Sharon Tate, Four Others Murdered
Ritualistic Slayings
August 10, 1969
The Los Angeles Times
By Dial Torgerson
Times Staff Writer
Film star Sharon Tate, another woman and three men were found slain Saturday,
their bodies scattered around a Benedict Canyon estate in what police said
resembled a ritualistic mass murder.
The victims were shot, stabbed or throttled. On the front door of the home,
written in blood, was one word: "Pig."
Police arrested the only one left on the property-a nineteen-year-old
houseboy. He was booked on suspicion of murder.
Killed were:
Miss Tate, 26, a star of "Valley Of The Dolls" and wife of Roman Polanski,
director of "Rosemary's baby." She was eight months pregnant. He is in
England.
Abigail Folger, 26, heiress to the Folger's Coffee family.
Jay Sebring, 35, once Miss Tate's fiancé, a Hollywood hair stylist credited
with launching the trend to hair styling for men.
Voyteck Frykowski, 37, who worked with Polanski in Polish films before they
came to Hollywood.
Steven Parent, eighteen, of El Monte, who left his home Friday morning
after telling his family he was going to “go to Beverly Hills.”
The maid, Mrs. Winifred Chapman went to the sprawling home at the end of
Cielo Drive at 8:30 a.m. to begin her days work. What she found sent her running
to a neighbor's home in a state of shock:
The on the lawn in front of the ranch style home was the body of Frykowski.
Twenty yards away, under a fir tree on the well-trimmed lawn, was the body of
Miss Folger, clad in a nightgown.
In the living room, dressed in underwear-bikini panties and a brassiere -was
Miss Tate. A bloodied nylon cord was around her neck. It ran over a beam in the
open-beam ceiling and was tied around the neck of Sebring, whose body lay
nearby.
Over Sebring’s head was a black hood " it seemed ritualistic," said one
investigating officer. Said another: "It looked like a battlefield up there."
Mrs. Chapman ran to a neighbor's home, Jim Asim, fifteen, was getting ready
to leave the house "there's bodies and blood all over the place." She cried to
Asim.
The youth, who was a member of law enforcement troop 800 of the Boy Scouts,
called West Los Angeles police.
A half-dozen police cars raced up Cielo Drive, overlooking Benedict Canyon,
to the cul de sac where it ends - at the wire gate of the home at 10050 Cielo
Drive rented by Polanski and Miss Tate.
The police entered the property with guns drawn. A dog bayed behind the
guesthouse facing the driveway. Officers heard a man's voice yell to the dog to
be quiet.
They entered the guesthouse and at gunpoint arrested William Etson Garretson,
who will be 20 on August 24. He was wearing only pinstriped bell-bottom
trousers.
The maid, in shock, was taken to UCLA Medical Center for treatment. Later she
was taken to the West Los Angeles Station, as was Garretson. After questioning
him for several hours, police booked Garretson on suspicion of murder.
Police Theory
At the scene of the crime police Lieutenant Robert Madlock
gave newsmen the reason: "He was taken into custody because he was on the
premises were five people were murdered."
Madlock gave few other details. Among information police did release:
Exact causes of death were not immediately determined. Autopsies were
pending.
Telephone lines into the home had been cut, apparently by the murder.
No weapon was found at the scene, although officers found pieces of what
were believed to be a pistol grip inside the home.
No narcotics were found in the home. There were evidences of a struggle.
There was apparently nothing missing. No motive could be immediately
determined.
Doctor Thomas Noguchi, County Coroner, went to the home Saturday afternoon.
An hour later he emerged and told newsmen he couldn't elaborate beyond saying
the dead were victims of "multiple wounds." He said a further announcement
would probably be made today.
"This is an extraordinary case, a difficult case." He said, explaining why
he came to the scene. "If my presence is demanded by the people of Los Angeles
County, I’ll be there. "
Identifies Four Bodies
William Tenant, Miss Tate's agent, came to the home at noon-still wearing
tennis close-and identified the bodies of Miss Tate's, Miss Folger, Sebring
and Frykowski.
He left, sobbing, without speaking to reporters waiting at the gate. Later
he phoned Polanski at his apartment in London to inform him of Miss Tate's
death.
"He broke down and cried," said a friend in London. "He made arrangements
to catch the first available flight to Los Angeles."
Hollywood Associates said Miss Tate had recently visited Polanski in
London, where he was working on plans for a projected film.
