Chapter 33

The Investigation

The police investigation into Sharon’s murder was headed by Lieutenant Robert Helder, and was assisted by five sergeants: Michael McGann; J. Buckles; E. Henderson; D. Varney and Danny Galindo. These men had the unenviable task of sorting through the flotsam which had once formed the lives of the victims, trying to find both a motive and a suspect.

The most obvious suspect, caretaker William Garretson, was given a lie-detector test on the Sunday afternoon following the murders. He was shown to be answering truthfully as to any involvement in the crimes, and apparently he knew nothing as to their causes. Questioned at length about the events of that Friday night, Garretson declared:

Well, I just—I just stayed inside the house and everything; and I was kind of scared that night. I don’t know why, you know, I was kind of scared, and I stayed in the house and everything, and I started to write letters, you know.… And I—I tried to call—I wanted to know what time it was because, you know, I had quite—you know, Christopher had barked that night and everything else, and I wanted to know what time it was. And just before, you know, it got daylight, I called the time and then, you know, I found out the phone was dead, and then I went to the room and got another phone, and I plugged it into the wall, and then, you know, to—and there was nothing, and so then I really got kind of worried then, you know, what happened and wasn’t giving it too much thought. It wasn’t daylight yet because, you know, it was still dark. But it was just beginning to get daylight. And I got kind of, you know, I really got kind of scared then, and then I stayed up until it did get daylight; and when it did get daylight, then I went to sleep and the next thing I knew I woke up and there was an officer pointing a gun at me.¹

Garretson’s story that he had remained in the guest house all night, writing letters, however, is open to doubt. In jail, Patricia Krenwinkle declared that, on Watson’s instructions, she had gone to the guest house and found no one there. As they chased both Voyteck Frykowski and Abigail Folger across the front lawn of 10050 Cielo Drive, the killers could not have helped but noticed the lights burning in the little house just a hundred feet away. It was not hidden at all. Conversely, it is nearly impossible that Garretson, sitting in the living room with a stereo whose volume was set between 4 and 5—as he testified—would not have heard the screams and gunshots coming from the lawn just outside his windows.

“How could he have not heard that commotion,” Doris Tate later questioned, “how could he have been in that house?”² The First Homicide Report, in fact, stated: “In the opinion of the investigating officers and by scientific research … it is highly unlikely that Garretson was not aware of the screams, gunshots and other turmoil that would result from a multiple homicide such as took place in his near proximity. These findings, however, did not absolutely preclude the fact that Garretson did not hear or see any of the events connected with the homicide.”³

Contrary to this, Prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi writes: “Using a general level sound meter and a .22 caliber revolver, and duplicating as closely as possible the conditions that existed on the night of the murders, Wolfer [an LAPD acoustics expert] and an assistant proved (1) that if Garretson was inside the guest house as he claimed, he couldn’t possibly have heard the shots that killed Steven Parent; and (2) that with the stereo on, with the volume at either 4 or 5, he couldn’t have heard either screams or gunshots coming from in front of or inside the main residence.”⁴

Under intense questioning, Garretson finally admitted that, at some point during the night, he had looked at the door to the guest house and saw that the handle had been turned.⁵ He went no further, and does not seem to have been questioned on the point. In the intervening years, Garretson has altered his version of events that night a number of times. In 1997, he told author Bill Nelson: “I did hear a scream. I walked down the hall and into the closet. It had a window facing the pool area and there was a curtain over the window. All the windows in the house were closed that night and the doors were locked. I had lights on everywhere. The whole house was lit up. As I stood there at the window I said to myself, ‘What the fuck is this? What the fuck is going on?’ Something impressed me not to open those curtains. I don’t know why, Then I walked down towards the living room because the three dogs were at the front door barking loudly. I stopped at the bathroom door. I thought, This doesn’t make sense. I heard footsteps running the other way. Something impressed me again not to move. They could not see me because I was in the hall and there was no window right there. When I saw the front door I saw the handle. Someone had moved it and it was turned.”⁶

In 1999, in his first television interview, he declared that he had not only heard the four shots which killed Steven Parent, but that he had looked out of the guest house window facing the main residence and saw Patricia Krenwinkel chasing Abigail Folger across the side lawn. According to Garretson, he ducked back down, out of sight, but listened as he heard screams followed by a woman saying, “Stop! Stop! I’m already dead!” He froze, and within a few minutes saw that the handle to the front door had been turned. He then heard footsteps running in the opposite direction, back toward the main house.⁷

