• A Tragic Trip to the House on the Hill

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A Tragic Trip to the House on the Hill

Roman Polanski at 10050 Cielo Drive

After a harrowing tour of his house, Director Roman Polanski sits on the bloodied porch, beside door where the killer scrawled “PIG” in blood.

Now it was quiet, and the Sunday afternoon washed by the August sun. The police had done their work and gone away and there was an eerie suspension of time and motion at the place in Benedict Canyon where the five were killed.

“This must be the world-famous orgy house,” said Roman Polanski with bitter sarcasm as he parked in his driveway. He pointed to a white rail broken on the fence bordering the drive and speculated that the boy, Steven Parent, had backed his father’s car into the fence in a desperate attempt to flee the bullets that destroyed him.

He walked into his yard, past the fake wishing well with the stone doves and squirrels perched on the rim, past the beds of marigolds and daisies dying from a fortnight of inattention, past the crumpled blue bedsheet which lay on the grass under one of the great pine trees. Someone must have put it there to cover Abigail Folger in her death, and they left it there.

He walked around to the rustic swimming pool, now crowded with leaves and debris, the floats and air mattresses silently bumping into each other as a soft breeze stirred the water. “You see that big tube,” he said, pointing to a transparent plastic ring, “Sharon bought that so she could prop up her big belly and float around.”

The front porch, where Voityck Frokowski’s body had been, was bad – the blood dried and darkened to a mahogany brown and strewn about the flagstones like a Jackson Pollock painting, the blood epitaph “PIG” dimming now on the white Dutch door – but the living room was the dark side of the moon.

Here was a spacious, wonderful room – white walls and white beams, an open loft overhead with a redwood ladder leading to it, big fireplace with novels and scripts strewn on the hearth, baby grand piano, a scattering of chairs to sit in not to look at, a place of warmth and taste and – as the eye looked closer – impossible horror.

In front of the beige velvet couch were the two major smears of blood, the one where hair stylist Jay Sebring fell next to the crumpled zebra rug, the other where Sharon Tate, stabbed a dozen times, slashed so brutally that murder became atrocity, collapsed and died in a jumble of oddities – a yellow candle stub, a teach-yourself-Japanese instruction kit, a mauve bedroom slipper, a book on natural childbirth. Sharon’s first baby would have been born within the mouth. Doctors took it from her body, but the perfectly formed infant son had died with its mother.

Roman speaks English well, even though he learned it just four years ago, but when he is tired the words come out with difficulty, each one separate, each one painfully located, each one punctuated. “Why?” he said, and he said it again and again and again. And, after a long while, “Sharon…was…the supreme moment…of my life… I knew it would not…last.”

The Sudden Stillness of Their Swinging World

Eighteen months ago, in a London registry office, Sharon Tate married Roman Polanski. She wore a taffeta minidress, he a Regency suit with a white cravat. It was the union of two different worlds. Roman’s world until that day had been laced with tragedy and horror. When he was a child in Krakow, Poland, his mother disappeared one day and he learned that she had been taken to the place called Auschwitz, and he never saw her again. One afternoon his father, who wore the yellow Star of David armband, took him to the barbed-wire fence which ringed the ghetto and cut out a small place and told him to run, run for his life, run from the Germans until the war was over and people stopped disappearing.

After he had survived what so few other Polish Jews had, a man attacked him in Warsaw and savagely clubbed his head in a quarrel over a bicycle. Roman survived one more, but his assailant – who, it turned out, had already murdered three people – was hanged.

When Roman became a film director and made it to the West and started building his credits – Repulsion, Cul-de-Sac, Rosemary’s Baby – they all seemed to deal with death and the macabre. Several months ago in London I asked him why he made so many horror films. “What is horror to you,” he answered quietly, “may not be horror to me.”

While Roman was fleeing from the Nazis, Sharon was growing up first in Dallas – where her father, an Army officer, had been stationed in 1943 – then a dozen places around the country. At six months, she won the “Miss Tiny Tot” contest, and two decades later, trailing beauty crowns, began the long climb up to the high place where she would die.

Many thought she was the most beautiful woman in Hollywood. She had almond-shaped eyes and the high cheekbones that go with being photogenic. She had the legs that miniskirts were created for (she would be buried in a Pucci print mini). Her voice was soft, her manner gentle. She smoked a little pot because the others did, and she did not pursue her career with the ravenous ambition indigenous to her business. When she became pregnant this year, she announced the news, said a friend, “as if she had invented having babies.” She was not nor had she ever been promiscuous. “Sharon was out of bounds,” said one of the town’s most successful bachelors. “You just looked, and God it hurt to look, but you couldn’t touch.”

