Sharon Tate: A Life

by Ed Sanders

  On each side of the bed were marble-topped tables, one holding an oval-framed wedding portrait and a princess phone. A bottle of Heineken’s beer, Jay Sebring’s favorite drink, rested upon the other.

  There was a large closet in the bedroom, as well as a bathroom and a dressing room. A tall armoire with drawers near the bottom rested against a wall. One drawer was packed with photos of Sharon. On top of the wardrobe lay a new white bassinet for the baby, wrapped in clear plastic. To the right, an ornate hookah.

  A Sony videotape viewer and a television lay to the left of the armoire.

  Sadie returned to the living room and informed Watson that there were people in the bedrooms. He was angry. He told Sadie to go into the bedrooms and bring them to the living room. Sadie opened her Buck clasp knife and walked into Abigail Folger’s bedroom, and said “Go out into the living room. Don’t ask any questions.” She went to Sharon’s bedroom and did the same thing.

  Jay Sebring said, “What’s going on?” when he arrived in the living room. “Sit down!” shouted Tex, but Jay refused.

  Sebring, a cool, experienced businessman, and Frykowski, survivor of Hitler, probably tended not, at first, to fight. But then when Tex commanded all of them to lie down on the floor on their stomachs atop some pillows, Sebring said, “Let her sit down, can’t you see she’s pregnant?” Then he grabbed for the gun and Tex shot him in the armpit. Jay fell, and Tex kicked him in the bridge of his nose. Abigail then screamed.

  Christopher, the Weimaraner, somehow escaped the back patio porch of the guesthouse, barking excitedly. The dog trotted into the front door of the main house about this time. Sadie said later that a “hunting dog” came around. Sadie even thought that somehow the dog got hold of her knife, which several minutes later she accidentally dropped down the side of a cushion during a scuffle. “We looked all over for it. I really think the dog got it.”

  Next Tex Watson snarled, “All right, where’s the money?” Abigail replied that her purse was in the bedroom. Sadie jabbed her Buck knife up against Folger’s back and conducted her to the bedroom. Abigail there opened up her black canvas shoulder bag and gave out seventy-two or seventy-three dollars. Sadie turned down Abigail’s credit cards, and they walked back into the living room.

  Tex then tied Sharon and Abigail around and around their necks with the nylon rope and threw the end of it over the white ceiling beam, telling Sadie to choke the rope so that the two had to stand up or else choke. Jay’s unconscious body acted as a weight on the other end of the rope knotted around his neck.

  Concerned about Wojtek Frykowski, Tex instructed Sadie to retie his hands with a bigger towel. She returned with a large Martex bath towel, and tied his hands behind him more securely, then she shoved Wojtek back onto the couch, and then stood guard over him.

  Tex told Katie to turn out all the lights. The next morning the only lights the police discovered turned on were the hall light leading into the back bedrooms and the desk lamp in the living room.

  As Katie was hauling on the end of the rope, one of the victims asked, “What are you going to do to us?”

  Tex Watson replied, “You are all going to die.” And once again he announced he was the Devil. Right away a thick blast of moans, begging, and shrieks arose as the victims struggled to free themselves.

  Wojtek Frykowski was bouncing up and down, trying to loosen the knot behind his back, and Tex ordered Sadie to kill him. Sadie raised her knife then paused. Frykowski tore his hands free, reaching up from the sofa to grab her hair and pulled her down, gripping her knife arm. He hit her on her head and both rolled onto the stuffed chair.

  Sadie freed her arm, and started wildly stabbing, first four times down his left leg. He tried to flee toward the hall to the entrance, while she stabbed him in the back, hitting bone, but then she got him in the right lung. Sadie lost her knife, which the police later found lodged, blade up, between the cushion and the back of the chair. Without a weapon, Sadie yelled for help, clinging to his back.