“The problem with Garretson,” says Prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi, “is that, as a lawyer, you have to look at what he first told the police. I spent a number of hours with him, questioning him at length about what he had seen and heard that night. At that time, he never deviated from the story that he was listening to the stereo. As a prosecutor, you always want to go with the first statement of a witness, which is usually the most accurate and unhindered by time and enhancement. It is possible that he heard something, but highly unlikely, and I would still think his 1969 version of events is most likely to be the truth.”⁸

Garretson has said that he tried to use the telephone and found it dead. He later admitted to the police that he may have gone out onto the rear lawn, on the far side of the guesthouse. It is possible that he remained there for some time, fearing for his life. Perhaps he did try to leave when enough time had passed and the house was quiet, only to do so at the same time Manson and his friend were coming to or were in the main house. He may have thought the killers were still on the premises, and waited until morning, falling asleep, only to be woken by the barking of the dogs at the approach of the police. As Vincent Bugliosi points out, however, it is highly suspicious that Garretson has continued to alter and enhance his version of events with the passage of time. In the end, we are left with no definitive account of Garretson’s experiences. Despite the contradictory stories, Garretson apparently told the truth to the police when he said he had no part in the murders, and the following day they released him from custody. He quickly returned to his native Ohio.

The police had their suspicions, too, about Roman Polanski. In the swirl of rumor and innuendo surrounding the murders, there were whispered allegations of a love triangle between him, Sharon and Jay, of jealousy and revenge, of a hired killer. In addition, Polanski’s reputation for the macabre did not serve him well in the eyes of many of the police: Two days after the murders, on Monday, 11 August, he submitted to a lie detector test, conducted at Parker Center by Lieutenant Earl Deemer.

Throughout the proceedings, Roman seemed curiously light-hearted, a possible symptom of both his sedated state and also of his denial of the tragedy which had taken place. He joked with Deemer, “I will lie one or two times, but I will tell you when.”⁹ According to one of his friends, Deemer had little taste for this. He knew that Roman, within a day of learning of Sharon’s death, had begun a series of casual sexual relationships. This was typical behavior for Roman, an attempt to temporarily forget his troubles through a meaningless sexual encounter, but Deemer, who knew nothing of Polanski’s deeply traumatic past, was horrified. He found Polanski’s lack of obvious grief disturbing.¹⁰

“Have you dated any airline stewardesses since Sharon’s death?” he finally asked the director.

“I haven’t dated any,” Roman replied. “I just … fucked them.”¹¹

The majority of the interview concerned the motive for the murders. “I think the target could be myself, maybe just some kind of jealousies, or something,” Roman volunteered. “Target couldn’t be Sharon directly.… Could be Jay the target, could be Voyteck.” Asked about the possible drug connection, Roman admitted that Jay had been involved with drugs on and off for years. He added that he had recently discovered that Jay owed a large amount of money to his dentist, and may have been in debt. “He might have been entangled in some peculiar business.… For this reason he might have gone into some kind of dangerous area to make money.”¹²

Roman passed the test, and the police had no indication that he knew anything at all about the crimes. He added, however, as he was leaving the interview: “The whole crime seems so illogical to me. If I’m looking for a motive, I’d look for something which doesn’t fit your habitual standard, under which you are used to work as police. I would look for something much more far out.…”¹³

Polanski later recalled that Lieutenant Robert Helder had “told me about this group of hippies living at that ranch with this guy they called Jesus Christ. Bob said they were suspected of being involved in the killing of some musician and writing a note on his body, and there was a possibility that these people had something to do with it. I said, ‘Come on, Bob, you’re prejudiced against hippies.’ And I remember his words: ‘You should suspect everyone. Don’t dismiss it so easily.’”¹⁴

Polanski, too, had his suspicions. “He suspected a lot of his friends,” recalled Richard Sylbert, one of the director’s associates. “He had either fucked their girlfriends or their wives.”¹⁵ The police had discovered a pair of eyeglasses lying frame-up on the floor of the living room at 10050 Cielo Drive. As they had not belonged to any of the victims, the presumption was that they been dropped by one of the killers. Polanski actually borrowed the glasses from the police and crept round trying to find out if they fit anyone he knew. Although he could find no one who fit the prescription (and the glasses had apparently been left by Manson as a false clue), Roman had a lingering fear that his friend John Phillips might have had a hand in the murders as a way of getting revenge against Roman for the brief affair the director had with Michelle Phillips in London earlier that year. Roman actually went through Phillips’ automobiles to check for bloodstains, and eventually confronted the singer, holding a knife to his throat and demanding to know if he had been involved in Sharon’s death. Phillips told him no, and Roman dropped the weapon, believing his friend.¹⁶

