Sharmagne Leland-St. John, Jay Sebring, Roman, and Elizabeth Folger

Normally, this is something I would never do, share a Facebook post unless it was Public. 

However, realizing that over 2,000 people are friends with this person (whom I won't name here), I figured it's not really private anymore, and Sharmagne is also quite public.

Here is the post:

I love this part:  
"Bugliosi withheld so much info on the murders, but I never understood why."

Personally, I've never heard of Sharmagne Leland-St. John until I read the above post.  She says she was Jay Sebring's girlfriend.   I'll admit I don't know much at all about Jay's private life during that time, maybe someone that does can chime in...

She has a public Facebook page, a Wiki page, and an IMdB page.  Sharmagne is quite accomplished as a poet and actress.  Her parents were actors.  She was married to Richard Sylbert, the Oscar-winning production designer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharmagne_Leland-St._John

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0500912/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm

I checked the Tate/LaBianca police reports and she is not listed as a suspect, although she clearly admits she was, along with Charles Tacot and others.

It's also the first I've read that Roman had plans of switching houses with Michael Butler.

(From Wiki) 
"Michael Butler is an American theatrical producer best known for bringing the rock musical Hair from Public Theater to Broadway in 1968.  During his time as Hair producer he was dubbed by the press as "the Hippie Millionaire."

"My future nephew was married to Gibby's younger sister."  In researching Elizabeth Folger, I could only find that Elizabeth was married to Robert Eldred.  Not sure if Robert was her future nephew, but thought I would throw all this out there as most here are always interested in the Folgers.

Here is Elizabeth in 2010:

Robert Eldred is a Financial Planner in the Bay Area.

And once again we hear the story that the Manson girls were swimming in the Cielo pool a day before the murders.

I faintly remember reading something long ago about the cast from Hair being questioned,  (also thrown out of Mexico at that time) but I don't recall the specifics...unfortunately...

Anyway, I'm glad to see some of the folks that were actually there starting to speak up, maybe with all these little tid-bits we'll be able to connect more dots!

Sharon and Roman on the set of "Fearless Vampire Killers"

Submitted by Venus. Thanks Venus!

Venus reviews "The Girl" by Samantha Geimer

Recently I read this book and really enjoyed it. It was written in the style that made it seem as if she was sitting next to you and telling it directly to you. I love books like that.

If you've ever had any questions about the events of that period when Roman Polanski arranged to photograph a young teenager, you'll find the answers here. Samantha Geimer tells all. The book is her autobiography... her life before, during and after this case, that completely changed the lives of all who were involved.

I was impressed by her dry sense of humor, there were moments when I found myself laughing, especially when she described a movie called "The Hurricane" (which Roman was briefly involved with).  She summed it up quite well, basically saying it was a film about a lot of rain. I don't remember her exact comment, sorry.

She apparently did have a chance at a Hollywood career, stating that she'd had several callbacks for the film "Freaky Friday." The role eventually went to Jodie Foster.

Many people have wondered how she could've posed topless for him. She didn't like doing it, but compared herself to peers such as Brooke Shields and Jodie Foster.  They were doing similar things so she figured it was ok. She said she just looked at it as a job and nothing else.

People have criticized her mom since her mom didn't go with her that day. Here's the reason: Brooke Shields' mom Teri got a lot of bad press for being such a stage mother so Samantha's mom stayed away. Plus, a friend was supposed to go with her, but changed her mind at the last minute.

She wasn't impressed with Roman at all, she thought he was her size and said he looked like "a ferret." When he gave her the pill and champagne, she said she was playacting and tried to be like a "Cosmo" girl. When things started getting more intimate, she said she was still just trying to get through it by trying to be like Marilyn Monroe. She wondered what Marilyn would do.  She didn't think his intention was to hurt her even though he did.

She said she was never a fan of his films except that, at the time of this incident, her favorite film was "Fearless Vampire Killers." She said she didn't connect him with the film.

This book really captured the mood of the era.

There are photos in it from that night. If you're looking for any topless ones, don't waste your time. Here are a couple photos that Roman took. Does she look happy? To me, she looks very nervous and uncertain.

For anyone who thinks she looked like an adult, you're wrong. While she wasn't a child, she was nowhere near being an adult.

The book also features correspondence from the lawyer(s) and she talks about the apology she got from Roman.

