Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders

Before the filming was over, and after what was for Polanski a very long courtship, Sharon and Roman became off-screen lovers too. When Sebring flew to London, Sharon told him the news. If he took it hard, he was careful not to show it, very quickly settling into the role of family friend. There were indications, asides made to a few associates, that Sebring hoped that Sharon would eventually tire of Roman, or vice versa, the presumption being that when this happened he intended to be around. Those who claimed that Sebring was still in love with Sharon were guessing—though Sebring knew hundreds of people, he apparently had few really close friends, and kept his inner feelings very much to himself—but it was a safe guess that although the nature of that love had changed, some deep attachment remained. After the breakup, Sebring was involved with many women, but, as revealed in the LAPD interview sheets, for the most part the relationships were more sexual than emotional, the majority “one night stands.”

Paramount asked Polanski to do the film version of Ira Levin’s novel Rosemary’s Baby. The film, in which Mia Farrow played a young girl who had a child by Satan, was completed late in 1967. On January 20, 1968, to the surprise of many friends to whom Polanski had vowed never again to marry, he and Sharon were wed in a mod ceremony in London.

Rosemary’s Baby premiered that June. That same month the Polanskis rented actress Patty Duke’s home at 1600 Summit Ridge Drive in Los Angeles. It was while they were living there that Mrs. Chapman began working for them. In early 1969 they heard that 10050 Cielo Drive might be vacant. Though they never met in person, Sharon talked to Terry Melcher on the phone several times, making arrangements to take over his unexpired lease. The Polanskis signed a rental agreement on February 12, 1969, at $1,200 a month, and moved in three days later.

Though Rosemary’s Baby was a smash success, Sharon’s own career had never quite taken off. She had appeared semi-nude in the March 1967 issue of Playboy (Polanski himself took the photos on the set of The Fearless Vampire Killers), the accompanying article beginning, “This is the year that Sharon Tate happens…” But the prediction wasn’t fulfilled, not that year. Though a number of reviewers commented on her striking looks, neither this nor two other films in which she played—Don’t Make Waves, with Tony Curtis, and The Wrecking Crew, with Dean Martin—brought her much closer to stardom. Her biggest role came in the 1967 film Valley of the Dolls, in which she played the actress Jennifer who, on learning that she has breast cancer, takes an overdose of sleeping pills. Not long before her death, Jennifer remarks, “I have no talent. All I have is a body.”

There were reviewers who felt that adequately summed up Sharon Tate’s performance. To be fairer, to date she hadn’t been given a single role which gave her a chance to bring out whatever acting ability she may have had.

She was not a star, not yet. Her career seemed to hesitate on the edge of a breakthrough, but it could easily have remained stationary, or gone the other way.

But for the first time in her life, Sharon’s ambition had slipped to second place. Her marriage and her pregnancy had become her whole life. According to those closest to her, she seemed oblivious to all else.

There were rumors of trouble in her marriage. Several of her female friends told LAPD that she had waited to tell Roman of her pregnancy until after it was too late to abort. If she was concerned that even after marriage Polanski remained the playboy, she hid it. Sharon herself often told a story then current in the movie colony, of how Roman was driving through Beverly Hills when, spotting a pretty girl walking ahead of him, he yelled, “Miss, you have a bea-u-ti-ful arse.” Only when the girl turned did he recognize his wife. Yet it was obvious that she hoped the baby would bring the marriage closer together.

Hollywood is a bitchy town. In interviewing acquaintances of the victims, LAPD would encounter an incredible amount of venom. Interestingly enough, in the dozens of interview sheets, no one who actually knew Sharon Tate said anything bad about her. Very sweet, somewhat naïve—these were the words most often used.

That Sunday a Los Angeles Times reporter who had known Sharon described her as “an astonishingly beautiful woman with a statuesque figure and a face of great delicacy.”

But then he didn’t see her as Coroner Noguchi did.

Cause of death: Multiple stab wounds of the chest and back, penetrating the heart, lungs, and liver, causing massive hemorrhage. Victim was stabbed sixteen times, five of which wounds were in and of themselves fatal.