Fortean Times – September 2019

Fifty years ago, RomanPolanskiwas enjoying the success of his Satanic horrorfi lm

Rosemary’s Babywhen his wife, actress SharonTate, was brutally killed by Charles Manson’s

‘Family’.JAMES RILEYexamines the occult background of the Manson murders.

BETTMANN / GETTY IMAGES

NY DAILY NEWS VIA GETTY IMAGES

34 FT383

O

n 17August 1969,fi lm-

director RomanPolanski

arrived at 10050 Cielo Drive,

the palatial LA home he

had shared with his wife,

the actress SharonTate.

Emotionally and psychologically,

Polanskiwas in anextremely fragile

state of mind.Just over a week earlier,

on 9August,Tate and three of her

friends – the celebrity hairdresserJay

Sebring, coffee heiress AbigailFolger

and actorWojciechFrykowski – had

been brutallymurdered in the house.

Steven Parent, ayoung man visiting

Cielo Drive’s on-site caretakerWilliam

Garretson,was also killed. He had

been shot on the driveway. Garretson

aloneremained unharmed,reportedly

because he spent theevening in the

cottage that came with his job and

was thus hidden safelyaway from the

main house.

It would be November before the

murders and those of Rosemary

and Leno LaBianca – killed on 10

August in nearby LosFeliz –would be

connected to ‘theFamily’, a commune-

cum-cult held togetherby the conman,

pimp, and sometimemusician Charles

Manson. His trial and that of ‘Family’

members Susan Atkins, Charles ‘Tex’

Watson,Patricia Krenwinkel and LeslieVan

Houtenwould extend into 1971 and lead

to prosecutorVincent Bugliosi’s true crime

bestsellerHelter Skelter(1974), named after

the bloody writingfound on thewalls of

the LaBiancaresidence. Meanwhile, in the

immediate aftermath of themurders, itwas

Polanski who occupied the spotlight.^1

Reporters turned upen masseto Tate’s

funeral in Culver City on 13August and

Polanskifound himselfswept up ina

rumour-mill of speculation and scandal.The

mediawere presenting him aseverything

fromgrieving husband to intended target,

or even perpetrator, of themurders. Itwas

as aresponse to this attention thatPolanski

decided toreturn to Cielo drive on the

17th to “set therecord straight”.With him

were a writer-photographer team fromLife

magazine,TommyThompson andJulian

Wasser, as well as the television psychic

Peter Hurkos. Hurkos was a Dutch psychic

and medium who had gained a certain

degree of fame as a ‘psychic detective’ of

sorts. He had previously used his purported

ESPabilities to analyse thefi les relating to

the Boston Strangler case of 1964.

Hurkos had been a friend ofJay

Sebring, and Sebring’sfamily had

asked him to perform a ‘reading’

at Cielo Drive to glean information

about the crime.

Hardly anything had been

changed since theevening of the

ninth andfor Polanski 10050 Cielo

Drive had become a haunted house,

utterly uncanny, trulyunhomely: a

disturbing mix of thefamiliar and

the unfamiliar. It was all there, just

as heremembered it, but there

were other, horrible things too: the

vivid marks ofmurder. Worst of all,

therewas anoverwhelming sense

of absence.Tate was not there, nor

were her andPolanski’s friends,

nor was thechild they had been

expecting:Tate had been eight

and a half months pregnant when

she died.Weeping in the bedroom,

Polanski suddenlyrealised this attempt

at catharsiswas toomuch, far too soon.

Hurkos too, claimed to have been physically

affectedby the heavy atmosphere. After

completing hisreading, he put it to the press

thatTate and her party had been killedby

three men turned into “frenzied homicidal

maniacsby massive doses of LSD”. Itwasn’t

just drugs, though. According to Hurkos, the

killings “erupted during a black magic ritual

known asgoona-goona”.^2

Hurkos’s response to Cielo Drive was

speculative, inaccurate, but not inapt when

seen in the light of the details thatwould

later emerge during the Manson trial. Itwas

also inkeeping with the wider climate of

1969. RegularFTreaders will befamiliar
      with thework of Gary Lachman whose
      bookTurn offYour Mind(2001) looked at
      the resurgence of magical ideas, “all things

THE DEVIL’S BUSINESS

THE MANSON MURDERS, THE END OF THE SIXTIES,

AND THE ‘CULT OF THE OCCULT’

Polanski found

himself caught

up in speculation

and scandal

LEFT:A front page from 3 December

1969 linking Charles Manson to the

Tate/LaBianca killings and other murders.

FACINGPAGE:Manson is brought into

the Los Angeles city jail.