To me, the apology became a moot point when you also read (at other points) that Roman said he "was used to grief" and considered this "was a trifle." Really? A trifle?????

Here's what Roman looked like during this time.

Venus puts in her two cents:

I'm slightly older than Samantha. I remember this case. I was (and still am) appalled by it. One thing that really upsets me is when people say she'd already had sex. So what?????? If we follow that logic, does that mean a married woman can't be raped? What about a prostitute? If someone says no, that should be the end of it. Roman seemed to think he had no problem getting sexual partners so he should've just moved on. What was his reasoning? Was it the appeal of the unattainable? Was it a novelty? Was it just his attitude? I don't care if things are different in Europe. I don't care about her past sexual experience. She told him no. Period.

Now, since I'm in her age group, I also remember wanting to be treated like an adult. I can remember getting dressed up and pretending that my photo was being taken (not by him, just by "someone") It was all pretend. And, no, these weren't sexy pictures. I just liked to try out different clothes, makeup and hairstyles.

Personally, I'm glad that she was able to move on with her life. I'm glad that she seems to be happy and content. Good for her.

She has forgiven Roman which is ok by me since it's her business. I don't know how she feels. If she's chosen to forgive him to move on with her life, that's ok.

Samantha Geimer - The Today Show

Roman Polanski victim: I’m telling story "on my own terms".

From the Today Show - September 16, 2013

Samantha Geimer, who at age 13 was at the center of a sexual abuse charges against director Roman Polanski, speaks out 36 years later in her new book “The Girl: My Life in the Shadow of Roman Polanski.” 

She tells TODAY’s Savannah Guthrie that the book is a way "to tell my story on my own terms.”

For 32 years, Samantha Geimer lived in relative anonymity, her sexual victimization by Roman Polanski relegated to the past after the Oscar-winning director's flight to Europe prior to being sentenced for her rape. But following Polanski's arrest in 2009, Geimer was forced to re-address the past, and decided to finally own her own story. In "The Girl: A Life in the Shadow of Roman Polanski" she finally gives her account. 
Here's an excerpt:

PREFACE

No. No freakin’ way. I can’t do this again.

September 27, 2009, Estes Park,Colorado. A chill in the air, snow on the mountaintops, leaves cinnamon and gold—so different from the glorious monotony of our Hawaii weather. My husband and I were in the middle of a long anticipated vacation on the mainland—celebrating family birthdays, catching trout, watching elk rut. We were feeling particularly festive. At 6:00 AM Dave left our hotel to !sh. I collapsed gratefully back into bed. At 8:15 AM the phone rang.

It was my friend Dawn. She was always looking out for me.“I have to tell you something, and you have to wake up and be ready,” she said. I was instantly awake. I knew something bad had happened to her. I steeled myself.

“Roman Polanski got arrested.”

Oh God. This wasn’t her bad news. This was my bad news.

“Sam? Did you hear what I said?”

When I’m upset, I curse. I can’t help it. I become a fourteen-year-old boy. “S__t s__t s__t s__t, what the f__k.”

“They arrested him in Switzerland,” Dawn said. “I just heard it on the news.”

Sickness, panic. Need my family. Need my mother. Need a Xanax.

CNN had the story:

Oscar-winning filmmaker Roman Polanski has been arrested in Switzerland on a decades-old arrest warrant stemming from a sex charge in California, Swiss police said Sunday.

Polanski, 76, was taken into custody trying to enter Switzerland on Saturday, Zurich police said. A spokesman for the Swiss Justice Ministry said Polanski was arrested upon arrival at the airport.

He has lived in France for decades to avoid being arrested if he enters the United States and declined to appear in person to collect his Academy Award for Best Director for “The Pianist” in 2003.

The director pleaded guilty in 1977 to a single count of having unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor, acknowledging he had sex with a 13-year-old girl. But he fled the United States before he could be sentenced, and U.S. authorities have had a warrant for his arrest since 1978.

Atria

Here’s a problem: This story doesn’t mention the insanity that preceded his flight—the egomaniacal judge, the unconscionable uncertainty of the sentencing, the case being played out not in the courtroom, but in the media.

And here’s another problem: Roman Polanski’s arrest was, in a sense, my arrest. Because I am that thirteen-year-old girl.

