Sharon Tate: A Life

by Ed Sanders

  Sheilah Wells soon also heard the horrible news. Wells recalls it vividly, “Listen, within two hours, there were private detectives in my house, and some were following the occult, and I’m going ‘What are you talking about?’ I mean it was just so bizarre.”

  ES: “As far as the occult, you don’t have any memories of Sharon taking part in anything?”

  Wells: “No. It was all so innocent and strange—having your palms read, and all of that stuff; it all came out of the sixties, and all of those bizarre interests in health food; it was just another part of the deal. It wasn’t anything serious, or strange. It was curiosity. That was just so shocking. I guess they (the detectives) just had to follow different paths.”

  Her great friend’s murder impacted Wells enormously. Afterward, she recounted, “I kind of dropped out. I think it really did affect me more than I knew that it actually had. There was a certain joy, a certain part that just kind of stopped.” Indeed, she continued to act, mainly in television throughout the 1970s, and had a memorable role in the Blues Brothers movie in 1980, but ultimately left the business. (Today she continues her passion for interior design she had revealed when rooming with Sharon back in 1964. “That’s what I do,” she told me. “That’s my passion. I do private residences, people in the business, from Madonna to Rob Schneider.”)

  Colonel Tate Heads for Cielo Drive

  Colonel Paul Tate, according to his written account, was at his base in San Francisco at the time of the murders. He had seen The Wrecking Crew the very night Sharon was slain. The next day, at around 2 p.m., Colonel Tate arrived at Cielo Drive, having been called at Fort Baker by LAPD. He apparently flew from San Francisco, then rented a car.

  He had a reputation, as an intelligence officer, of being icy cool, and having served through three wars, he was well used to violence. But this was of course different, and he brushed away tears as he pushed his way through the throng at the electric gate and walked toward the house. He was intercepted by police, including Lieutenant Robert Helder, who was the lead officer in the investigation.

  Tate arrived at the end of the driveway where the gate opened to the flagstone walkway that curved to the house’s front door. Next to the gate was the wishing well. The colonel could view what the police were doing, searching through cabinets and drawers, through the open French doors. All the bodies had been removed, except for Jay Sebring’s. Lieutenant Helder would not allow Colonel Tate to view Sebring, who when he arrived was being loaded into a duffel bag onto a gurney. After a few minutes the colonel departed this desolation toward the desolation of his family’s home in Palos Verdes.

  Chapter 13

  August 9–10: More Carnage and Grief

  Saturday in London

  When he spoke with Sharon on Friday, Roman decided that he could complete the script for Day of the Dolphin in Los Angeles. So he told his wife he was going to try to get a flight the next day, Saturday. “I’ll leave tomorrow,” he had said, giving her a jolt of happy expectation.

  Saturday, the consulate was closed, and he needed a US visa. So he decided to fly to the United States “the following Monday or Tuesday, as soon as the visa was granted.”

  Also on Saturday came the news that the English nanny, Marie Lee, whom Sharon had selected after interviewing dozens of applicants who responded to an ad she had placed in the London Times, would be granted a US work permit.

  Polanski had lunch on Saturday with “society doctor” Tony Greenburgh and director Simon Hesera. “Conversation was rather subdued,” Polanski later recounted. “We had just learned of the sudden death of a friend of ours, Danielle, Dick Sylbert’s ex-girlfriend. She was a beautiful French girl in her early twenties, and the news had come as a shock. ‘Makes you wonder who’ll be next,’ I remember saying.”

  Then Polanski was back at his Mews house. London was nine hours ahead of LA time, and so it was 7 p.m. in London when the call came in about Cielo Drive. The one making the call was his agent, Bill Tennant.

  Andy Braunsberg answered. “I handed the phone to (Polanski) and he literally unraveled in front of my eyes,” Braunsberg recalled. “He disintegrated. He put the phone down without hanging up, rushed into his bedroom and was weeping and crying and banging his head against the wall.”

  The Marauders Go Forth for Another Night

  On August 5, Mr. and Mrs. Leno LaBianca drove with their speed boat in tow from Los Angeles north to Lake Isabella where Mrs. LaBianca’s teenage son from another marriage, Frank Struthers, was visiting family friends, the Saffies. They left the boat there for Frank to use and returned to Los Angeles.