Roman and Sharon – the words quickly went together – became one of the most popular couples on two scenes, Hollywood and London. In London they kept a small mews house sparsely furnished (the living room had two busts, one of Napoleon, one of Roman, side by side), and their mates were the Beatles and the Stones and Victor Lownes of the Playboy Club there and whoever was in town. When Sharon was away for any extended time, Roman was not averse to an evening out with somebody else. “He has the European attitude toward sex,” said a friend. “It’s no big deal, nothing to get nervous about. But there was never any doubt that he loved Sharon and only Sharon.”

In Hollywood they moved smoothly through many layers of film society – dining at Garson Kanin’s house, where Roman was introduced to Artur Rubinstein and fell emotionally into his arms, inventing wild and funny situation comedies to act out at home on Roman’s TV tape machine with French Director Roger Vadim and Jane Fonda, running with the young and sometimes troubled newcomers, the rock singers, the friends of friends whom Roman often found at his table in a nightclub and rarely sent away.

Futile Search For A Missing Thread

Roman walked now through the living room into the master bedroom. “Sharon must have been asleep that night,” he said. “Look, there, the pillows – she always put them that way when I was gone.” The big double bed with the gaily printed lime-green and orange sheets had been slept in on one side only; two big pillows cut it in half, rather like a bundling board. “She hugged the pillows instead of me,” he said shyly.

His eyes caught the shuttered door leading to the pool. There were dried spots of blood there and the black grime left when police dust for fingerprints. “She must have been awakened by the noise and got up…” Roman followed a path through the hall into the living room. “They hit her here…” He went back into the bedroom. “She tried to get out that door…” He returned to the hall and pointed to tiny drops of blood flecking the baseboard. “And they dragged her into the living room and did…it.”

He went into the second bedroom where Frokowski and Miss Folger slept in a magnificent antique bed. “I should have thrown him out when he ran over Sharon’s dog,” he said. Sharon had owned a Yorkshire named Sapirstein (after the sinister obstetrician in Rosemary’s Baby), and several weeks earlier Frokowski had run over the animal in the driveway and killed it.

How long had Voityck and Miss Folger been house guests here? “Too long, I guess,” he answered.

Roman’s success in the West was a beacon to many creative friends in Poland. Several of his generation managed to leave the Communist country and, in most cases, their first letters and calls were to Roman Polanski.

“Roman became sort of a Polish Y.M.H.A. in America,” says a friend. “He loaned them money, he even borrowed money to loan them money, he read their scripts and got them jobs, and it didn’t matter if some of them had no talent and no promise. What was important was that they were Polish. There was this incredible bond.”

Roman prowled through his house as the afternoon wore on. “There is something here,” he said. “I can feel it. Something the police missed. I must find the thread.”

All week long he had tried to put some of the pieces together. He heard the Hollywood gossip: that the killers were devil-worshippers, that it was a Mau-Mau type slaughter. Drugs? “We smoked pot at my house,” said Roman. “But I don’t think I’ve ever been to a Hollywood party where it wasn’t.” (One film figure wryly noted a few days after the crime, “Toilets are flushing all over Beverly Hills; the entire Los Angeles sewer system is stoned.”) Roman learned from John Phillips, the rock composer and co-founder of the now disbanded Mamas and the Papas, that Frokowski was reportedly “into a harder drug scene than just pot.”

Sharon and Roman spent most of this spring in Europe, she doing a film in Rome, he preparing several new films in London. In their absence, Frokowski and Miss Folger had stayed in the house – at Roman’s request. They remained there after Sharon returned, keeping her company until Roman could join her.

“Roman didn’t know what the hell was going on at his house,” says a friend. “All he knew was that one of his beloved Poles was staying there. Sharon probably knew, she had to, but she was too nice or dumb to throw him out. If any creeps and weirdos went up, it wasn’t by Sharon’s invitation.”

Roman found a smashed lantern in the flower bed near the front porch. He held it for a minute, wondering if the police had overlooked it, if it was perhaps a clue. He looked at the nail on the front door where it had once hung. He threw it back to the flower bed.

He was drawn back once again to the bedroom. He opened the door of an armoire, and baby things almost tumbled out. There were stacks of blankets, diapers, formula bottles and warmers, basinet, books – Naming Your Baby, Let’s Have Healthy Children, How To Teach Your Baby To Read. He came across a stack of publicity photos of Sharon, posing in the front yard, the spectacular view behind her, below her. And he cried for quite a long while.