The investigators into Sharon’s murder faced a number of mistakes which, from the beginning, compromised the integrity of the case. First and foremost were the continual leaks made by various officials to members of the press, depriving the investigators of an important element in interrogating witnesses and potential suspects. The murder scene at 10050 Cielo Drive had been mishandled: blood on the front porch had been tracked about by officers, creating new prints; blood typing and sub-typing was not done on many of the pools and stains found in the house; the pieces of the gun grip discovered on the living room floor had been kicked beneath the desk by one of the police; and the potentially damning bloody fingerprint on the inside gate control button had been smeared when an exiting officer superimposed his own print over it on pushing the button.¹⁷

Both the Tate and LaBianca investigators submitted preliminary reports at the end of August, outlining the progress made and their theories as to why the crimes took place. The reports were never made public and they revealed little of importance. As to motive, the Tate detectives still held to what had been their first theory, that the slaughter at 10050 Cielo Drive was somehow connected to a drug burn, and involved Voyteck Frykowski as the primary target.

The police first began to formulate a possible drug-related motive for the murders on Cielo Drive a few days into the investigation, when they learned of Voyteck Frykowski’s numerous drug connections in Los Angeles and beyond. Although the drug link would eventually be dismissed when the killers began to confess, it remained the strongest possibility in the investigators’ opinions throughout the fall of 1969. “Roman didn’t know what the hell was going on at his house,” a friend told Thomas Thompson. “All he knew was that one of his beloved Poles was staying there. Sharon probably knew, she had to, but she was too nice or dumb to throw him out. If any creeps or weirdoes went up, it wasn’t by Sharon’s invitation.”¹⁸

The investigators quickly learned of Voyteck’s friendships with Pic Dawson, Ben Carruthers, Tom Harrigan and Billy Doyle, all four of whom were apparently known to LAPD drug investigators. The incident at the housewarming party at 10050 Cielo Drive, when Roman Polanski had ejected them, was related by William Tennant. The police also learned that Pic Dawson had threatened the lives of both Voyteck Frykowski and his friend Witold Kaczankowski, and there were rumors of the alleged drug burn at 10050 Cielo Drive and whipping of Billy Doyle a few days before the murders themselves. All of this was strong circumstantial evidence of a possible motive and possible killers.

Witold Kaczankowski volunteered further information to the police, and, at their request, set about translating the numerous and lengthy diaries which Voyteck had kept in Polish, suspecting that there might be a vital clue hidden in the pages. At one point, apparently, the artist told LAPD officials that he thought he knew who the killers were, and pointed the finger of guilt at the foursome who had been Frykowski’s drug connections. The LAPD eventually tracked down Dawson, Harrigan, Carruthers and Doyle and interviewed each of them as to possible motives and whereabouts on the night of the murders.

The police still had their suspicions. While there was no doubt that Frykowski, Dawson, Harrigan, Carruthers and Doyle had been involved in the drug underworld of Los Angeles, there was nothing found to indicate a connection with the deaths on Cielo Drive. “We looked at the drug angle long and hard,” says former Tate murder investigator Mike McGann. “In the end, there just wasn’t anything there.”¹⁹

Although nearly everyone in Los Angeles believed that there was a link between the Tate and LaBianca murders, the police continually pointed out the dissimiliarities, noting, for example, the drugs found at 10050 Cielo Drive. Many police officers who spoke to reporters declared that they thought the LaBiancas had been killed by a copy-cat murderer, a common enough occurrence. The Tate homicides fell under the jurisdiction of the Los Angeles Police Department, while the LaBianca inquiry was undertaken by members of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Office. Thus, there were two separate investigations, rarely sharing information. This lack of communication and insistence that the two murders were unrelated undoubtedly prolonged the eventual solution of the crimes.

At times, there were various advances. On 1 September, ten-year-old Steven Weiss discovered the .22 caliber Buntline used by Watson during the Tate murders, lying in some bushes in his rear yard. The yard sloped up a steep hillside to Beverly Glen Drive, from which Kasabian had apparently thrown the gun as the killers returned across the Hollywood hills to Spahn Ranch. The gun was taken by police, logged into evidence, and then ignored. As summer slipped into autumn, no one knew with any certainty if the killer or killers would strike again, and the fear, which had vanished briefly amidst the promising news reports of August, once again took hold of Los Angeles.