  On August 9, the LaBiancas returned to Lake Isabella accompanied by Rosemary LaBianca’s daughter, Susan Struthers, age twenty-one, to pick up Frank, and to haul the boat back to Los Angeles. They spent the day on the lake, had dinner, and were about to leave, when Frank Struthers was asked by his young friend to stay on till Sunday. Accordingly, Susan Struthers and the LaBiancas left the Saffie residence at Lake Isabella around 9 p.m., leaving Frank there, driving their green 1968 Thunderbird, hauling the ski boat, toward home.

  They drove straight to Los Angeles. At 1 a.m. they dropped Susan off at her apartment not far from their own home. Shortly after 1 a.m., John Fokianos, who operated a newsstand at the corner of Hillhurst and Franklin Avenue, near the LaBianca house, observed their green Thunderbird pulling the boat-trailer turn into a Standard station, make a U-turn and pull up adjacent to Mr. Fokianos’s newsstand.

  Leno bought a Sunday Herald-Examiner and the Sunday National Daily Reporter, a horse-betting publication. Rosemary LaBianca, reading the horrible story in the Herald-Examiner, was disturbed about the murders on Cielo Drive, so Mr. Fokianos gave her a front-section filler from the Sunday Los Angeles Times with its “ritualistic murders” page-one story. “She seemed quite emotional about it,” Fokianos later told reporters. Mr. and Mrs. LaBianca then drove to their home, parking the car on the street by the house, with the boat still hitched to the back.

  The white one-story house at 3301 Waverly Drive lay in a quiet upper-middle-class neighborhood not far from Griffith Park. The house, once belonging to cartoonist and filmmaker Walt Disney, had been owned since 1968 by Leno and Rosemary. Frank also lived in the house.

  To the west of the LaBianca residence was the former estate of actor Troy Donahue. To the east at 3267 Waverly Drive was the large house once rented by acquaintances of Charles Manson during the period September 1967 to September 1968, during which time some of the M group had undertaken a group LSD trip.

  Leno LaBianca was the chief owner of the State Wholesale Grocery Company that operated the Gateway food market chain, businesses prosperously managed by Leno. Mr. LaBianca held extensive property interests in California and Nevada. He owned an enterprise called Arnel Stables and possessed nine thoroughbred race horses. He formerly was a member of the board of directors of the ill-fated Hollywood National Bank.

  At the time of his death Leno LaBianca was negotiating the purchase of a ranch in Vista, California, for $127,000. His financial affairs were amazingly intricate, but one thing stands out: he was rich. Leno liked to gamble, visiting the race track often, wagering as much as $500 in a single day. The LaBiancas had recently discovered that their telephone was tapped. A telephone repairman was called to the home the day before the murders due to some trouble on the line, and he discovered the tap. It is now thought that the phone was monitored because Mr. LaBianca may occasionally have used the services of an infamous bookmaker known as The Phantom who lived just down the street.

  Mr. LaBianca was forty-four years old and Rosemary was thirty-eight. She was co-owner of a successful dress and gift shop, Boutique Carriage, located within the Gateway shopping center that her husband owned. She herself was a successful businesswoman, and she speculated in stocks and commodities. She left an estate valued at $2,600,000.

  The LaBiancas removed the water skis from the boat and carried them to the back entrance of the house and set them on the fender of M
rs. LaBianca’s 1955 Thunderbird, which they had left by the garage. When they went into the house, Mrs. LaBianca placed her purse on the liquor cabinet in the dining room. Both donned sleeping attire, and Rosemary was in the bedroom preparing to sleep.

  Leno was sitting in his pajamas in the living room, checking out the Herald-Examiner sports section and the racing form, sipping a can of apple beer. His reading glasses rested on the table in front of the L-shaped sectional sofa on which he was sitting.