Oh for God’s sakes, it’s all such ancient history, you might say. After all, it’s 2013: he’s eighty, I’m fifty. He is one of the most celebrated filmmakers in the world. I have a great husband, great kids, a great life. What do his problems, at this point, have to do with me?

Well, nothing. And everything.

To say that the Roman Polanski rape case was a circus is only the mildest exaggeration. For the media, there was nothing to equal its heady combination of sex, celebrity, and depravity until the O. J. Simpson trial in 1995. Just about everyone who lived through or read about this sordid chapter in Hollywood history had an opinion about the renowned director and the girl he was accused of drugging, raping, and sodomizing—me.

Opinions on the Polanski case go something like this: He was a vile pedophile whose power allowed him to escape the long arm of the law. 

Or: He was a troubled man whose own horrific background did not allow him to gauge the difference between a child and a young woman. And the girl? She was an innocent victim. 

Or, no: She was a cunning Lolita. Or, perhaps most commonly: She was a reluctant but ultimately willing player in the crazy ambitions of her stage mother, who wanted her little girl to be a star.

Who was the predator? Who was the prey? We were all suspect: Was Roman a rapist? Had my mother set up the famous director to blackmail him, using her daughter as bait? The arguments went on and on and on. Maybe the only person who lived through that time who has not weighed in on the crime and its aftermath in any significant way is... me. Which is why I thought it might be a good idea to tell my story.

But these thoughts only occurred to me a few months after Polanski’s arrest. That day, I was in a very different frame of mind. I was thinking: Goodbye, peace. Hello, Media Nightmare. Because I knew that whenever Polanski was in the news, I would be, too.

Ask yourself this: Would you like the craziest thing that ever happened to you as a teenager broadcast and then dissected over and over on television, in the blogosphere?

Right. I didn’t think so.

I called home and told my sons to unplug the phone—there were already thirty messages that had landed in the first few hours, and within the next couple of days my lawyer, Lawrence Silver, would be inundated. As much as I dreaded any time Roman Polanski was in the news, I never imagined that the appetite for this story would lead reporters to show up on Kauai. On my doorstep. My sons became prisoners in their own home. Photographers had staked out space in front of my property, sitting in their cars, waiting and drinking stale coffee. What did Rape Girl look like now? Was she fat, thin, pretty, wrinkly? Imagine how much my sons, who were then seventeen, twenty-one, and twenty-seven, enjoyed thinking about why their mom was getting this attention. Nobody likes to think about their mother getting kissed, never mind something like this.

As soon as I heard, I called Dave: “Sorry, fishing trip is over. We have problems. Come back now.” I called Mom, who’d been staying with my aunt up the road. “What did he do now?” she asked. It didn’t occur to her that his arrest, thirty-two years later, could have anything to do with me.

We made our way to Denver, staying overnight in a hotel near the airport. Roman’s arrest was in all the newspapers and running on the ticker on the news channels. My face was on all the televisions in the lobby bar. “Everyone’s staring,” Dave whispered. Were they? I don’t know. Maybe it was his imagination. I kept my head down. But the woman at the front desk noticed my photo in the Denver paper and upgraded us to a more secure floor. I was so grateful to that hotel, because that would be the last time I'd have any peace for the next few weeks.

In the Hawaiian airport a smattering of photographers were waiting for us. How did they even know what flight I was on? I guess all airline companies have moles. It was uncomfortable, but it was quickly over. Still, Dave and I had no choice: I couldn’t go home and face the paparazzi. We slept that night at my office. A couple of days later, an article ran that said I was “clearly upset and looking tired and drawn.” More like exhausted and furious. 

By the time I dared to go home, most of the stalkerazzi had grumpily given up camping outside my door. I had to hand it to my sons; they helped. They monitored the cars parked in front of the house, and shouted at anyone who came by to gawk; my son Alex even went out and continually photographed one of the photographers until he left. They had to discourage their friends from confronting the photographers; my sons were having to be peacekeepers as well.

Over the next few days, we would receive more than two hundred calls, almost all from the press, and that doesn’t include the ones that came to Larry’s office. At the same time, my husband’s cousins—the Geimer relations in California—were dealing with people knocking on their door. Geimer was an uncommon name, and reporters figured these people might have some idea where I was and what I was up to. Probably, in the minds of these media folks, I was having horrible flashbacks from decades ago. I was—but it was horrible flashbacks of them.

