Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders Read Online Free PDF Page B

ust before noon William Tennant arrived, still dressed in tennis clothes, and was escorted through the gate by the police. It was like being led through a nightmare, as he was taken first to one body, then another. He didn’t recognize the young man in the automobile. But he identified the man on the lawn as Voytek Frykowski, the woman as Abigail Folger, and the two bodies in the living room as Sharon Tate Polanski and, tentatively, Jay Sebring. When the police lifted the bloody towel, the man’s face was so badly contused Tennant couldn’t be sure. Then he went outside and was sick.
    When the police photographer finished his work, another officer got sheets from the linen closet and covered the bodies.
    Beyond the gate the reporters and photographers now numbered in the dozens, with more arriving every few minutes. Police and press cars so hopelessly jammed Cielo Drive that several officers were detailed to try and untangle them. As Tennant pushed through the crowd, clutching his stomach and sobbing, the reporters hurled questions at him: “Is Sharon dead?” “Were they murdered?” “Has anyone informed Roman Polanski?” He ignored them, but they read the answers on his face.
    Not everyone who visited the scene was as reluctant to talk. “It’s like a battlefield up there,” police sergeant Stanley Klorman told reporters, his features grim with the shock of what he had seen. Another officer, unidentified, said, “It looked ritualistic,” this single remark providing the basis for an incredible amount of bizarre speculation.
     
     
    L ike the shock waves from an earthquake, news of the murders spread.
    “ FIVE SLAIN IN BEL AIR ,” read the headline on the first AP wire story. Though sent out before the identity of the victims had become known, it correctly reported the location of the bodies; that the telephone lines had been cut; and the arrest of an unnamed suspect. There were errors: one, to be much repeated, that “one victim had a hood over his head…”
    LAPD notified the Tates, John Madden, who in turn notified Sebring’s parents, and Peter Folger, Abigail’s father. Abigail’s socially prominent parents were divorced. Her father, chairman of the board of the A. J. Folger Coffee Company, lived in Woodside, her mother, Inez Mijia Folger, in San Francisco. However, Mrs. Folger was not at home but in Connecticut, visiting friends following a Mediterranean cruise, and Mr. Folger reached her there. She couldn’t believe it; she had talked to Abigail at about ten the previous night. Both mother and daughter had planned to fly to San Francisco today, for a reunion, Abigail having made a reservation on the 10 A.M . United flight.
    On reaching home, William Tennant made what was, for him, the most difficult call. He was not only Polanski’s business manager but a close friend. Tennant checked his watch, automatically adding nine hours to get London time. Though it would be late in the evening, he guessed that Polanski might still be working, trying to tie up his various film projects before returning home the following Tuesday, and he tried the number of his town house. He guessed right. Polanski and several associates were going over a scene in the script of The Day of the Dolphin when the telephone rang.
    Polanski would remember the conversation as follows:
    “Roman, there’s been a disaster in a house.”
    “Which house?”
    “Your house.” Then, in a rush, “Sharon is dead, and Voytek and Gibby and Jay.”
    “ No, no, no, no! ” Surely there was a mistake. Both men now crying, Tennant reiterated that it was true; he had gone to the house himself.
    “How?” Polanski asked. He was thinking, he later said, not of fire but a landslide, a not uncommon thing in the Los Angeles hills, especially after heavy rains; sometimes whole houses were buried, which meant that perhaps they could still be alive. Only then did Tennant tell him that they had been murdered.
    Voytek Frykowski, LAPD learned, had a