  He looked up and saw a short hairy Charles Manson wearing a black turtleneck sweater, Levis, and moccasins and waving a cutlass. Charlie told Leno, “Be calm, sit down, and be quiet.” He ordered Mrs. LaBianca out of the bedroom to the living room, where he ordered them to stand back to back. Then he tied them together, making a double square knot, with two forty-two-inch leather thongs from around his neck. He told them that everything was okay, and they weren’t going to get hurt. He sat them down on the divan, and then he walked over to the liquor cabinet, took Rosemary’s wallet from her purse, and walked out the front door, leaving it unlocked. Charlie returned to the car parked outside, the same 1959 Ford used the previous night to drive from the Spahn Ranch to Cielo Drive. Inside sat his hand-picked trio of killers—Tex, Leslie, and Katie, plus driver Linda Kasabian—waiting. He said there were two people in the house and that he had tied them up. He told them that the people were calm and not to instill fear in them. Then, to kill them. Afterward they were to hitchhike back to the ranch, where Katie was to go to the waterfall encampment. The killers got out of the Ford, and Linda Kasabian then drove Manson back to the Spahn Ranch.

  Kill them they did, in a most horrific manner, leaving blood-writing on the walls, strange words and phrases such as “Rise,” “Healter Skelter,” and “Death to Pigs.”

  Then they departed. One of them treated herself to a shower, and to a container of chocolate milk.

  Autopsies and Sleuthing the Maze

  The initial investigation of Sharon Tate’s house was, for the most part, a maze of blind alleys and repetitious and sometimes tedious questionings. All address books, personal papers, sweepings of house and grounds, everything, even the wastebaskets, had to be gathered and examined carefully for leads, enemies, motives, and possible killers. Some investigators searched the brushy hillsides of Benedict Canyon looking for the murder weapons. Others began to look for the type of revolver to fit the bloody bits of walnut pistol grip found in the residence. 10050 Cielo Drive was kept under continuous police guard for about two weeks.

  The LA County medical examiner, Dr. Thomas Noguchi, supervised the autopsies of the victims on Sunday morning, August 10, with Noguchi himself conducting the examination of Tate. Tate joined such luminaries as Robert Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe, who were also autopsied by Noguchi. Several LAPD homicide investigators were on hand during the autopsies. Also at the autopsy were Sergeant Paul Whiteley and Detective Charles Guenther of the sheriff’s homicide department, who were investigating the Gary Hinman murder. They approached the officers handling the Polanski murders and told them about the similarities between the two sets of murders: writing in blood, wounds inflicted by knives, and so on. The officers of the Tate investigation considered the similarities insignificant, however, since there had already been a suspect arrested for the Hinman murder when the later murders were committed.

  Guenther and Whiteley Approach Tate Detectives During Autopsies: August 10

  When writing this book, I asked Sergeant Paul Whiteley to describe approaching the Tate detectives during the autopsies. He replied: “After hearing news reports that there was blood writings at the Tate home and that the autopsies were scheduled for that day, Guenther and I went downstairs to the morgue. Upon entering we saw three of the victims, including Sharon Tate. I remarked to Charlie how beautiful she was even in death. There was about six LAPD robbery-homicide detectives in the autopsy room. I approached Lieutenant Robert Helder and identified myself. I started to relate to him our investigation of the Hinman case, and he directed a Detective Buckles to talk to us. We stepped outside the autopsy room, and I related that we had arrested Robert Beausoleil just days prior for the Hinman Murder. I told him of the blood writing on the wall of ‘Political Piggy.’

  “At this point another LAPD detective came out of the autopsy room and joined us (he never identified himself). Detective Buckles asked us what Hinman did for a living, and I told him a music teacher. He then asked what Beausoleil did for a living and I told him he was part of a hippie group and wannabe musician. Detective Buckles said their investigation had led them to a Caribbean dope deal that was big-time and couldn’t be connected to our case. He further stated that the victims in his case were very important people and they wouldn’t be involved with any hippies. We left and went back upstairs to prepare a wanted bulletin for (Beausoleil’s girlfriend) Kitty Lutesinger.”

  Only a few weeks later, when Sadie/Susan Atkins was arrested for Hinman’s murder and it was discovered that she was not in jail the night of Sharon Tate’s murder, did the connection spark to life.

