by Ed Sanders
The owner of Cielo Drive, Rudy Altobelli, arrived from Europe Sunday evening. Since the residence was sealed off, he went to a place where he felt he would be safe—to Terry Melcher’s Malibu beach house! Only later did he realize the irony. He was interviewed by the police. They asked him about the party in March where Roman Polanski threw a person out. Early speculation held that the “PIG” on the front door was actually “PIC,” the nickname of one of the men thrown from the party. They also asked him questions about any possible marital problems between Mr. and Mrs. Polanski.
Mr. Altobelli was asked at the trial when he, Altobelli, first thought that Manson might be responsible for the murders. Altobelli replied that he thought of Manson as a suspect on the plane trip back to the United States just after the murders. In a tragic hesitation without which Manson might have been caught right away, Altobelli testified he did not volunteer the information to the police because he was not asked about it.
Later on Sunday evening, August 10, Roman Polanski arrived at Los Angeles International Airport from London, traveling with friends, including Richard Sylbert, and was silent coming through customs when the reporters crowded about with quick questions, disconcerting lights, and pushing microphones. His friend and associate, Gene Gutowski, read a short statement to the press that condemned sensationalistic printed rumors of rituals and marital problems that had filled the front pages and television screens of Europe and America. Roman Polanski at once was taken into seclusion in an apartment within the Paramount Studios complex.
Robert Evans, in his book, The Kid Stays in the Picture, described it: “I arranged for (Polanski) to be driven to Paramount and installed in the suite that had recently been Julie Andrews’s dressing room for Darling Lili. There he hibernated for a few days, heavily sedated by a Paramount doctor.”
Polanski’s friend Andy Braunsberg recounted how Polanski was protected at Paramount by bodyguards. It was safer that way, rather than at a hotel, since the killers were still aroam. “It was like the monster from the black lagoon. People believed this would not be the last of the killings,” remembered Braunsberg. Polanski was “in a state of complete shock and breakdown.”
Late Sunday night police found Sharon’s 1967 red Ferrari, license number VAM 559, in a body-repair shop where it had been taken after her fender-bender with her mom—thus removing the possibility that it may have been used as an escape vehicle by a robber-killer or killers.
About the same time, the artist named Witold K. called a friend in New York from a phone booth in Los Angeles, talking nervously in Polish, stating that he knew who the killers were and that he was in fear. Then New York acquaintances contacted a New York Times reporter in Los Angeles and related Witold K.’s claim. The reporter called the Los Angeles police, who promised Witold twenty-four-hour protection if he would talk. His friends called Witold K. back at the phone booth where he was waiting, and he agreed to the protection. Three police cars picked up Witold K. and delivered him to the apartment at Paramount Studios where Roman Polanski was in seclusion.
Witold K. told police that Frykowski was offered an exclusive dealership in the Los Angeles area, to distribute the drug MDA. Quarreling occurred, and one of the suppliers threatened to off Frykowski. Witold K. claimed not to know the names of the possible killers but that he could recognize them, and also that they were Canadian. Mr. Frykowski, said Mr. K., kept a diary, written in Polish, and also kept voluminous notes and jotted many phone numbers and addresses. The artist told the police that the identity of the killers was likely to be found in these notes and diaries, but that “it would take two weeks” for him to locate the killers’ identities from the notebooks. One close friend, writer Jerzy Kosinski, told me in an interview that Witold K. went around, escorted by police, to the prestigious addresses in Frykowski’s notebooks to try to locate the killer—always careful to leave his business card.
Witold K.’s career as a painter was temporarily boosted by his cooperation with the police. One newspaper account showed a picture of Witold K. posing with several of his paintings on the Polanski front lawn. Kosinski claimed that Witold K. even sold a couple of his paintings to two investigators.
This is typical of the hundreds of leads followed vigorously by the police that led to blind walls of cool, silent traffickers in dope. And few things are more hidden than the big-league dope trade.