Acting on a tip that an auto theft ring was operating on the premises, over seventy-five members of the Los Angeles Sheriffs Office raided Spahn Ranch on 16 August, just a week after the murders. Twenty-six people, including Manson, members of his Family, and various ranch hands, were arrested and incarcerated. The search warrant, however, signed and dated on 13 August, was good only for that particular day. As a result, Manson and his followers were released from jail.

Manson was convinced that ranch hand Donald Jerome “Shorty” Shea had had a hand in alerting the police to possible illegalities taking place at the Spahn Ranch. As soon as Manson returned to the Ranch, recalls Steve Grogan, members of the Family had “a growing hostility” toward Shea. “They didn’t like him,” Grogan says. “Charlie didn’t like him because he was always drinking, and he thought he was a slob. He was always talking about messing with the girls that were there.… It was kind of subtle at first, the way he voiced his dislike and disapproval of the man. He would bring it up on conversation at dinner when we all sat around and ate. Over a period it grew worse until we were raided by the police, where everything we had was taken, that we had bought legitimately. All our tools and cars and all the possessions that we had accumulated. And plus the children were taken, too. Everybody was arrested on the ranch. In fact the only person left was George Spahn, and he was blind.… We spent three days in jail, and we were released. And we didn’t get back none of our property. The pink slips were confiscated, along with our property, to four or five dune buggies that we couldn’t get back from them; the children were put into foster homes. And what it really did is made everybody really upset at this guy, because I was led to believe that he was doing it to get us evicted off the ranch, to get us thrown off the ranch. And that was the only place we had to stay at the time. And it was through his actions that he caused us this trouble.”²⁰

On returning to Spahn Ranch, Manson, Watson, Bruce Davis and Steve Grogan killed Shea, believing that he was working to get them evicted from the property, and fearing that he knew too much about the Family’s involvement in the murders. Family member Barbara Hoyt happened to be in the back bunkhouse, sitting near an open window which overlooked the dry creek bed below, when she heard Shea’s agonized screams and cries for help. Terrified, she remained crouched out of sight.²¹ After the murder, Grogan bragged that Shea had been decapitated, and his body cut into nine pieces and buried in separate graves. He did this, he later explained, on Manson’s instructions, “to make the crime more threatening and use the psychological tool of fear among the other people that were there at the time.”²²

Shea’s murder was an open secret among those at the ranch. Barbara Hoyt recalled how Manson laughed that “Shorty committed suicide with our help. We stabbed him, and kept cutting him. He got to now. It was hard to kill him, sure hard to kill him, when he got to now.”²³

Shortly after Shea’s murder, most of the Family left Spahn for Death Valley. The situation was rapidly becoming too intense, and too many people knew too much. Often, this was a direct result of the inability of Manson and his various Family members to keep their mouths shut. Just before he took his followers out to the desert, Manson turned to ranch hand Juan Flynn, pushed a knife beneath his chin, and yelled, “You son-of-a-bitch, don’t you know I’m the one who’s doing all these killings?”²⁴

In Death Valley, the Family spread themselves between two ranches, Myers and Barker. Those who remained continued to speak openly about their participation in the Tate-LaBianca murders. “Sadie [Susan Atkins] and Leslie [Van Houten] were bragging about how they killed them, and how much fun it had been,” remembers former Family member Dianne Lake. “Krenwinkel was the only one who seemed bothered by what she had done.” Watson took great delight in telling Lake that it had been “fun to tear up the Tate house.”²⁵

On 19 September, Ranger Richard Powell, on patrol through the Panamint Mountains of Inyo County, discovered the charred remains of a Michigan Articulated Skip Loader. Suspecting arson, he began a series of regular patrols round the area. Three days later, he happened across a red, four-wheel drive Toyota occupied by five ragged-looking hippies. The isolation of the area meant that Powell could do nothing but question the group and let them go; when he returned to Death Valley National Monument Headquarters, he ran the license plate and discovered that the Toyota was registered to Gail Beausoleil, wife of Bobby Beausoleil, then in jail in Los Angeles in connection with the murder of Gary Hinman.