  Newspaper articles describing the autopsy noted that the baby had been perfectly formed, partly to quell any speculation pertaining to Polanski’s most famous movie. At the same time, the wildest assertions appeared in national publications about the physical state of the victims, based on inaccurate information apparently leaked from someone at the coroner’s office. In Los Angeles, reporters in unusual number gathered at police headquarters, snatching for data.

  Because everything any officer said was being published, they had to be careful. On Sunday, August 10, Lieutenant Robert Helder, the head of the investigation, informed a news conference that efforts to find the perpetrators were focused on acquaintances of the caretaker William Garretson. Another police source stated that they were “not entirely satisfied” with Garretson’s answers. That afternoon Garretson was given an hour-long lie detector test, in the presence of his attorney, Barry Tarlow.

  A lieutenant from the LAPD scientific investigation division administered the polygraph in the late afternoon of August 10, at the Parker Center police headquarters. They found Garretson “stuporous and vague,” as if he were under the influence of some kind of narcotic. During his polygraph interrogation Garretson still seemed confused and unable to remember things.

  For instance, the caretaker was very vague about what had gone on at the Polanski residence the evening of the murders. The polygraph revealed that someone seems to have arrived at the residence immediately prior to Garretson’s trek down to the Sunset Strip where he bought food. Garretson: “And so I stayed home all day Friday, August 8, and I cleaned up the house a little bit and did the dishes and everything, and they came around 8:30, nine o’clock, somewhere around there. And I went to get something to eat, and I went down on the Strip; I had something down there, and I could see her light all the way down from Cielo—not Cielo, but Benedict Canyon, all the way down to the Strip.”

  One question, who are the “they” who arrived about 8:30? The victims returning from dinner at the El Coyote restaurant? Or guests? Garretson was also vague about what he was doing during the murders. At the trial he testified that he spent the time writing a letter to a friend named Darryl and listening to The Doors and a Mama Cass album. During the polygraph he admitted he might have gone out in back of his house, which was out of view of the main house and grounds, so perhaps he hid there. In spite of inconsistencies, his answers regarding his innocence were shown on the polygraph to be truthful, so Garretson was eliminated as a suspect.

  Garretson’s attorney, Barry Tarlow, secured the services of a private investigator who conducted a separate polygraph examination of Garretson, and compiled a tape about Garretson and the scene at 10050 Cielo Drive.

  “I felt very strongly that he had heard someone that night,” the private investigator later told my investigator, Larry Larsen, during the murder trial.

  One thing Garretson claimed was that Sharon Tate had given Garretson marijuana for
Garretson and Rudy Altobelli to smoke. “Altobelli sent him over for it, and he got it in a little tin foil and brought it back,” said the private eye. “He showed truthful in the polygraph except for what he could have heard.”

  When I later visited Sharon Tate’s mother, Doris, she too was perplexed about Garretson. She wondered, where was the caretaker during the murders? Patricia Krenwinkel told her attorney during the trial that she remembered entering the caretaker’s house but finding no one there. Yet the caretaker swore he was there all night, listening to records, smoking pot, and sleeping. Mrs. Tate had doubts. It was a mystery she wanted to be cleared up.

  Doris believed that the Manson group had advance word that Sharon Tate was not going to be at the house that night. Back in 1971, Larry Larsen had interviewed Jay Sebring’s business partner, from whom we learned Sharon had intended to spend the night with a friend. Mrs. Tate verified that during my visit.

  Manson associate Vern Plumlee had told us that he’d heard the Family thought Sharon wouldn’t be there. Doris Tate believed, she told me, that someone might have tipped the Family off. She wondered if someone saw that Sharon’s red Ferrari was gone (it was in the repair shop) and called Manson, and then the attack began.

  At the time, I was sending question lists to Manson in prison, and she suggested I tell him I’d visited her. She thought that maybe that would jog his memory.

  Steve Brandt, who was a good friend of the Polanskis’ as well as their former press agent and a legal witness for their 1968 wedding, arrived in Los Angeles on Sunday, August 10, from New York. He was questioned in detail by police investigators and provided “voluminous information,” according to reports at the time, about Sharon Tate and her circle of friends and about dope and Frykowski’s ten-day mescaline experiment.