Finding the LaBiancas
Rosemary LaBianca’s sixteen-year-old son, Frank Struthers, was driven home from his vacation at Lake Isabella on August 10 in the evening close to dark, and was dropped off in front of 3301 Waverly Drive. His mother and stepfather’s Thunderbird, with boat attached, was parked on the street. He spotted that the window shades were drawn as he walked up the driveway. He continued to the garage, and knocked on the back door, no answer. It was locked. Water skis lay on the fender of the other car, by the garage. He rapped on the den window. Again, no answer. He walked down to a nearby public phone and called the house, but there was no answer. Next he called his sister, Susan Struthers, and told her he was worried.
Susan and her fiancé, Joe Dorgan, arrived at 3301 Waverly Drive, where they met Frank. They retrieved the house keys from the ignition switch of Mrs. LaBianca’s Thunderbird and entered the house through the back door. Susan stayed in the kitchen while Frank Struthers and Joe Dorgan made their way through the dining room into the living room and saw Leno LaBianca “in a crouched position” on the floor. Something was wrong, very wrong, so the two turned around and rushed away. Dorgan picked up the phone in the kitchen, then dropped it. They ran into the yard yelling for help, and a neighbor called the police. At about 10:45 p.m. police cars raced, sirens blaring, to the driveway.
Quickly the house on Waverly Drive became glutted with reporters and homicide detectives. The Los Angeles Times covered it with a page-one story bearing the headline “2 Ritual Slayings Follow Killing of 5,” linking it to the murders of Friday night.
Police released to the public many of the major details of the murders. Newspapers mentioned the knife and fork impaled in Mr. LaBianca and the word “war” scratched in his stomach. They told of the white “hood”—the pillowcase—over his head. Not released to the media were the bloody words “Healter Skelter” scrawled on the ice-box doors, although police did note that there were words in blood on the refrigerator doors. The Los Angeles Times story, for instance, mistakenly related that “the words ‘Death to Pigs’ had been smeared on the doors of the refrigerator, apparently by the heel of a slayer’s hand.”
Manson’s friend Gregg Jakobson was questioned right away because of his association with Cielo Drive owner Rudy Altobelli. Had the words “Healter Skelter” been released to the media by the police, Jakobson, who was one of scores of people who knew what the words meant, right away would have informed the police about the Manson Family, and Manson and crew probably could have been arrested right away. It is likely, however, that investigators, wanting a number of polygraph interrogation keys retained, withheld “Healter Skelter” as well as the bloody word “rise” that was found in the living room.
Police Backing Away from Linking Cielo Drive and the LaBiancas
On the afternoon of August 11, the Cielo Drive caretaker, William Eston Garretson, was set free after being held for two days, walking out of custody facing a row of cameras.
That same day, police pulled back from connecting the Cielo Drive and Waverly Drive murders. “There is a similarity,” remarked a LAPD Sergeant, “but whether it’s the same suspect or a copy cat, we just don’t know.” The two sets of victims, how they had differing friends, differing lifestyles, and no apparent connections, helped separate the cases. By August 12, police officially ruled out any link between the Tate and LaBianca crimes.
The LaBianca investigation team was headed by Lieutenant Paul LePage and detectives from robbery-homicide, including Sergeant Phil Sartuche, Sergeant Manuel Gutierrez, and Sergeant Frank Patchett, all of whom played considerable parts in ultimately cracking the ca
se.
The LaBianca investigation initially focused on business affairs and the extensive gambling activities of Leno LaBianca. It was determined that about $200,000 was missing from Gateway Markets, one of Mr. LaBianca’s businesses. Mr. LaBianca collected rare coins; his collections were worth thousands. A rare coin collection, believed to be Mr. LaBianca’s, was found in a house on Waverly Drive a couple of blocks from the LaBianca residence—a place owned by the bookmaker The Phantom, which had been abandoned by him a week after the murders.
