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THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 48 JULY 31, 2019
NEWMAN: COURTESY OF JIM MARKHAM. DICAPRIO: BG010/BAUER-GRIFFIN/GC IMAGES. MANSON: BETTMAN/CORBIS.ProfilePhotographed by Fabrizio MalteseA Hair Mogul’s
Manson Memories:
‘I Thought I Was Next’
Jim Markham, stylist to Paul Newman and Steve McQueen, hosted a federal sting
to uncover the motives behind the murders and now shares his alternative belief:
‘I never bought into the race war theory’ By Tatiana SiegelJ
im Markham remembers vividly the days
following the grisly Manson murders of
Roman Polanski’s preg na nt w i fe, Sharon
Ta t e, her former boyfriend and hairstylist
Jay Sebring and three others at the director’s
Benedict Canyon residence in August 1969. At
the time, Markham was Sebring’s protege and
business partner in a budding franchise of
men’s hair salons that stretched from a star-
packed outpost on the corner of L.A.’s Melrose
and Fairfax to Miami. Sebring became the sec-
ond person to die at the hands of the Manson
Family members during an infamous killing
spree that claimed seven lives, including cof-
fee heiress Abigail Folger and her lover, Polish
screenwriter Wojciech Frykowski.
Markham, then 25 and splitting his time
between his hometown of Albuquerque,
New Mexico, and L.A., was the heir appar-
ent to Sebring’s 400-plus clientele, which
included Paul Newman, Frank Sinatra and
Steve McQueen. Markham heard the news on
the radio and got on the phone with Sebring
International president John Madden. “Jay
and I had talked many times ... that I’d be his
successor if anything ever happened to him,”
Markham recalls. “I just took right over out
of necessit y.”
The hair-care mogul sipped a Perrier on the
deck of the Majestic Hotel in Cannes when he
met with THR, a day after the world premiere
of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood — Quentin
Ta r a n t i n o’s spin on the events surrounding
the Charles Manson-directed murders. (In
the movie, Sebring is a key character played
by Emile Hirsch.) By Markham’s side was his
wife of 32 years, Cheryl — the daughter of Dan
Genis, special effects guru behind Star Wars —
who came of age during the Manson era.
Revisiting the weeks that followed the
killings is both painful and cathartic for
Markham, now 75 and fabulously wealthy
thanks to founding four hair-care companies,
including Pureology Serious Colour Care,
which he sold to L’Oréal in 2007 for $280 mil-
lion. (He pocketed more than $100 million on
that deal alone.) Markham has never talked in
detail about his entanglement in the infamousinvestigation that captured headlines
worldwide and continues to fascinate new
generations. His tale reveals his previously
unknown role in the critical months after the
murders, as law enforcement attempted to
identify the killers and decipher their motives
with no break in the case.
Days after the murders, and at the behest
of Sebring’s father, Markham began living at
the house where he had been a frequent guest:
Sebring’s Bavarian-style home, once owned
by Jean Harlow and located on Easton Drive
in Beverly Hills — just one mile away from
the Polanski-Tate residence on Cielo Drive.
“I’m living in Jay’s house with raccoons on the
roof — it would sound like somebody walking
on the top of the house,” he says. “I finally had
to move out. I thought I was going to be next.
They hadn’t caught Manson. Nobody knew
why it happened.”
As Markham remembers, Tate’s father, a col-
onel in Army intelligence, began working with
federal agents on the investigation. The agents
told Markham that they believed the killers
were connected to the salon (murder victim
Folger also had a connection to the hair enter-
prise given that she was an investor in Sebring
International). The salon was bugged, but
ultimately that line of inquiry lost steam. Once
the Manson Family became suspects, however,
about six months after the murders, the feds
enlisted a willing Markham to set up a sting
at his rented Brentwood home. He was to host
a meeting between a woman and a man she
had met at a bar, someone who had recounted
to her at length how he had met Manson in1 Hair-care mogul Jim Markham, who invented the sulfate-free
shampoo, was photographed May 22 in Cannes.
2 Markham was Paul Newman’s longtime haircutter.3 Charles Manson,
arrested in 1969.
4 Leonardo
DiCaprio (left)
and Brad Pitt in
Once Upon a Time
in Hollywood.123 4