Why would all this be happening now? True, the United States could have sought Polanski’s arrest and extradition worldwide at any time since 1978. But at that moment, we knew nothing. I never even realized Polanski could leave France; I had no idea he had a chalet in Switzerland and traveled, semi-covertly, in and out of several countries. At the moment all I could think was, Why would he do something so stupid? And why should I have to live through it all—again?

I called my lawyer, Larry Silver, who said, “I don’t know what this is about, either. Do nothing. I’ll find out.”

Something, or someone, had stirred up old wounds. Maybe Steven Cooley, the Republican district attorney of Los Angeles—who, not coincidentally, was running for state attorney general—felt he had to show everyone who was the big macher and push for resolution in this famously unresolved case.

I suddenly recalled how uncomfortable I’d felt for many years in California, and in Los Angeles in particular. Celebrity didn’t just count for a lot; to a certain segment of the population, it was everything. And wherever a celebrity was involved, all emotions loomed large. Adulation, yes. But retribution, too. I had this sense that the entire legal system was saying to Polanski, You think you’re better than us? Well, just wait.

The purpose of the legal system is to punish criminals, of course, and there were many ideas about what this meant for Polanski—had he been punished enough for what he did? Did he still deserve to be held accountable? Or had the punishment been bungled so stupendously that anything further was cruel and unusual? And then there was the other purpose of the judicial system: to protect victims and protect society from criminals. So what was the sense of arresting Polanski now? Did society need to be protected from him? Did I?

Over the years, I have had bad dreams about the legal morass, the publicity, the questioning in the courtroom. But I don’t think I ever dreamed about Roman or that night at Jack Nicholson’s house. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t terrible. It was. But its terribleness didn’t haunt me. Other aspects of that time did. When Roman was arrested in Switzerland, it wasn’t exactly déjà vu, but it reminded me of the sense of powerlessness I had experienced as a thirteen-year-old girl. With the passing years, it had come to seem less and less likely that Roman would ever return to the States. He would live and die a celebrated director in France, where he was beloved, and I would hold on to the anonymity I cherished. And if he were to return, I assumed it would be because he’d resolved his legal problems and comeback voluntarily. How could he be arrested again, thirty-two years later?

In a blink everything had returned nearly to the way it was decades before. Roman was sitting in a jail cell, and I was being hounded by the press. It was just like all those many years ago when we first met Judge Rittenband, the man who oversaw the case: we were bound again by a legal system that valued the headlines it could generate more than the effect its actions had on individuals. His rights as a defendant, my rights as a victim, were being stomped into the ground.

As the case moved again through the courts and old atrocities were revisited, my lawyer, Larry Silver, again beseeched the court to finally make the whole thing go away.

“The victim is once again the victim,” he wrote. “Everyone claims that they are acting to vindicate justice, but Samantha sees no justice. Everyone insists that she owes them a story, but her story continues to be sad.

“She endures this life because a corrupt judge caused, understandably, Polanski to flee. No matter what his crime, Polanski was entitled to be treated fairly; he was not. The day Polanski fled was a sad day for American justice. Samantha should not be made to pay the price. She has been paying for a failed judicial and prosecutorial system.”

“This statement makes one more demand, one more request,one more plea: Leave her alone.”

• • •

Now listen: I am not naïve. If you write a book, you’re not asking to be left alone. You’re inviting people into your life. I know that. Welcome.

But I do have a reason. So much has been written about the Polanski case, but none of it has been written by me, the person at the center of it. So many years have gone by; it’s time. I've had so many years to rage, to laugh, to marvel at what people say and why they say it. In a sense I want to take back ownership of my own story from those who've commented on it, without rebuke, for so long. Because my story is not just pure awfulness. It's crazy and sad, but yes, sometimes funny, too. It may have been messy at times, but it's my mess and I'm taking it back.

There is even, as we parents say, a teachable moment. We have what I think of as a Victim Industry in this country, an industry populated by Nancy Grace and Dr. Phil and Gloria Allred and all those who make money by manufacturing outrage. I’ve been part of it. If you spent years reading about yourself in the papers with the moniker “Sex Victim Girl,” you’d have a lot to say about this issue, too. But for now I’ll leave it at this: It is wrong to ask people to feel like victims, because once they do, they feel like victims in every area of their lives.