Concerned that the individuals in the Toyota might have a connection with the burning of the earth moving machine, Powell began to coordinate an investigation. On 29 September, California Highway Patrol Officer James Pursell joined him on a patrol which encompassed Goler Wash and the surrounding area. At Barker Ranch, the pair discovered some scantily-clad young women, along with local miner Paul Crockett and Manson Family member Brooks Poston. Crockett, whose previous run-ins with Manson had infuriated him, promptly informed the officers that the group and its leader were staying in the desert, indulging in frequent sex orgies and indiscriminate illegal drug use.

It took just over a week to coordinate a proper raid. California Highway Patrol officers, joined by Inyo County District Attorney Frank Fowles and several other officials, divided into two groups and circled the area where Crockett had warned they would find Manson and his followers. Both Barker and Myers Ranches were raided, during the course of which the remaining members of the Family were arrested and booked into custody in Independence on suspicion of arson. Manson himself, discovered crouched inside a narrow cabinet beneath a sink, was arrested as well. Other members of the Family had fled: Linda Kasabian to the east coast, Charles Watson back to his native Texas, Mary Brunner to Wisconsin.

A few hours before the police raids, Kitty Lutesinger—Bobby Beausoleil’s pregnant girlfriend—and Stephanie Schram, also pregnant, managed to sneak away and hitchhike out of Death Valley before a police car picked them up. Ominously, they began to talk of murders the Family had committed. Lutesinger told the police that Beausoleil had not been alone in killing Hinman, and named Atkins as one of the participants. Investigators came to Independence to interview her, and Atkins readily admitted her role.²⁶ She was transferred to Los Angeles and arraigned for the murder of Gary Hinman.

Atkins was incarcerated at the Sybil Brand Institute for Women in Los Angeles. While there, she bragged to two of her cellmates, Virginia Graham and Ronnie Howard, of her participation in the Tate murders as well. She took a perverse delight in their horrified reactions as she described stabbing Sharon Tate and watching the blood gush from her full stomach. The two women made some speedy calls, conveying details of Atkin’s conversations to various authorities.

Unknown to the public, however, police were fast closing in on the solution to the crimes. By the middle of October, the Tate and LaBianca investigations, brought together by the officers working on the Hinman case, began to realize that the three crimes all seemed to be connected. Although the various investigations were plagued with unusual difficulties, it would be wrong to conclude that the case would not have been broken, as has often been claimed, had it not been for Atkins’ prison confessions.

Tate murder investigator Mike McGann confirms that, prior to Atkins’ confession, he and his fellow sergeants had begun to link the activities of the Manson Family to the three crimes.²⁷ Indeed, this is itself confirmed by Roman Polanski’s own account of his interview with lead investigator Lieutenant Robert Helder, during which the officer mentioned a group of hippies living at a nearby ranch. Police first interviewed Atkins the last week of October, and became suspicious that members of the Manson Family might be involved in the Tate-LaBianca murders. Six members of the Manson Family were interviewed on 6 November and, on 13 November, Danny De Carlo told police that he had overheard conversations at Spahn Ranch which led him to believe that the Family was involved in the Tate and LaBianca murders. That same day, the Hinman, Tate and LaBianca investigatory teams were combined into one unit. Five days later, police first learned that Atkins, in jail, was openly bragging that she herself had stabbed Sharon Tate to death.

The horror and emotional uncertainty of the last several months for the victims’ families finally came to an end on December 1, 1969. On that day at 2 PM, Los Angeles Police Chief Edward Davis walked into an auditorium at Parker Center in downtown Los Angeles and announced that police had finally solved the murders of Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, Voyteck Frykowski, Abigail Folger, Steven Parent and Leno and Rosemary LaBianca. The suspects, all members of a group of hippies known collectively as the Manson Family after their criminal leader Charles Manson, were either under arrest or awaiting indictment or extradition for the murders.

A few days later, on Friday, 5 December, 1969, Susan Atkins sat before a Los Angeles County Grand Jury and gave a lengthy account of the murders. She had been promised that, in return for her truthful testimony, the state would not seek the death penalty against her, nor would they use any of her testimony against either her or her co-defendants. Atkins loved an audience, and she left out no brutal detail during her multi-hour interview. It was enough for the Grand Jury. On December 8, they handed down indictments against Manson, Watson, Atkins, Krenwinkel and Kasabian, for seven counts of murder and one count of conspiracy to commit murder. It was the beginning of the end for the Manson Family.