  Still Frykowski pushed onward. Then Tex twisted him around and shot him in the middle of his back and again in his right thigh, but still Wojtek walked. Then when the .22 misfired, Tex began to club his face and scalp with the gun, breaking one of its walnut grips into pieces. When Tex ran to get Wojtek, Sharon and Abigail were struggling to free themselves from the knots on their necks. Abigail broke loose and headed for the back bedroom, toward the French doors to the swimming pool that led to freedom. Abigail clawed at the shuttered door, smearing blood, to open it up. Krenwinkel raced after her, and the taller and stronger Abigail fought fiercely. Katie put herself on Death Row when she tried to prevent the door from being opened, leaving a fingerprint above the knob on the right French door.

  Meanwhile, Tex stabbed the struggling Sebring four times, and kicked his face, then, his black velour turtleneck beginning to get bloody, his eyes shiny with the thrill of kill, he raced to Abigail, wounded only defensively at this point, having fled out the bedroom door. Abigail surrendered. “I give up. Take me.” He did, smashing her head with the gun butt, and stabbing her chest and abdomen till she fell on the lawn.

  Watson then heard Wojtek screaming near the front lawn; he ran toward him, and saw him rise up from the bush into which he had fallen and then stagger across the grass. Sadie/Susan Atkins later told a cellmate, “He got to the lawn and was standing there hollering, ‘Help! Help!’ and nobody even heard him.”

  The young mother Linda Kasabian was kneeling in the dark by the electric gate. She heard screams, and ran up the walkway onto the grass. As she later wrote, “Then I saw Frykowski staggering out the door—drenched in blood—I looked in his eyes—he looked in mine—I saw the image of Christ in him, I cried and I prayed with all my heart.” It was then, she recounted, that she began to feel Charles Manson no longer to be Jesus Christ. Instead, he was the Devil.

  Sadie left the house upset that she had lost her knife. She spoke with Linda Kasabian, and then when Wojtek got to his feet and began to scream into the hot night, Tex sprinted out the front door and rode poor Frykowski to the ground, while stabbing.

  At that moment, all the killers were out of the house, leaving Sharon as yet unharmed. Sharon started toward the front door just as Krenwinkel reentered the back door by the pool and entered the living room.

  Sharon was crying for her unborn child’s life. Sadie caught her in a headlock. Tex said it looked like Sharon wanted to sit down, so, as Sadie later reported, “I took her over and sat her down on the couch.”

  “All I want to do is have my baby,” said Sharon. Sadie spoke with her to calm her down, but also mentioned how she had no mercy for her. A Manson Family member, about a month later, overheard Sadie say that Sharon was the last to die because she “had to watch the others die.”

  Sharon sat quietly, and the killers waited for a few minutes. Finally it came. Sadie later told a cellmate that she held Sharon’s arms back behind her. And Sharon turned her head around and looked back at Sadie, “Please don’t kill me, please don’t kill me. I don’t want to die.” She was crying. “Please, I’m going to have a baby.”

  Sadie answered, “Look, bitch! I don’t care if you’re going to have a baby. You’d better be ready. You’re going to die.” Sharon begged her killers to take her with them and let her have the baby before they killed her. It seemed like a good idea to Tex at first—after all, the Family adored children. Then someone said, “Kill her.”

  Tex told Sadie to kill. Sadie said she couldn’t do it. Katie? No, Tex you do it. So Tex stabbed her several times in the left breast through the brassiere. Then they all stabbed her, sixteen times, with both knives. Sadie said she was thrilled. “It felt so good, the first time I stabbed her.”

  All of a sudden, Tex said: “Get out.” The girls left, and then Tex came out and proceeded to evilly conduct a final circuit. He ran counterclockwise: first to Abigail to stab her, then over to the lifeless Frykowski, where Tex kicked him. Then the man who had called himself the Devil ran inside t
he house to arrange the tableau.

  While Tex was inside the house, Sadie and Katie walked around looking for Linda, but couldn’t find her. Tex came out of the house and ordered Sadie to go in the house and write something on the door—something witchy.

  Tex and Katie walked down the walkway, and Sadie went back through the front door. Sadie walked into the haunted room. Evidently Tex (or Manson himself when he visited the house a few hours later) had looped the nylon rope twice around Sharon’s neck. There was a double loop around Sebring’s neck, with an overhand knot formed by the second loop. The rope led from one end, which was under Jay’s body, around his neck twice over to Sharon, who was lying in front of the couch beneath the flag, around her neck twice, then back along the couch and over the ceiling beam.

