by Greg King
Like the LaBiancas, the family of Steven Parent long remained silent. His sister Janet recalls the painful memories of the Tate-LaBianca trial, and the devastating aftermath which followed the verdicts. Once the trials were over, the police released the victims’ personal property which had been held in evidence. The white, 1966 Ambassador in which Steve had been shot and killed by Watson, was duly returned to the Parents. “The police had taken the panels out of the car,” Janet remembers, “and when we got it back, Steve’s blood was still in the cracks, along the seat and under the console. They also brought back an envelope which had my brother’s personal effects. His watch and his class ring were still covered with dried blood. There was no feeling about it at all. My brother was a nobody as far as everyone else was concerned, but he was a somebody to us.”14
The subject of parole remains an understandably painful one with Janet Parent. She takes umbrage at the seemingly endless series of hearings given to Manson, Watson, Atkins, Krenwinkel and Van Houten. “I want to do what I can do to keep them in there,” she says, “but I don’t want to do anything that will endanger myself and my family. I just want somebody to make me understand how this can even be happening. I just can’t rationalize any of it. These are people who we know have killed already. Why do we want to put them back out? I fear for my life, I fear for the lives of others. They’re putting everyone in jeopardy. I know that somebody has got to help keep them in there, but at the same time, I’m upset, I’m afraid. I don’t even know how to deal with it. They have to keep rehashing it, and giving these people the chance to get out. They shouldn’t even be alive, they shouldn’t be here. There’s no way they can ever be rehabilitated. I just don’t understand why people support them.”15
On 7 July, 1999, media attention focused on the California Women’s Correctional Facility at Corona, where Leslie Van Houten was scheduled to attend her thirteenth parole hearing. The year before, on receiving a one year denial from the Board of Prison Terms, she had smiled broadly at the commissioners. In 1999, there was much talk that the photogenic and well-spoken Van Houten might finally be given a release date.
Also present that day were three disparate players: Stephen Kay, Deputy District Attorney who had assisted Vincent Bugliosi at the original Tate-LaBianca trial and tried Van Houten in her two following trials; Angela Smaldino, niece of Leno LaBianca; and Bill Nelson, an independent producer, author of two books on the Manson Family, and owner of a website dedicated to the history of the crimes.
It was obvious from Van Houten’s initial appearance before the Board of Prison Terms that this day was to be somehow different. Kay noted: “She looked like she didn’t sleep last night, she had big circles under her eyes, she was shaking and quivering.”16 Van Houten scarcely glanced at Smaldino and Kay as she took her seat. Van Houten began her parole hearing by raising an objection. She was incensed that Nelson, among others, was offering copies of her various parole hearings for sale. “I feel,” she told the Board of Prison Terms, “that this has gotten a little out of hand, and I believe that there is really no reason for the camera to be in the board room, when it’s being gotten to somehow and sold for profit. And I believe that the internet has become a place where there’s a lot of exploiting of violence, and this man has a shopping list, and I am part of that shopping list, and if you allow the camera in here then I’m partaking in it, and I can’t do that.”17
After some discussion, however, the Board members refused to remove the camera. Visibly upset, Van Houten continued to voice objections. “I think there’s a lot of things going on,” she said, “that are not proper and correct. I feel like I’m part of a circus, to tell you the truth, and I need to get an attorney to look into why these decisions are being made the way they are, because I don’t think it’s right. I think someone’s manipulating the system to make money, and I can’t be part of that.”
Van Houten turned to Angela Smaldino, Leno LaBianca’s niece, who sat at the end of the table. “I deeply apologize to you,” she began, “for all the pain I caused you,” before Presiding Commissioner Carol Bentley interrupted, telling Van Houten not to speak directly to the family member. Van Houten, however, ignored the Commissioner and continued to speak over her objections, finally declaring, “I gotta go, I can’t be part of this hearing. I don’t know how this works, I don’t know if I’m postponed, I just know that I can’t sit here and do this knowing that someone’s going to sell it.”
On her feet now, Van Houten was on her way out of the hearing room when Bently stopped her, suggesting that the Board take a recess to discuss the matter. When the three member Board of Prison Terms returned, they told Van Houten that her parole hearing would be postponed until her objections could be examined.