I made a decision: I wasn’t going to be a victim of anyone or for anyone. Not Roman, not the state of California, not the media. I wasn’t going to be defined by what is said about me or expected from me. I was going to tell my story, my truth, through nobody else’s perspective but my own.

And that is what I have done.

Excerpted from THE GIRL: A LIFE IN THE SHADOW OF ROMAN POLANSKI  by Samantha Geimer. Copyright © 2013 by Samantha Geimer. Excerpted by permission of Atria Books. All rights reserved. 

View here:  http://www.today.com/books/girl-victim-roman-polanski-case-breaks-her-silence-8C11144935

Roman Polanski Rape Victim Unveils Startling, Disturbing Photo for Book Cover (Exclusive)

"The Girl," Samantha Geimer's memoir about being raped by Roman Polanski in 1977 at age 13, features a picture the director took of her days before his assault.

After nearly 35 years of silence, the 13-year-old girl Roman Polanski raped in 1977 is finally telling her full story in The Girl: A Life in the Shadow of Roman Polanski. 

The Hollywood Reporter's exclusive first look at the cover of the book reveals Samantha Geimer's determination to reclaim her own story. 

The cover is a haunting close-up shot of the teenage Geimer (then known by her maiden name, Samantha Gailey), taken on Feb. 20, 1977, less than three weeks before Polanski drugged and raped her at Jack Nicholson's Mulholland Drive home during a modeling shoot when he also gave her alcohol and a quaalude. 

But the photo comes with a surprising twist: It was taken by Polanski himself.

He took the pictures during his first photo session with Geimer, now 50, at her home in Woodland Hills, a session in which the director coaxed the young girl to pose topless for him in some of the shots. 

Using the photo was part of Geimer's strategy to reclaim her story.

Since the incident, the media has always illustrated the story with a picture of Polanski. Geimer finally wanted to put her own face on the story, and this picture reflected the starting point for her. 

The pictures surfaced during Geimer's civil suit against Polanski, which she filed in 1988 and resulted in Polanski agreeing to pay her $500,000 plus interest (a sum Geimer struggled to collect). 

As part of the civil suit, her attorney Lawrence Silver, who also contributes to the book, demanded Polanski turn over all the pictures he took. Even though the director turned over some photos (and all rights associated with them), Silver always believed others existed, and years later they were discovered. 

“What happened was this," writes Silver in the book. "In executing the search warrant, the police didn’t recognize the importance of a receipt/claim check from Sav-On Drugs’ photograph department. Years later, I was told that Polanski gave his lawyer the receipt, and they secured the printed roll of film and negatives from the drug store. During the civil suit, his lawyer had to turn those photos over to me. These photographs, important both legally and historically, would likely have never been discovered if not for the civil suit.”

Publisher Atria promises that The Girl "will give readers insight into many dimensions of the story that have never been previously revealed." In announcing the book in 2012, Geimer said, "I am more than a 'Sex Victim Girl' [and] I offer my story now without rage, but with purpose -- to  share a tale that will reclaim my identity."

The book with the arresting cover photo of Geimer goes on sale Sept. 17.  

Story here: 

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/roman-polanski-rape-victim-unveils-591015

Submitted by Katie. Thanks Katie!

Roman as Chief Conspirator???

According to a number of studies, homicide is one of the leading causes of death for pregnant women in the United States... and the perpetrator is usually her husband:

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=3316485&page=1#.Tz5wPlHex8E

Case in point: Laci Peterson was overjoyed with the anticipation, of having her first child.  Unfortunately for Laci, her husband Scott wasn’t so excited.  Scott was feeling more and more “tied down” and decided to rid himself of the problem.

What if the intended targets at Cielo Drive were Jay & Sharon, and the others were incidental?  Just the opposite of what is supposed.

Who would benefit most from Sharon’s death?

It’s a fact, that Roman never took his marriage vows seriously.  Unfaithful, is an understatement.  If Sharon divorced Roman, he stood to lose financially… i.e., division of assets….child support….alimony…for the next 18 years or so…. or for longer.

Did Roman think Sharon was leaving him for Jay?  What better reason to kill them both?  It was no secret to Roman that Jay spent a lot of time at Cielo Drive.  Was Roman really okay with that?

Why did Roman let Sharon believe, that he'd accompany her back to the US in July… and then back out at the last minute?  Because, he supposedly had to work on a film?  THEN--on Friday  (the night of the murders), he suddenly told Sharon, he could work on the film in LA after all?   It's probably just a coincidence, but it's a big one.