  Sadie went over to Sharon Tate and put her head on her stomach to listen, kneeling on the floor by the velvet couch. Finally Sadie went to the yellow towel used to tie Wojtek’s hands, came back, and obtained some blood from Sharon’s breast, then licked some blood from her fingers.

  She knelt down by the front door to print “PIG” in blood type O-M. Then she went back into the living room, tossed the towel toward the hearth, and departed. She left the door wide open, and as she moved off the porch, left behind two barefoot prints in blood. Sharon’s black kitten walked mewing amidst the carnage.

  She found them waiting for her when she reached the electric gate. Tex forgot life imprisonment and left a smear of red on the gate button. The blood was Sebring’s. The gate opened, and the stabbers scooped up their spare clothes and huffed down the hill as the gate closed.

  Linda Kasabian had already started the Ford, and Tex yelled at her, and pushed her to the passenger’s side. Then he low-voice yelled at Sadie for losing the Buck knife. He turned right onto Benedict Canyon Drive switching the lights on. Then the four drove up Benedict Canyon while changing their clothes. They talked excitedly in the hot a.m.

  Linda gathered the bloody attire into a ball, and Tex told her to wipe the prints off the gun and the two knives. Linda threw the bundle down a ravine, which bounced down intact, lodging against a bush. Then she hurled down the knives. Tex said they needed to wash up, so they pulled left off Benedict onto a street just a block north of the street where Jay Sebring lived.

  Tex spotted a garden hose hooked up to a house, so he turned the Ford around, parking toward the Canyon road in case they needed to escape quickly. Then they walked a few feet to the hose. The owner of the house heard splashing water, so he took a flashlight and went into his basement to look for leaks. Then there were voices from the street, so he flashed the light on them, saying, “Just what do you think you’re doing?”

  Tall Tex replied, “Hi, we’re just getting a drink of water, and we’re sorry to have disturbed you.”

  “Is that your car?” asked the owner. “No, it’s not. We’re walking.”

  Tex opened the door for the girls and then flooded the engine. Finally the engine caught and Tex peeled out, wrenching the owner’s clutching hand. As the car sped away, he memorized the number and later wrote it down, GYY 435.

  Tex didn’t turn on his lights until he reached the Valley, where they stopped for gas. The three killers went to the john to wash, and Sadie noticed there was blood on the car. Tex told Linda to drive the rest of the way to the ranch. Somewhere Tex evidently threw the Longhorn revolver out the right window down a ravine at a location about one and a half miles from Sharon’s house.

  During the rest of the drive, the foursome seemed to relax, becoming even semi-jovial. The weapons, the blood, the clothes, they were safely tossed, weren’t they? And they began to trade anecdotes.

  Tex groaned that he had hurt his foot and it was painful. Sadie’s scalp was awfully sore where Wojtek had grabbed her hair. Katie’s contribution was how the knife handle hurt her hand each time she stabbed. The knives were inadequate, all agreed. Sadie complained about the toughness of Wojtek’s legs when she hacked at them. They had vivid memories of the moans, and how Sharon kept calling out to God and Abigail kept crying out to her mother.

  Manson was dancing naked with key disciple Brenda, aka Nancy Pitman, by the Longhorn Saloon at 2 a.m. when the quartet returned. “What’re you doing home so early?,” he wanted to know.

  When Tex traced the events, Manson was distressed at the low body count. He had ordered additional killings in other houses near Cielo Drive. Watson remembered later, “When he asked why we didn’t go to any other houses, I just shrugged.”

  Sadie announced that she had seen blood on the vehicle, so Charlie instructed her, Linda, and Katie to wash it with a sponge and water. After the three washed the Ford, he told them to go into the bunkhouse while Sadie wiped the exterior.

  Several chuckled when Tex told how he had said to people in the house, “I’m the Devil, I’m here to do the Devil’s business, where’s your money?” Next, Manson polled the hackers to see if any felt remorse for what they had done, and all replied, “No.”