Some friends of Mr. LaBianca denied the possibility that the Mafia had contracted his death. If it had, they said, they would have heard about it. Police made an activity chart divided into half-hour increments showing the activities of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca between August 4 and August 10. They conducted lie detector tests on a good number of acquaintances of the victims.
Twenty-five finger prints were found in the LaBianca house. Nineteen were eliminated, six remain unidentified. 41,634 suspects were checked against the print on the liquor cabinet where Manson had taken Mrs. LaBianca’s wallet. The LaBianca investigation team arranged so-called M.O. runs with the State Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation (CII) computer, in Sacramento. The CII computer stored a large amount of information regarding crime and criminals. An M.O. run collects all crimes committed with the same methods. A police agency could get a list of every murder where the killer tied up the victim, and/or wrote on the wall, in order to obtain the identity of potential suspects.
On the Polanski residence murders, one of the problems facing the police was the overwhelming number of suspects. The decedents’ lives were replete with relationships that could have spawned violent grudges. The Cielo Drive murders provided impetus for a great number of narcotics arrests. Some individuals, however, were promised immunity from dope prosecution if they would provide information about the deceased and possible culprits. Three LA homicide detectives went to Vancouver to help the Royal Canadian Mounted police organize a dragnet for the Canadian dope dealers that Witold K. and others had fingered. The dope dealers were believed headed toward Edmonton, Alberta, or already holed up in the western Canadian woods.
US Treasury agents investigated aspects of drug traffic to see if there was a pattern of interstate trafficking. In the days following the murders there were large-scale cocaine arrests around the country that have been linked to the reverberations resulting from the murder investigation. Police traveled around the country administering polygraph examinations. They went to England to interrogate suspects. The US Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (forerunner to the DEA) also investigated.
Films, Videotapes, and Cielo Drive
Police located reels of film and videotapes of interest during the follow-up investigations. Some were found in the Polanski residence in the main bedroom closet. For instance, one videotape was found in a room off the living room loft and was booked as item #36 in the police property report. Other films were taken into possession in Jamaica and in Annandale, Virginia. Some of the films apparently involved an elite underground film group in Hollywood that swapped erotic files of stars and semistars, past and present.
One videotape found at the Polanski residence was of Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate making love. It was not booked into evidence but was returned, after police viewed it, to the spot in the loft above the living room where police had found it.
During Manson’s trial, one of the defense lawyers, Paul Fitzgerald, was approached by a television reporter representing a rising movie actress who had left a roll of undeveloped 35-millimeter film allegedly containing pictures of herself getting after it at the Polanski residence on the day of the murders. The representative wanted the attorney to ask Manson if the Family had removed the film from the house that night, because she had been unable to find out what happened to it, and she felt that if the film were publicized her career would be threatened.
Meanwhile, as the police investigation progressed, all forms of wild speculation were passed from mouth to mouth regarding the Cielo Drive murders. There was speculation from close friends of Frykowski that they had been done by the Polish secret police, who took a plane from Los Angeles to Rome right after the murders, in reprisal for Polanski’s defection from Poland. There was every form of speculation regarding mutilation and ritual.
There was a flame of violence in Los Angeles in early August 1969 where from Friday, August 8, to Tuesday, August 12, twenty-nine people were murdered. In the two days following the murders, Ken’s Sporting Goods Shop in Beverly Hills sold two hundred guns. The Bel Air Patrol, a private security force serving the exclusive Bel Air Area, hired something like thirty extra men. People slept within easy reach of the electronic panic buttons that could summon the Bel Air Patrol. Bodyguards were in great demand. Individuals placed their own homes under twenty-four-hour surveillance by teams of private detectives. People packed guns at the funerals of the deceased.
A Lie Detector Test for Polanski
On Monday, August 11, the day after he returned from London, Roman Polanski took a lie detector test, which he passed. He’d had some Valium earlier in the day. He was shown some photos, only one of which, of Billy Doyle, he recognized. They also showed him an array of knives.