“I’m going to look into hiring an attorney also,” Van Houten added. “This has gotten too big for me … I um … I don’t know … how many cameras are outside? How many news media are outside, how many agencies? Do you know? Do you know if Mr. Nelson is on the grounds?”18
Nelson was indeed on the grounds, there to obtain his video copy of the proceedings. He stood outside the facility, watching a live feed from the hearing room along with other media representatives. “I heard her mention my name, and I turned away from the monitor in disbelief and said, ‘I’ve just become the story.’”19
As soon as the hearing was adjourned, the collected media swarmed round Nelson, shouting questions and demanding to know how much income he had derived from his website sales. He patiently explained his permission to tape the proceedings, and that the majority of sales from his site were made to researchers and television producers. The press, however, was reluctant to let the story drop with this simple answer; he was described on the KNBC news broadcast that evening as “an obsessed man with a website.”20
Deputy District Attorney Stephen Kay suggested after the adjournment that the presence for the first time of a LaBianca relative, Angela Smaldino, unnerved Van Houten. “I know Leslie pretty well,” Kay said. “We sat next to each other in the original trial. I tried her on both of her re-trials, and I’ve been to all thirteen of her parole hearings.… She usually is very well spoken, but she had trouble with her words today, and what this was all about was that for the first time in any parole hearing a relative of the LaBianacas showed up, and she was going to have to face Angela Smaldino, who was a niece of Leno LaBianca, and hear about the devastation that these murders caused the LaBianca family, and even worse than that for Leslie, the Board was going to hear about the devastation.”21
Smaldino certainly believed that it was her presence which led to Van Houten’s shaken appearance. She told Court TV correspondent Clara Tuma: “I wanted her to face what she did to the whole family. We know what she did to Leno and Rosemary. They died in fifteen minutes, but our family died slowly, over the last fifteen years.”22 Smaldino told Court TV’s Clara Tuma that she thought it was “appalling that this day, in public, Leslie Van Houten would reach out” to her.23
On June 3, 2000, Patti Tate died after a long battle with cancer at the age of forty-two, while Sharon’s father, Paul, passed away in 2005. Debra Tate, the last surviving member of Sharon’s immediate family, has become the public face of opposition to parole for those involved in the 1969 murders. Endowed with her mother’s strength of purpose, Debra fights on against the horror her family has endured for five decades while promoting Sharon’s memory.
Cancer also brought an end to Susan Atkins’s decades-long effort to win her freedom. She received a four-year denial at her 2005 parole hearing; three years later, she was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. Debra Tate opposed her proposed release; Atkins, she said, should remain incarcerated while receiving medical treatment. A review panel sided with Tate. On September 24, 2009, the woman who had once so proudly boasted of stabbing Sharon Tate died at the age of sixty-one.
“Many people I know in Los Angeles,” wrote Joan Didion, “believe that the Sixties ended abruptly on August 9, 1969, ended at the exact momen
t when word of the murders on Cielo Drive traveled like brushfire through the community, and in a sense this is true. The tension broke that day. The paranoia was fulfilled.”24
Thirty years after her death, Sharon lives on, not only in the hearts and minds of her family and friends, but also in books, magazines, film, and on pages scattered across the internet, operated by those too young or too removed to ever have known her in life. Many are fascinated by her macabre death; others, enchanted by her beauty and entertained by her brief body of work, dream of what might have been.
Sharon Marie Tate Polanski continues to haunt the minds of the American public, an admittedly morbid fascination, but also a measure of her immense charm, beauty and sense of innocence which came to an abrupt end that hot summer night at Cielo Drive. No one knows what might have become of her career as an actress. The one area where she appeared to be heading, that of a comedic actress, might have proved a showcase worthy of her talents had she gained more experience and starred in further roles. Ultimately, and unfortunately, what Sharon so wanted in life she managed only to achieve in death: stardom.
Sharon’s real legacy lies not in her movies or in her television work; not in the glowing memories of friends and colleagues whose recollections may be accused of having fallen to the inevitable trap of nostalgia; nor does it lie in the monstrous end which she suffered, and the ensuing trials and incarcerations of one of the most sinister groups ever to surface in the United States. Sharon Tate’s legacy must be viewed as the one which her mother and sisters, Patti and Debra, so tirelessly endeavored to promote: the fight for victims’ rights. The very fact that, today, victims or their families in California are able to sit before those convicted of a crime and have a voice in the sentencing at trials or at parole hearings, is largely due to the work of Doris Tate. Their years of devotion to Sharon’s memory and dedication to victims’ rights, ironically wrought from devastating tragedy, have helped transform Sharon from mere victim, restore a human face to one of the twentieth century’s most infamous crimes, and finally sever the link between her name and that of Charles Manson.
“Sharon Tate,” wrote Gerald Malanga (a writer-actor at Warhol’s factory), “enjoyed her life to the utmost while it lasted and contributed to a high and joyous quality to the life of others. Death could not alter this fact; for however death may affect the future, it cannot touch the past.… Sharon came into existence and has passed out of existence. Yet between that birth and death she lived her life, has made her actions count with a scope and meaning that the finality of death cannot defeat.”25
Image Gallery
Sharon Tate in Hollywood.
Sharon Tate as a senior at Vincenza American High School.
Phillippe Forquet and Sharon (Frank Edwards).
With Roman Polanski in The Fearless Vampire Killers.
Poster for The Fearless Vampire Killers.
An atypical portrait of Sharon.
Poster for Valley of the Dolls.
Leno LaBianca (center) signing a Gateways Market contract (photo courtesy of Alice LaBianca).
The words “Death To Pigs” written in blood on the wall of the LaBianca residence.
Sharon in death.
Jay Sebring in death.
Charles Manson.
Charles “Tex” Watson, mug shot, 1971.
Manson, booking photo, 1967.
A postcard (front and back) sent by Manson in 1998 from State Prison in Corcoran, California.
“Do you want to wright (sic) one of the guys here—you know I can't keep up with ALL & or Everyone. So I just ride and let it roll in a (illegible) thing. Do you want to HOOK up with somebody. Cool—Easy, Charles Manson.”