  Not long thereafter, Tex and Charlie entered the bunkhouse together for a further colloquy on what had occurred. Manson was pleased when Tex recounted that everything had been messy; bodies were lying around, but all were certainly dead.

  The killers were sleepy. Kasabian went to the back ranch to rest. Sadie made love with a man—she thinks it might have been Clem—then went to sleep. Katie and Tex slept in the Saloon.

  There is a considerable difference between the scene of the murders, as left by Atkins, Krenwinkel, Watson, and Kasabian, and the one found by the police the next morning. For instance, none of them had tucked any face towel over the head of Jay Sebring, yet the police found a towel over his head.

  There was not enough slack in the rope that extended from Sharon Tate to Jay Sebring for Sharon to have stood and moved around, yet she moved around the room, the killers recounted. So the rope perhaps was affixed sometime after her death. The murderers, particularly Sadie/Susan Atkins, did not mention fixing the rope, although the ever-babbling Atkins gave lengthy confessional torrents about every aspect of the crimes to anybody who would listen. Nor did she mention the brown-framed glasses found by the bloody steamer trunks.

  Also Roman’s steamer trunks in the living room by the hall door were knocked away during the night; the killers didn’t do it. There was a long trail of blood extending down the side of the upper trunk onto the slid-askew top of the bottom trunk. Sebring’s blood, yet the killers claim he was killed in one spot and never moved.

  The answer is that Manson and a companion returned to the scene of the crime.

  During the trial, studying the large blood map of the house, I became suspicious that Manson had gone to the murder scene, and asked defense attorney Paul Fitzgerald to query Manson. He replied, “I went back to see what my children did.” Apparently unknown to the others, Manson and a pal drove to Cielo Drive, where they boldly parked not far from the gate. They wiped down Steven Parent’s car for prints, then walked into the house and saw the dead bodies. Manson later wrote in his autobiography (as told to Nuel Emmons), “I did not feel pity or compassion for the victims. My only concern was whether it resembled the Hinman killing. Would the police now have reason to believe that Bobby was not the slayer of Hinman?” Plus were any fingerprints left there?

  “I’d had thoughts of creating a scene more in keeping with a black-against-white retaliation, but in looking around, I lost the heart to carry out my plans.” With towels they wiped every surface clean, leaving a Tex Watson print on the front door and Krenwinkel’s on the door leading to the swimming pool. Manson hooded a beige towel over Sebring’s head, tucking the ends beneath the rope loops.

  They may have done other horrible things; perhaps they moved Sharon’s body, and Jay’s also, to the front porch, then carried them back into the living room. In support of this, two large pools of blood were left on the front porch, one to the left of the door mat, type O-M, Sharon Tate’s, and the other on the edge of the porch, type O-Mn, Jay Sebring’s. Parent’s,
Frykowski’s and Folger’s blood types were all B-Mn, so none of the blood on the porch could have been theirs. A police report describing the homicide scene stated, regarding the blood of Sharon Tate on the front porch, that “From the amount of blood there it would appear that she remained there for at least minutes prior to movement.” There were also spatters of Sharon Tate’s blood in the front hall and on the door sill, but never, while the killers were at the estate, was she in the hall. The killers—Linda, Katie, and Sadie—later stated that at no time were Sharon Tate or Jay Sebring near the front porch. If they weren’t moved there, how did their blood get there in such quantity?

  Manson’s associate brought an old pair of eyeglasses used as a magnifying glass to start fires, which he or she tossed down near Roman Polanski’s steamer trucks as a false clue. Then Manson and pal were gone.

  By the door leading to the hallway to Sharon’s bedroom rested the wooden rocking chair Doris and Paul Tate had given their daughter for nursing the baby.

  Stephanie, Manson’s newfound love, testified that Manson came to her around dawn the morning just after the murders and brought her up into Devil Canyon, likely to the campsite by the waterfall, where she stayed for about a week.

  Manson in August 1969

  Tex Watson

  Susan Atkins

  Patricia Krenwinkel

  Linda Kasabian

  Chapter 12

  Night and Morning

  There were a number of screams and shots reported in Benedict Canyon during the night, most of the screams were after the murders were committed. Nothing out of the ordinary, just ordinary hot weekend screams.