So how did it go from Roman wanting Sharon gone… to the Manson Family being involved?
We don’t believe Roman knew any of the Manson clan, but it doesn’t mean, he didn’t know any unsavory characters in the UK, who DID know the Manson Family.

Roman spent his childhood years surviving the horrors of the Holocaust… running, hiding, lying, being severely beaten and witnessing murders frequently.  Could this have transformed him into someone capable of directing movies that were violent, sadistic and gruesome?  Do those experiences make life more precious…..or more dispensable?

We do know, that Roman is capable of raping a child.  That, we know for sure.  He also had an affair with an under-aged Nastassja Kinski while filming the movie Tess.  Was this man also capable of instigating murder(s)?

Submitted by Katie, Venus and Carol!! 

Thanks Ladies!!  You ROCK!

This New Movie should definitely prove interesting! 

"Martha Marcy May Marlene", Directed by Sean Durkin

Roger Durling,  October 31, 2011

"Martha Marcy May Marlene" is the enigmatic film by first-time writer/director Sean Durkin, whose Roman Polanski-esque debut full of paranoia and dread was rewarded with best director honors at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.  The film deals with a young woman (played by Elizabeth Olsen, in perhaps the best big-screen acting debut in decades) who is trying to piece her life back together after escaping from a cult led by a Charles Manson-like character, portrayed phenomenally and frighteningly by last year’s Academy Award nominee John Hawkes.

Watch The Official Trailer Below...

John Hawkes: "It seems like every year there is an attempt to make a Charles Manson–type movie, and I have never wanted to be involved in those kinds of things even though I’ve been asked.  But when I read the script, the word “cult” was not really in the script, and it wasn’t about the leader. It was about this amazing young woman’s journey of what happens in the immediate aftermath in leaving a cult".

Sean Durkin: "There’s a line right at the beginning of the movie when she turns to her sister and asks, “How far are we from yesterday?” and then the movie cuts into a flashback.  The way you play with time is astonishing.
When someone is in a group like this, from what I understand, there are no clocks or calendars, so the idea of time gets completely lost.  Therefore, she’s left with this traumatic experience and trying to make sense of it, so she’s experiencing those events in her mind and the events in the present simultaneously.  As an audience, we feel like we’re down the rabbit hole with her".

"I spent time with someone who was in a cult. She is a friend of ours, and the way that she described it is that fear, that paranoia, that confusion, that inability to say what had happened, lying about where she had been — it was a basic survival mode, and that is what attracted me and got me really passionate"

Venus Writes:
How about a thread about the odd relationship between Sharon, Jay and Roman? 

For instance, did Roman really care that Sharon and Jay were still close?  Was he relieved that Sharon was busy and not paying attention to his shenanigans?  Or was it something else?  One book I read (a Warren Beatty bio) implied that there was a menage a trois between the 3 of them.  I'm certainly not saying that's true, but it's a point to ponder.  I think you can see that this topic has a lot of possibilites.  Would Sharon and Jay have gotten back together in the future?  Would her marriage to Roman have worked out (doubtful) and she and Jay have gone their own ways?

Thanks Venus!!

Older News:  7/28/2010
Polanski Alleged To Have Raped Another Woman At Jack Nicholson's House  http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2010/07/polanski_alleged_anal_rape.php

More Roman on Lie Detector - 8/16/69:

At 50 seconds - 2min. 47secs...
"Jay Sebring may have been invloved in a money thing, drug thing, drug delivery... entangled in some peculiar business.  Jay owed his dentist $5400 dollars.  That's rather amazing to me, as he was known as a prosperous man.  This indicates to me, he must have been in serious financial trouble, despite the appearances that he kept".

At 6mins. 18secs -  6mins. 40 secs....
"Voytek Frykoski had been sniffing Cocaine for two years regularly".

Roman Polanski comes home to the scene of the Murders.

A Tragic Trip to the House on the Hill.

After a harrowing tour of his house, Director Roman Polanski sits on the bloodied porch, beside door where the killer scrawled "PIG" in blood.

 By Thomas Thompson

Now it was quiet, and the Sunday afternoon washed by the August sun. The police had done their work and gone away and there was an eerie suspension of time and motion at the place in Benedict Canyon where the five were killed.