Mrs. Doris Tate bring interviewed (with Bill Nelson) about her frequent battles for victims’ rights.
The grave marker.
Publicity shots of Sharon at the apex of her career.
Sharon Tate, 1967.
Sharon Tate on the set of The Beverly Hillbillies, with Nancy Kulp and Max Baer.
Source Notes
Prologue
1. Brottman, 18.
2. Art Schultz to author.
3. Doris Tate to author.
4. Ibid.
5. Bob Lardine, “Reaching for Instant Stardom: Sharon Tate is on a Crash Program to get to the Top.” In the New York Sunday News, 16 December, 1966.
6. Art Schultz to author.
7. Doris Tate to author.
8. Edwards, 67.
9. Eye of the Devil Pressbook, MGM-Filmways, Inc., 13.
10 Musel, 24.
11. Doris Tate to author.
12. Musel, 26.
13. Bowers, 27.
14. Lydia Lane, “Sharon Tate’s Big Discovery.” In the Los Angeles Times, 24 October, 1967.
15. Doris Tate to author.
Chapter One
1. Art Schultz to author.
2. Ibid.
3. Will Melendez to author.
4. Art Schultz to author.
5. Will Melendez to author.
6. Howard Miller to author.
7. Bowers, 27.
8. Sheila Boyle Plank, on “The Last Days of Sharon Tate,” True Hollywood Stories, E! Entertainment Channel, produced by Brent Zacky, 1999.
9. Elizabeth Gedwed Stroup to author.
10. Sheila Boyle Plank to author.
11. Sheila Boyle Plank, on “The Last Days of Sharon Tate,” True Hollywood Stories, E! Entertainment Channel, produced by Brent Zacky, 1999.
12. Bowers, 27; details are also drawn from Sharon’s 1961 Vincenza American High annual, Nostra Italia.
13. Art Schultz to author.
14. Will Melendez to author.
15. Lydia Lane, op. cit.
16. Bowers, 27.
17. Howard Miller to author.
18. Art Schultz to author.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid.
21. Jim Wilson to author.
22. Art Schultz to author.
23. Polanski, 252.
24. Art Schultz to author.
25. Skip Ward to author.
26. Bob Lardine, op. cit.
27. Pat Boone to author.
28. Ibid.
29. Ibid.
30. Doris Tate, in Sharon Tate the Victim, Charles Manson the Killer, videotape produced by Bill Nelson, California Breeze, Costa Mesa, California, 1990.
31. Sheila Boyle Plank, on “The Last Days of Sharon Tate,” True Hollywood Stories, E! Entertainment Channel, produced by Brent Zacky, 1999.
32. Art Schultz to author.
33. Ibid.
34. Crivello, 38.
Chapter Two
1. Stern, 7.
2. Musel, 24–6.
3. Skip Ward to author.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Bowers, 27.
7. Crivello, 38.
8. Hal Gefsky to author.
9. Hal Gefsky, quoted in TV Radio Mirror, November, 1969, 12.
10. Hal Gefsky to author.
11. Doris Tate, in Sharon Tate the Victim, Charles Manson the Killer, op. cit.
12. Sanders, 72.
13. Crivello, 38.
14. Bowers, 27.
15. Hal Gefsky to author.
16. Schessler, 11.
17. Hal Gefsky to author.
18. Crivello, 38.
19. Ibid, 38–9.
20. Musel, 24–6.
21. Bowers, 27.
22. Mike Mindlin to author.
23. Hal Gefsky to author.
24. Crivello, 38.
25. Hal Gefsky to author.
26. Ibid
27. Bowers, 27.
28. Herb Browar to author.
29. Bowers, 27
30. Lindsay, 45–6.
31. Musel, 24.
32. Lindsay, 45–6.
33. Polanski, 250.
34. Lindsay, 45.
35. Ibid, 100.
36. Bowers, 28.
37. Herb Browar to author.
38. Ibid.
39. Ibid.
40. Mike Mindlin to author.
41. Hal Gefsky to author.
42. Rollin, 55.
43. Musel, 26.
44. Cox, 150–151.
45. Bowers, 28.
Chapter Three
1. Philippe Forquet to author.
2. Hal Gefsky to author.
3. Philippe Forquet to author.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Holt, 318.
7. Philippe Forquet to author.
8. Young, 49.
9. Nalven, 286.
10. Ibid, 290.
11. Cox, 137.
12. Musel, 26.
13. Eye of the Devil Pressbook, MGM-Filmways, Inc.
14. Musel, 24.
15. Bowers, 28.
16. Rollin, 55.
17. Bowers, 28.
18. Eye of the Devil Pressbook, MGM-Filmways, Inc.
19. Mike Mindlin to author.
20. Herb Browar to author.
21. Cox, 137.
22. Ibid, 79–80.
23. Nancy Kulp to author.
24. Musel, 26.
25. Philippe Forquet to author.
26. Bowers, 28.
27. Philippe Forquet to author.
28. Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, 27 May, 1964.
29. Philippe Forquet to author.
30. Bugliosi, 26.