Sharon’s death than accept the devastating loss. “For three years,” she explained, “I could not mention her name. I was so grief stricken, for ten years to be exact, that I couldn’t even talk about this. I was in a pattern of denial. For three years, I could not even say that my daughter was dead.”11

  “I had a very hard time,” Doris said. “At first, I couldn’t even come back to the cemetery. It took me six months before I could visit Sharon’s grave. I had to be ready to separate the body from the soul, and she’s not there. I know where she is.”12 More than anything, it was the brutal and senseless manner of Sharon’s death which overwhelmed her family. “I can’t imagine a man holding a pregnant woman down and stabbing her to death,” Doris said. “My mind will not allow me to imagine what she went through.”13

  “It is impossible for anyone who hasn’t gone through it to understand the depth of the pain that one goes through when losing a child to murder,” Doris explained. “It is very hard if you can’t understand that emotion. Life changes forever. As a parent you never expect to outlive your own children.”14

  The trauma of Sharon’s death was made even worse, though, by the constant swirl of publicity. Her murder was dredged up relentlessly by the media throughout the following decades; as the Supreme Court struck down the death penalty; as Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme tried to assassinate President Ford; as Vincent Bugliosi’s book Helter Skelter was first published, then made into a mini-series for television; as Manson began to give interviews; as Leslie Van Houten was granted a new trial; as the murderers went up for parole for the first time; and as the anniversaries of the murders came and went. “It took me ten years to recoup,” Doris said. “Some parents get over it in less time, but it took me ten years, because I kept denying that it had happened.”15

  “When I got to the point where I couldn’t stand it,” Doris remembered, “I flipped open the Bible. Through my religion I learned you go directly to your God. That’s where the answers come from.” She eventually turned to Proverbs 24:17-18: “Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth, and let not thine heart be glad when he stumbleth; Lest the Lord see it, and it displease Him, and He turn away His wrath from him.” For Doris, the words literally saved her. “The scripture was the only thing that did pull me through. I knew it was someone else they were going to have to deal with. I just left my revenge with the Lord. He led the way. He took care of me.”16

  Increasingly, Doris turned to prayer for comfort. “I am very religious, a Catholic, and Christianity is a big part of my surviving,” she declared.17 Her deep faith gave her a sense of serenity, but it was not until 1982 that Doris was forced to publicly confront Sharon’s death. Ironically, it was the potential release of prisoner Leslie Van Houten—one of the Manson Family members who had not participated in Sharon’s murder—which drew her out of her shell.

  By 1982, Leslie Van Houten had collected some 900 signatures on a petition asking for her release from prison. To many, it looked as if she might win an early parole. Stephen Kay, who had helped in Bugliosi’s original prosecution of the defendants, was worried enough to recall a promise which Doris had made to him a decade earlier. Then, when the trials had come to an end, Sharon’s mother had told Kay that if he ever feared that any of the killers would win release from prison and there was anything she could do to help, he should telephone her. With Leslie Van Houten actively petitioning the Board of Prison Terms, Kay rang the Tate house in Palos Verdes. “Leslie Van Houten has 900 signatures that they are going to present to the Board for her release,” he explained. “I need your help.”18

  Kay’s telephone call broke Doris’s self-imposed distance from the tragedy. Although Van Houten had not been among her daughter’s killers, she was still horrified that any of the murderous Manson Family might be free to walk the streets again. “If they can get 900 names, surely I can get enough people to agree with me they should not be released,” she remembered.19

  Ironically, in view of the deplorable sensationalism which had surrounded the murders and the trials, Doris went to the one source she knew would give her a voice. She contacted the tabloid National Enquirer and asked if they would help. “I told them that I would write a story for them if they agreed to publish it, and if they would run a coupon that people could clip and send to me opposing her parole.”20 The article, on the potential release of Van Houten, told of Doris Tate’s efforts to spearhead a letter-writing campaign to deny parole for any of the Manson killers. It worked. Doris Tate soon had over 350,000 letters from people all over the world, all of them united in opposition to the release of any of the convicted killers who committed the crimes at either 10050 Cielo Drive or 3301 Waverly Drive. The petitions and letters went in dozens of boxes to the parole board pondering Van Houten’s fate: it was enough to make them change their minds, and Van Houten was denied a parole date.21

  The experience changed Doris Tate’s life. Where previously she had relegated her daughter’s death and the fate of her killers to the painful recesses of her mind, she now decided the time had come to confront the issue head on. A gentle, soft-spoken woman, Doris hardly seemed a likely candidate for a crusading champion of victims’ rights. Yet, taking the painful experiences of her own tragedy, she managed to build a platform which would eventually attract the attentions of the world’s media.

