Sharon Tate (January 24, 1943 – August 9, 1969) was an American actress and model. During the 1960s, she appeared regularly in fashion magazines and played small television roles before appearing in several movies. In 1968 she married director Roman Polanski,
She was eight-and-a-half months pregnant with the couple's son when she was strangled and stabbed in the stomach and chest in her home. Very NSFW crime scene photo.
Four others, including the man that took this photo, were also murdered that night by a group known as the Manson Family on August 9, 1969.
Manson, an aspiring musician, had previously attempted to enter into a recording contract with record producer Terry Melcher (the son of actress/singer Doris Day) who was a previous renter of the house along with his girlfriend, actress Candice Bergen. Melcher snubbed Manson which left him disgruntled. In retaliation, Manson ordered the attack thinking that Melcher still owned the house, which had been rented to Polanski. Source.
To ensure they were noted as bungling idiots, they also stole $70 from one of their victims, Abigail Folger, heiress to the Folger coffee fortune.
Consensus view within the Los Angeles tapehead community is a little different.
I read Helter Skelter at 12 and watched the movie at 13. It's certainly lurid. It's also nonsensical.
- According to Schreck's research in the Manson file, what transpired at Cielo drive in the early hours of August 9th 1969 was the bloody consequences of a turf war between ambitious small-time drug dealer Tex Watson and established suppliers Wojciech Frykowski and Jay Sebring over the lucrative Hollywood drug scene.
Sebring and Frykowski have both been named by several authors over the years as suppliers of narcotics to actors and musicians in Hollywood. A loose-knit network of stars that included such names as Mama Cass and Steve McQueen, as well as Polanski and Tate, whose house at Cielo Drive appeared to be a base for some of the dealing.
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