Friends said that Miss Folger had been staying at the Tate Polanski home
where Frykowski was also a guest.
"Gibby" Folger was the daughter of Peter Folger of Woodside California,
president of the Folger Coffee Company, a subsidiary of Proctor & Gamble.
She was a society girl-a graduate of Catalina School for girls at Carmel
and of Radcliffe - who had in recent months joined Miss Tate's circle of
Hollywood friends, sometimes called a community of "the hippies."
Folger told a reporter his daughter had been active in social welfare
causes around Los Angeles for the past six months and "more are less commuted"
between Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area. "She has always led a
clean life," he said.
Hollywood friends told of seeing her at séance-type sessions, meditating
Indian philosophy with Mia Farrow and others.
Police said that the men killed at the house were dressed in "hippie"
clothes.
The home is a rambling affair with the driveway at one side and a swimming
pool at the other. The bodies were scattered from the driveway almost to the
pool area.
Police wouldn't offer any theories as to how five persons could have been
killed without some of them successfully fleeing. The Ambassador in which the
young man was killed was facing toward the gate, which was the exit from the
driveway.
Parent was identified by his parish priest, the Rev. Robert Bryne of the
Church of the Nativity, who went to the coroner's office after the boy's
father, Wilfred E. Parent, 11214 Bryant Road, El Monte, told him his son was
missing.
Father Byrne began crying as Deputy Coroner Don Strickland showed him
Parent's body. "Oh my God," putting his head his hands. "Steve, Steve, Steve."
The boy's father called a coroner's office about the same time and was told
that his son was dead.
Police wouldn't speculate on what an El Monte teen-ager was doing at the
home of the jet-setting film crowd-but a coroner's aide said there were
reports young Garretson had a guest at his caretaker's quarters Friday night,
and that the guest may have been Parent.
The home is secluded from others in the neighborhood. Mrs. Seymour Knott,
who lives at 10170 Cielo Drive, told a report:
"I thought I heard some shots about midnight. About three or four. They
weren't too loud. More a clap! Clap! Sort of thing."
Miss Tate and Polanski were married at a London registry office in January,
1968. They had been separated frequently because of film commitments in
various parts of the world and there had been rumors in Hollywood recently
that the couple were having marital trouble.
The time of the killings was not immediately determined. Police told a
neighbor that Miss Tate had been dead too long when the bodies were discovered
for anything to be done about saving the life of her unborn child.
Barry Tarlow, Young Garretson's attorney, said the youth told him that he
was completely innocent and knew absolutely nothing of the crime. He said he
had been asleep when police burst in with shotguns and arrested him.
Police in Garretson's hometown of Lancaster, Ohio, said he was given a
two-year suspended jail sentence in 1967 for contributing to the delinquency
of a minor. His mother, Mary Garretson, 42 a divorcee, said her son had left
home last October "without saying goodbye but had written saying he hopes to
return home soon. She said he told of entertaining young friends in his
caretaker's quarters - including a young" nervous veteran back from Vietnam he
ordered out of the place for stealing neighbors champagne, and an AWOL marine
later caught and sent to the brig.
"He's a quiet, gentle boy," the mother told the Times by phone. "I could
hit him and he’d never do a thing. I could holler at that kid and he’d just go
lie on his bed and never talk back to me. Just lie there, quiet."
"He wrote me and phoned me often. He said he was watching this house for
this man and he wanted to quit the job as soon as he could so she could come
home. He was homesick. He left just after he got out of school last year and
he wanted to come home."
"He said he wanted to come home, buy a car, and then maybe go back to
California and go to school, to learn to be an actor."
Garretson's worked for Rudy Altabelli, who rented the home to the Polanskis.
Altabelli is in Europe and had asked Garretson to continue his $35-a-weak job
as a caretaker at the property until he came home.
"He never mentioned the people who live there," the boy's mother told the
Times by telephone. "He did send me a picture of that Mr. Polanski walking a
dog. Bill loves dogs. He never mentioned the lady. But he did say that Mr.
Cary Grant’s cook gave him a ride up the hill once in a Rolls-Royce."
Still at the home after Garretson was taken away were the pets he had been
helping care for: a Dalmatian, two poodles, a Weimaraner, a Yorkshire terrier
and a kitten.
The Animal Regulation Department took them away as the coroner's office was
removing the bodies of the slain.