Lieutenant Earl Deemer, the polygraph administrator, purportedly asked him, “Have you dated any airline stewardesses since Sharon’s death.”
“Yes,” replied Polanski, “Well, I haven’t dated; I’ve seen a couple of them.”
“Took them out to lunch or something?”
Polanski replied, “I fucked them.”
Years later, while Polanski was testifying in a court, a tape of Polanski’s 1969 lie detector test was played in which he had told the polygraph officer he had made it with a couple of stewardesses after Sharon’s murder, and he claimed that the boast was a lie, done to lessen the tension with the detective conducting the test. Polanski further told the court, regarding making it with the stewardesses, “Not that I object to it, particularly in those times. It would be something I would not miss if I had the opportunity.”
Chapter 14
Aftermath and Investigation
A Federal Narcotics Agent Speaks of a “Cult” Possibly Being Involved
The same day that Polanski had his polygraph examination, two reporters for the New York Daily News, Michael McGovern and William Federici, met with an agent of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (the predecessor agency to the Drug Enforcement Agency) at a restaurant in Los Angeles. The agent at the restaurant supplied the two reporters with some allegations which Federici and McGovern used in a page 2 story in the Daily News of August 13, under the headline “Believe Cultist Hired Sharon Killer.”
Federici was a well-respected crime reporter who had won the prestigious 1969 George Polk Award, for metropolitan reporting. In a recent conversation with the author, Federici confirmed the accuracy of what he reported in the Daily News. Federici recalls being summoned from his vacation to travel to Los Angeles to write about the murders, and that the agent that provided information was a federal Drug Enforcement Administration agent. I asked why the federal drug agent would have known about the Tate murder investigation. (The DEA was established in 1973; in 1969 it would still have been known as BNDD.) “They were involved in this thing right from the beginning,” he replied. “The BNDD was part of the whole thing. There was a whole task force.” Federici got his law enforcement contacts in New York to get in touch with law enforcement in Los Angeles and ask them to help Federici. Hence the meeting with the federal drug agent. I asked, “The material in the article reflects what you learned from the federal drug officer?”
“Yes,” he replied.
The Federici-McGovern story began, “Beautiful Sharon Tate and four others are believed to have been the victims of an assassin hired by a member of a cult which met regularly for sex-drug rituals in her posh Bel Air home, authorities disclosed today.
“It is believed that the principal t
argets of the hired killer were Sharon, a brown-eyed movie-TV actress, and her former fiancé, hair stylist Jay Sebring. Sebring, a karate enthusiast who held a brown belt, had been feuding with another cultist over a girl.
“Existence of the cult—whose members include top Hollywood personalities and show business executives—was revealed as detectives investigated the tangled, bizarre events of the group’s last evening, which ended with the brutal torture murders.”
Tell of Whips, Chains
“Discovered in the death house was an assortment of the cult’s tools—including black leather masks, whips, ropes, and chains, investigators said.
“Outside in the driveway, in the trunk of Sebring’s back 1966 Porsche was a quantity of cocaine, LSD, marijuana and methedrine, known as speed, it was said.
“Police said that the killer may have been inducted recently into the cult and hired by one of the members.
“He is believed to be one of the weirdos and freaks invited by thrill-seekers who call themselves The Swingers, to participate in the rites of the club.
About Fifty Members
“The club has a permanent membership of nearly 50 but was increased with the admittance of strangers picked up at exclusive Hollywood discotheques by Sharon’s crowd.
“The group, a throwback to the Hollywood of another era, drew its inspiration from the fantasy world here of the ’30s.
“Sharon, 26, was an enthusiastic dancer at two of the inner circle clubs, the Candy Store and the Factory. Only members are admitted. When Sharon wasn’t accompanied by her husband of 20 months, film director Roman Polanski, 35, she attended with any of a number of friends.”