Suspect In Mass Killing Being Sought
August 11, 1969
LOS ANGELES - Police said Sunday they were seeking a second suspect in the "ritualistic"
slaying of honey-blonde actress Sharon Tate, killed with four other persons in a
slaughter that recalled her director husband's macabre movies.
Detective Lt. Robert Helder said the suspect might be driving a fire-engine
red Ferrari sports car owned by film director, Roman Polanski, and used
occasionally by his wife. Police haven't been able to locate the auto.
The lieutenant wouldn't identify the suspect, other than to say he was
mentioned "in conversation" by William Garretson, a 19-year-old caretaker
arrested in a guest cottage behind Miss Tate's $200,000 tomato-red rented home
in fashionable Bel Air where the slayings were discovered Saturday morning.
LIE DETECTOR TEST
Helder said Garretson was being given a lie detector test and might be
released. There was no physical evidence in the youth's living quarters to
connect him to the crime, the detective said.
Polanski and his associates told newsmen before the director flew home from
London to claim his wife's body that they were convinced Garretson is innocent.
"If he weren't innocent he would have split - gone away - instead of hanging
around there." said (unreadable) Polanski's friends. Police said the
victims had been dead about 12 hours when found.
Coroner Thomas Neguchi said Miss Tate died of stab wounds in the chest and
back which penetrated vital organs. He said three of the other victims
died of multiple stab wounds and massive hemorrhaging and the youngest died of
several gunshot wounds along with numerous stab wounds.
LOOKED PLANNED
Helder, who appeared with Neguchi at a news conference, said he didn't feel
the second suspect was a "maniac" because the slayings looked planned.
"Mainly because of cut telephone wires," Helder said, the killings appeared
to be premeditated. "I don't feel we have a maniac running round. It
was a planned type of situation."
But Helder conceded that "this is one of the weird homicides... We don't have
anybody we can talk to. We're trying to piece it together."
"It almost looked like a ritual." said Sgt. Stan Klornan after viewing the
death scene. But Helder said any ritual involved wasn't ceremonial or
religious.
VIOLENT STRUGGLE
He said there was no evidence of a wild party, liquor or narcotics. "We
could find no signs of a great violent struggle," he added.
But he noted the "strangeness" of a cloth wrapped around one of the victim's
head and a rope tying the victim to Miss Tate's body. An American flag was
draped over the back of a couch in the living room where the two bodies were
found, he said.
"The victims were caught unaware," Helder said.
Moments before Polanski was informed of the killings, a friend said, Polanski
was at a London cocktail party where guests were discussing the death of a
mutual friend. He said the director remarked fatalistically "Eeny meeny
miney mo, who will be the next to go?"
COLLAPSES IN TEARS
Then the phone rang the message telling Polanski about the deaths arrived and
he collapsed in tears.
Also killed were:
Jay Sebring, 26, Miss Tate's former boyfriend and an internationally known
hair stylist; San Francisco socialite Abigail Folger, 26, of the Folger's Coffee
family; Veyteck Frykowski, 37, a movie associate of Polanski's, and Steven Earl
Parent, 18, of suburban El Monte.
Helder said Parent was Garretson's friend and probably didn't know the other
victims. His body was found in his 1965 sedan in front of the house.
"At the time I arrived at the scene, the car was in drive position and the
brake was not set." Helder said, indicating the youth might have been
trying to escape when he was killed.
STAGGER OUT TO LAWN
The coroner said Misses Tate and Folger, and Frykowski and Sebring did not
die instantly. The detective said Miss Folger and Frykowski apparently
staggered out to the front lawn where their bodies were found 100 feet apart.
"We know the phone was operating at 10 p.m. and was not operating at 5:30,"
he said. He said Garretson was the first to discover it was not working
when he tried to make a call at 3:30 a.m."
Garretson maintains innocence, Helder said, and related that he had "a very
casual relationship" with the victims and heard nothing on the quiet, secluded
estate the night of the killings.
Miss Tate, eight months pregnant with a baby the autopsy disclosed was a boy,
returned from Europe two weeks ago.
Miss Tate asked them to stay on when she arrived because of the impending
birth of her child, the detective said. "She didn't want to be alone."
Helder did not explain Sebring's presence on the night of the slayings.
Investigators said Sebring was wearing a black hood. His body and that
of honey-blonde Miss Tate were connected by a white nylon cord slung over a
ceiling beam in the living room.
'KIND OF RITUALISTIC'
"It seemed kind of ritualistic," said an investigating officer. "It
didn't appear as if the two connected to the rope had been hanged because there
was blood on them."
Miss Tate, who commits suicide in her best-known film role as Jennifer in
"Valley of the Dolls," wore only bikini pants and a bra. She was expecting a
child within weeks. She and Polanski had been married since January 1968.
Telephone wires were cut and somebody had scrawled PIG on the front door with
blood.
On the lawn, behind an electric gate in the front fence, sprawled the bodies
of Miss Folger, a pretty brunette, and Frykowski, both in bloody disarray.
The body of young Parent, battered from an apparent struggle, was seated in
the front seat of a car parked in a nearby courtyard.