  She immediately joined the Los Angeles Chapter of the organization Parents of Murdered Child
ren, a support group for the families of the victims of violent crimes. “Once I was prepared to face Sharon’s death,” she explained, “then I was able to counsel other families.” Although an undoubtedly painful experience, especially at the beginning, Doris was determined to make a difference in the lives of those who, like herself and her family, had suffered at the hands of violent crime, either directly or indirectly. “Why not turn something that was so horrible into something worthwhile for her memory?” she declared, summing up her growing motivation as an activist.22

  A large part of Doris Tate’s work was with victims’ rights groups. She was an advisor and member of the Victim Offender Reconciliation Group; Parents of Murdered Children; and the group Justice for Homicide Victims, and founded COVER, the Coalition on Victims’ Equal Rights. She also served on the California State Advisory Committee on Correctional Services, as a victims’ representative to various parole boards and prison authorities.

  “My target is the first time offender,” she once explained. As a member of the Victim Offender Reconciliation Group, she made regular pilgrimages to various institutions, to meet with inmates and to share her story with them. There were also videotaped presentations from other victims’ families, and comments from survivors of violent crime. At times her receptions were cool, and she was frequently seen as the enemy by many inmates—at least until she began to speak. One of Doris Tate’s greatest assets was her ability to speak about Sharon’s tragic death, and the emotional impact it had had on not only herself but on her family as well. Putting a human face on the victim was an essential part of this work. “If you can rehabilitate even one, or two or three of these people, you have saved some victim’s life,” she explained.23

  Much of Doris Tate’s work as a member of the California State Advisory Committee on Correctional Services was a determined effort to reform the prison system. She actively campaigned for a number of important changes, all of which she believed were necessary to bring the system in line with public expectations. This included inmates having to work for a minimum wage and learn productive skills during their period of incarceration. Under Doris Tate’s proposals, prisoners would have paid taxes with the money they earned, paid room and board to the state, made restitution to victims, and been forced to save a substantial sum for their future use on the outside in the event of a parole.

  She was intimately involved in the successful passage of California Proposition Number 8, the “Victim’s Rights Bill.” This measure, which went into effect in 1982, for the first time allowed victims to make impact statements at the sentencing of their attackers, or, in the case of murder, the families of the victims. The Bill also gave victims access to any pre-sentencing investigative criminal and psychiatric reports prior to sentencing, and outlawed the use of plea-bargaining in certain cases, mainly murder, armed robbery, rape or arson. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it allowed victims or the families of victims to make impact statements at parole hearings, and to be granted prior access to any of the relevant criminal or psychiatric documents which the inmate might use at the hearing. It was a stunning victory for Doris, and propelled her further along in her quest to protect those victims of violent crime whom she regularly encountered.

  Energized and convinced that she had the ability to make a difference, Doris ran for the California State Assembly in 1984 as a strong advocate for victims’ rights. She lost, but this did not stall her efforts on behalf of victims’ rights. Along with her friend Stephen Kay, she campaigned actively for the passage of California Proposition Number 89, which allowed the state’s governor to overturn parole decisions made by the Board of Prison Terms. When it passed, it was thanks in large part to their ceaseless activism.

  Her work within the corrections system made Doris Tate a strong advocate not only of reform but of stricter sentencing and use of capital punishment. At the time of the Manson trial, when asked to comment on the death sentences handed down to her Sharon’s murderers, she shyly answered that she believed it was wrong to take a life, be that the life of her innocent daughter or those who had mercilessly slaughtered her. Gradually, however, after spending years hearing the stories of other families who had suffered at the hands of those inmates who had killed and then been paroled to commit further crimes, she changed her views.