"This must be the world-famous orgy house," said Roman Polanski with bitter sarcasm as he parked in his driveway. He pointed to a white rail broken on the fence bordering the drive and speculated that the boy, Steven Parent, had backed his father's car into the fence in a desperate attempt to flee the bullets that destroyed him.

He walked into his yard, past the fake wishing well with the stone doves and squirrels perched on the rim, past the beds of marigolds and daisies dying from a fortnight of inattention, past the crumpled bedsheet which lay on the grass under one of the great pine trees to cover Abigail Folger in her death, and they left it there.

He walked around to the rustic swimming pool, now crowded with leaves and debris, the floats and air mattresses silently bumping into each other as a soft breeze stirred the water. "You see that big tube," he said, pointing to a transparent plastic ring. "Sharon bought that so she could prop up her big belly and float around."

The Front porch, where Voyteck Frykowski's body had been, was bad––the blood dried and darkened in a mahogany brown and strewn about the flagstones like a Jackson Pollock painting, the blood epigraph "PIG" dimming now on the white Dutch door––but the living room was the dark side of the moon.

In the bloodstained living room where the bodies of Miss Tate and Sebring were found beside the couch, clairvoyant Peter Hurkos, who worked on the Boston Strangler case, studies the scene.

Here was a spacious wonderful room––white walls and white beams, an open loft overhead with a redwood ladder leading to it, big fireplace with novels and scripts strewn on hearth, baby grand piano, a scattering of chairs to sit in not to look at, a place of warmth and taste and––as the eye looked closer––impossible horror.

In front of the beige velvet couch were the two major smears of blood, the one where hair stylist Jay Sebring fell next to the crumpled zebra rug, the other where Sharon Tate, stabbed so brutally that murder became atrocity, collapsed and died in a jumble of oddities––a yellow candle stub, a teach-yourself Japanese instruction kit, a mauve bedroom slipper, a book on natural childbirth. Sharon's first baby would have been born within the month. Doctor's took it from her body, but the perfectly formed infant son had died with its mother.

Roman speaks English well, even though he learned it just four years ago, but when he is tired the words come out with difficulty, each one separate, each one painfully located, each one punctuatd. "Why?" he said, and he said it again and again. And, after a long while, "Sharon was...the supreme moment...of my life...I knew it would not...last.

Eighteen months ago, in a London registry office, Sharon Tate married Roman Polanski. She wore a taffeta minidress, he a Regency suit with a white cravat. It was the union of two different worlds.

Roman's world until that day had been laced with tragedy and horror. When he was a child in Krakow, Poland, his mother disappeared one day and he learned that she had been taken to the place called Auschwitz and he never saw her again. One afternoon his father, who wore a yellow Star of David armband, took him to the barbe-wore fence which ringed the ghetto and cut out a small place and told him to run, run for his life, run from the Germans until the war was over and people stopped disappearing.

After he had survived what so few other Polish Jews had, a man attacked him in Warsaw and savagely clubbed his head in a quarrel over a bicycle. Roman survived once more, but his assailant––who, it turned out, had already murdered three people––was hanged.

When Roman became a film director and made it to the West and started building his credits––Repulsion, Cul-de-Sac, Rosemary's Baby––they all seemed to deal with death and the macabre. Several months ago in London I asked him why he made so many horror films, "What is horror to you," he answered quietly, "may not be horror to me."

While Roman was fleeing from the Nazis, Sharon was growing up first in Dallas––where her father, an Army officer, had been stationed in 1943––then a dozen places around the country. At six mnths, she won the "Miss Tiny Tot" conntest, and two decades later, trailing beauty crowns, began the long climb up to the high place where she would die.

Many thought she was the most beautiful woman in Hollywood. She had almond-shaped eyes, and the high cheeckbones that go with being photogenic. She had the legs that miniskirts were created for (she would be buried in a Pucci print mini). Her voice was soft, her manner gentle. She smoked a little pot because the others did, and she did not pursue her career with the ravenous ambition indigenous to her business. When she became pregnant this year, she announced the news, said a friend, "as if she had invented having babies." She was not nor had she ever been promiscuous. "Sharon was out of bounds," said one of the town's most successful bachelors. "You just looked, and God it hurt to look, but you couldn't touch."

