Frykowski On Drug ‘Trip’ When He Was Slain, Friends Report
August 22, 1969
By Dial Torgerson
Times Staff Writer
Voyteck Frykowski was in the midst of an experiment with
mescaline when he and four other persons were slain early August 9 at the home
of Sharon Tate, it was learned Thursday.
Friends said he planned to take the hallucinogenic drug for eight or ten
days. One said Jay Sebring, who was murdered with Frykowski, may also have been
taking mescaline or a similar drug.
"I saw them Thursday, August 7,"said Thomas Michael Harrigan, who has been
questioned extensively by the police. "I went to Sharon's place. Frykowski
seemed wobbly and uncoordinated.
"Sebring was sitting in a chair, his head tilted to one side, as though he
were watching a movie only he could see," he said in an interview.
"Sharon was in the bedroom. I could see her through an open door, combing her
hair. She was wearing a housecoat. I thought at first she was Abigail Folger.
Then she came out and I met her.
"She wasn’t high. She didn't use drugs. She was perfectly straight. She
seemed like a warm, sweet person. She seemed oblivious to what was going on
around, as though there was nothing out of the ordinary.
"I wanted to invite Frykowski to a party at my place Saturday, but I didn't
give him the address. He was too far-gone on the trip. He’d never been able to
understand the directions."
Harrigan thought Frykowski was in the fifth day of an eight-day mescaline
experiment when he last saw him August 7. Another friend, who saw him August 8,
believes that it was a ten-day trip.
Mescaline synthetically duplicates the effects of the LSD-like mushrooms used
by some American and Mexican Indians in trance-like religious rights.
One long-time friend of the Polish émigré believes Frykowski's use of
mescaline had changed his personality in recent weeks.
"His personality changed. Even his face, his features changed," the friend
said.
Friends told how his life rushed swiftly to its sudden end.
A defector from Poland, he mingled with Parisian underworld then came here
and, some said, dabbled in illicit narcotics trade. He drank chilled vodka by
the water tumbler, drove too fast, smoked marijuana and took mescaline.
"He had to live dangerously," said a beautiful Polish girl who knew him.
"He said he wanted to write about these things. But it wasn't that. He would
drive 65 miles an hour on Mulholland Drive. He was that way. He was always
putting himself in danger."
"He was a beautiful person," said Harrigan, who first met him at a Hollywood
Party in January. "He would get up in the morning, and walk outside, and be
happy, really happy, just being alive. He’d feel so good he’d make everyone
around him feel good.
"He was high just living and breathing. I don't know why he had to take
anything else. He also had that Polish, melancholy outlook, that he would die
young, that he had to live every moment and have every experience, while he
could."
Another Polish immigrant said he tried to warn Frykowski about drugs.
"I wanted him to leave Sharon's place," he said. (Frykowski and "Gibby"
Folger stayed at the Benedict Canyon home of Miss Tate and her husband,
directory Roman Polanski, while they were in Europe, and remained there when
Miss Tate returned to a wait the birth of her first baby.)
"I told him" you and Gibby can go anyplace. You can go to the islands. You
can go to Europe. Don't bring something terrible to this house. But they stayed
there, went inside, close the doors and two drugs. "
Polanski, in his only public comment on the case, referred to Frykowski as "a
very kind human being, who wanted success-but had little talent."
Some think Polanski shares the opinion of other friends that Frykowski was
the chief target of the mass murder.
Police had sought and questioned Frykowski's known contacts, Harrigan’s
Attorney, Paul Caruso, believes police asked Canadian authorities to find
Harrigan in their hunt for two Canadians Frykowski was supposed to meet at
International Airport August 6.
Went To Police
Harrigan, 27, who is from Ottawa, went to police on learning of an all points
bulletin naming him and three other Canadian Friends of Frykowski. Harrigan
wasn't one of the two men sought and he was questioned and released, Caruso
said.
"If I'd given Frykowski my address" said Harrigan "the police would have
found it and come to see me earlier. I wish now I had."
He said that he thinks the killer would’ve had to kill Frykowski first. "He
worshiped Roman Polanski". Harrigan said. "There was no way in the world he’d
have let anyone hurt Sharon Tate."
Private funeral services for Frykowski were to be held today at Forest Lawn
Memorial-Park, Glendale. His mother, Mrs. Tola Frykowski, and brother Jerzey,
came here from Poland for the rights. Cremation will follow. His ashes will be
taken back to Poland, where he has a ten-year-old son by a former marriage.
His mother said her son had written of Miss Folger, heiress to the Folger
coffee family of San Francisco. "He said he loved her, and wanted to marry her,"
she said, "but wouldn't do it because she was rich."
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