REAL LIFE
17
After The
Helter Skelter
FIFTY years after the brutal
Manson murders, Debra Tate
admits that, still haunted by
her sister ’s murder, she
continues the fight to keep her
killers behind bars.
I
N the strangely hot summer of 1969, the hills above Los
Angeles offered a sanctuary, not only from sweltering
workplaces and smog-wreathed freeways, but the
ominous flow of bad news spilling through the vast
metropolis.
At her home on Cielo Drive, a steep, winding road behind
Beverly Hills, 26-year-old Sharon Tate, one of Hollywood’s
brightest young stars, kept the windows open and padded
around the secluded property dressed as lightly as possible.
Things were going well for Sharon. After a hesitant start, her
career had taken off, and a year earlier she had married the
newly fashionable French-born film director Roman Polanski,
whose worldwide hit Rosemary’s Baby had rocketed him
into the big league. Best of all, Sharon was eight months
pregnant with the couple’s first child.
As the weekend of August 9-
approached, Sharon learned
that Roman had been delayed
in London and wouldn’t be
home as planned. Instead,
she invited friends over for
dinner and a chill-out at
Cielo Drive. None of them
would survive what the
Los Angeles prosecutor,
Vincent Bugliosi, later
characterised as ‘perhaps
the most bizarre, savage,
nightmarish murder
spree in the recorded
annals of crime’.Continues on pages 18-