Roman and Sharon––the words quickly weat together, became one of the most popular couples on two scenes, Hollywood London. In London they kept a small mews house sparsely furnished (the living room had two busts, one of Napoleon, one of Roman, side by side), and their mates were The Beatles and the Stones and Victor Lownes of the Playboy Club there and whoever was in town. When Sharon was away for any extended time, Roman was not adverse to an evening out with somebody else. "He has the European attitude toward sex," said a friend. "It's no big deal, nothing to get nervous about. But there was never any doubt that he loved Sharon and only Sharon."

In Hollywood they move smoothly through many layers of film society––dining at Garson Kanin's house, where Roman was introduced to Arthur Rubenstein and fell emotionally into his arms, inventing wild and funny situation comedies to act out at home on Roman's TV tape machine with French Director Roger Vadim and Jane Fonda, running with the young and sometimes troubled newcomers, the rock singers, the friends of friends whom Roman often found at his table in the nightclub and rarely sent away.

Roman walked now through the living room into the master bedroom. "Sharon must have been asleep that night," he said. "Look, there, the pillows––she always put them that way when I was gone." The big double bed with the gaily printed lime-green and orange sheets had been slept in on one side only, two big pillows cut it in half, rather like a bundling board. "She hugged the pillows instead of me," he said shyly.

His eyes caught the shuttered door leading to the pool. There were dried spots of blood there and the black grime left when police dust for fingerprints. "She must have been awakened by the noise and got up..." Roman followed a path through the hall into the living room. "They hit her here...." He went back into the bedroom. "She tried to get out that door...." He returned to the hall and pinted to tiny drops of blood flecking the baseboard. "And they dragged her into the living room and did...it..."

He went into the second bedroom where Frykowski and Folger slept in a magnificent antique bed. "I should have thrown him out when he ran over Sharon's dog," he said. Sharon had owned a Yorkshire named Saperstein (after the sinister obstetrician in Rosemary's Baby) and several weeks earlier Frykowski had run over the animal in the driveway and killed it.

How long had Voytek and Miss Folger been house guests here?

"Too long. I guess," he answered.

Roman's success in the West was a beacon to many creative friends in Poland. Several of his generation managed to leave the Communist country, and in most cases, their first letters and calls were to Roman Polanski.

"Roman became sort of a Polish Y.M.C.A. in America," says a friend. "He loaned them money, he read their scripts and got them jobs, and it didn't matter if some of them had no talent and no promise. What was important was that they were Polish. There was this incredible bond."

Roman prowled through his house as the afternoon wore on. "There is something here," he said. "I can feel it. something the poilce missed. I must find the thread."

All week long he had tried to put some of the pieces together. He head the Hollywood gossip: that the killers were devil-worshippers, that it was a Mau-Mau type slaughter. Drugs? "We smoked pot at my house," said Roman. "But I don't think I've ever been to a Hollywood party where it wasn't." (One film figrue wryly noted a few days after the crime, "Toilets are flushing all over Beverly Hills: the entire Los Angeles sewer system is stoned.") Roman learned from John Phillips, the rock composer and co-founder of the new disbanded Mamas and Papas, that Frykowski was reportedly "into a harder drug scene than just pot."

Sharon and Roman spent most of this spring in Europe, she doing a film in Rome, he preparing several new films in London. In their absence, Frykowski and Miss Folger had stayed in the house-at Roman's request. They remained there after Sharon returned, keeping her company until Roman could join her.

"Roman didn't know what the hell was going on at his house," says a friend. "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 and weirdos went up, it wasn't by Sharon's invitation."

Roman found a smashed lantern in the flowerbed near the front porch. He held it for a minute, wondering if the police had overlooked it, if it was perhaps a clue. He looked at the nail on the front door where it had once hung. He threw it back to the flowerbed.

He was drawn back once again to the bedroom. He opened the door of an armoire, and baby things almost tumbled out. There were stacks of blankets, diapers, formula bottles and warmers, bassinet, books––Naming Your Baby, Let's Have Healthy Children, How To Teach Your Baby To Read. He came across a stack of publicity photos of Sharon, posing in the front yard, the spectacular view behind her, below her. And he cried for quite a long while.

In the driveway, Roman stopped to examine briefly the black Porsche of Jay Sebring and the yellow Firebird of Miss Folger. Then he got into his car and hurried out. The trip down the hill was much quicker than the trip up.

Article Submitted by Mary!  Thanks Mary!