  “We are depending on our legislators and assemblymen to make decent laws,” she said in one interview, “but they are letting us down.” When faced with the frequent objection that the death penalty is merely state-sponsored killing, she angrily declared, “Look, we are not murdering these people, they bring it on themselves when they commit the crimes.” Even so, she was not a blanket proponent of the death penalty. Only in the most heinous of crimes, like the murder of her daughter and six other innocent victims, did she feel that its use was justified.24

  Because her daughter’s murder was, and remains to this day, a uniquely high-profile crime, Doris was determined to turn her own personal pain and loss into a public platform allowing her to not only fight for victims’ rights but also against the faults she perceived in the corrections system. Speaking of the Manson case, she declared: “It won’t go away, and that’s the reason I feel I’ve got to do whatever I can do. That it won’t go away is fine with me. It affords me an opportunity to do something in my daughter’s name. If there’s such a thing as destiny, then this is my plight.”25 She added: “I would like to see the whole system changed. My work can only be done through the Manson family.”26

  In this capacity, she was a frequent guest on numerous talk and interview shows dealing with crime and with victims’ rights. Once she began this work, there was no shying away from the ensuing publicity it brought, and she realized that, if she were to do any good, it would have necessarily to come through a public discussion of her own personal tragedy. Naturally enough, a large part of her energies were directed at specifically opposing any attempt by those involved with her daughter’s death.

  She and her husband began attending the parole hearings of both Charles “Tex” Watson and Susan Atkins, the two Manson Family members who had actually stabbed Sharon, when the specifics of Proposition 8 were introduced into the California Penal System. The first face-to-face meeting she had with Watson, in 1985, was a distinctly uncomfortable experience. In a small room, Watson, accompanied by his attorney, sat at one end of a long table, with Doris at the other. She later recalled feeling almost possessed, saying, “I could have killed him.”27 Her husband, glancing over to Watson occasionally, told the parole board, “That man should never, never, never be turned out into society.”28 This first effort was successful, for Watson was denied parole, not for the first, and not for the last time.

  At Susan Atkin’s parole hearings, Doris Tate was confronted with a tearful, middle-aged woman who continually declared that she was a changed person, that she should be set free. Although the tears seem real enough, Doris declared, “I can’t pay attention to that.”29 Instead, looking at one of her daughter’s killers, she said bitterly, “You’re an excellent actress. The greatest job since Sarah Bernhardt.” To the parole board, Doris read a brief statement: “This woman is guilty of eight murders, which means that she cannot live in an unsuspecting society. I feel very sorry that these people chose this way of life. But, after eight convictions of murder, there’s no turning back. And society has been kind to Ms. Atkins by overturning the death penalty, and that is more concern than she gave my daughter.”30

  Doris was so adamantly opposed to the release of any of the convicted Manson Family killers not only because they were responsible for her daughter’s death but also because she saw it as a terribly dangerous precedent. Many of her arguments involved the issue of releasing serial killers upon society. Where, she would ask, would society then draw the line? If members of the Manson Family were released, then why not other serial killers? It was one of the most pertinent points in her case against release, and one of the most compelling as it did not rest simply with the vengeful mother of a mu
rdered daughter but with a genuine concern about setting and enforcing limits on the corrections system itself. “What an embarrassment to the State of California to let these people out,” she once said. “I will fight as long as I am alive to keep them in.”31

  Likewise, Doris Tate took a dim view of the religious conversions of both Atkins and Watson. Without questioning their sincerity, Doris was adamant that the matter of their faith had nothing whatsoever to do with the granting of parole. “They should be judged not by the faith they profess but by the crimes they committed,” she said. “If religion opened the prison doors to everyone who declared themselves converted, most of the correctional institutions would be empty.”32

  In 1990, this view brought Doris into a painful conflict, ironically with another relative of a Manson Family victim: Suzanne LaBerge, Rosemary LaBianca’s daughter. At the time of the original trials at the beginning of the 1970s, the death of her mother and stepfather so affected LaBerge that she claimed to suffer a nervous breakdown. In the years following the murders, she herself became a Christian. It was while watching a film about religion in prison that she first heard of Watson’s declared conversion. She visited him in prison on several occasions before revealing her true identity. The pair quickly formed an alliance, dedicated to gaining Watson’s release.

  The issue came to a head at the last parole hearing for Watson which Doris attended. It took place in May, 1990, in a small room at the Correctional Institute at San Luis Obispo. “I dread going—and at the same time I wouldn’t miss one,” Doris told a reporter the day before the hearing. “I feel that Sharon has to be represented in that hearing room. If they’re pleading for their lives, then I have to be there representing her—how she lost her life and how she pleaded for her life, and how her pleas were ignored.… Watson seems to think that because of his faith he doesn’t have to pay for the crimes that were committed.”33 She added: “He won’t get out while I’m alive and breathing. I’ll never let Tex live that down.”34