In the driveway, Roman stopped to examine briefly the black Porsche of Jay Sebring and the yellow Firebird of Miss Folger. Then he got into his car and hurried out. The trip down the hill was much quicker than the trip up.

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14 Responses to A Tragic Trip to the House on the Hill

  1. thomas paalo miriani says:

    I think the comment about the union of two separate worlds is the understatement of the entire Tate Files. Not only more than two of those but also more than just the two wedded partners. Not just coincidental that their nearly hidden residence was later invaded by a group two years after the much publicized funeral of hippie two years prior. History may later vindicate the love/anti war movement, but the testimony of Miss Susan Atkins cannot now be revealed. Known as a “sexy murderess”, she is obviously one of the blots on an era not truly understood, like herself.

  2. Dana Ferris says:

    I think that Roman taking $5,000 from Life magazine was horrible. Making money off of the deaths of his wife and their friends. I read about this in something else about the murders. Then not even taking his things and some things of his wife and child. He should want memories of his family. But he wanted to wipe them out. All I can say is disgusting.

    • Timothy Nicholas says:

      Well, I can’t judge him. Who really comprehends his situation, his tortured mentality. I think live and let live in this unique situation.

  3. David Kidd says:

    All I can say about this is that there are terrible secrets about this murder…I sum it up this way…People can’t handle the truth, If you get my meaning.

    • gusgoiania says:

      What secrets are you talking about…Frikowsky in his drug-dealing business peacing off the powerful dealers, including someone from Israel, on the top of the chain who supplied him with the drugs to be sold, and due to that, they decided to hire Manson to mastermind the killings of Friko and Folger, who supported her lover financially, and whoever was with them at Cielo…

  4. john marlow says:

    I don’t name the owner of10050 cielo driive for during roman for house damage

  5. Prometheus1816 says:

    You forget, this is a man who’d had horrible losses before. After the extermination of his pregnant mother and the fact that his family was scattered after the end of WW II, most people of the Jewish persuasion had been deprived of their livelihood, their belongings, family members, dignity. Polanski had lived a transient life throughout that war ever since his father cut the hole in the chain-link fence at the Warsaw Ghetto and told him to “Piss off”. From that point on Polanski didn’t live a normal life. What you might think was important, wasn’t to him. He’d signed everything over to Paul and Doris Tate. I’ve been in the same position as Polanski in not feeling worthy of things. He didn’t feel worthy of Sharon’s belongings, so he gave them to the Tate family. It’s disgusting to think you know what was going through his mind at the time. He didn’t feel WORTHY of Sharon’s belongings. His gypsy lifestyle afterward showed greatly how much he thought of himself. Which wasn’t much. As for any money he received, we have no idea if he needed it. The whole purpose of taking LIFE up to that house was to show that it wasn’t this “great orgy house”. He accomplished what needed to be done, to show the blood and the condition of the home where five were butchered. He feels very differently today now he has children with Emmanuelle Seigner. I’m tired of people judging him for the things he did at the time. I dare anyone to walk a mile in his shoes. This man has been through more than most of us.

  6. Adam says:

    Imagine what this man has gone through in his life – starting as a child and the Nazi’s. Can you imagine going through that and then finding the strength to become a successful director/ movie producer etc. Then facing his wife, child a friends murdered in his own home. I know he has made mistakes – who hasn’t. I am impressed by his overall strength and drive. His mistakes I will leave for God to judge.

  7. Susan Tussing says:

    I’m just so sorry that this terrible tragedy happed to him a second time. He didn’t and no deserves to go through something like this. Losing his beautiful wife and unborn son. Then going back to the house where they lived their married life and seeing all that horror I don’t know why he did not lose his mind over this.

  8. patriciawright@ymail.com says:

    Roman took $50,000 it was rumored from Life magazine

  9. Tate-Polanskidotcom says:

    When you’ve been through what Roman has in terms of the scourging of the Krakow ghetto, the complete eradication of his PREGNANT mother, the uncertainty of his step-sister and father’s survival. Then the horrible massacre of his PREGNANT wife and friends then the trashing of their memory you tend to become less materialistic. Polanski said in is autobiography he considered happiness transitory after Sharon’s murder. He found little happiness in life after that. He became more nihilistic. I don’t care he accepted money for it. Considering what the press was writing at the time about all of them, a little payback was nice. As for Sharon’s belongings, looking back at the Holocaust and how everything was burned, he saw little in keeping things of remembrance considering how easily it was to have those things taken away. He also signed Sharon’s estate over to Paul James Tate, preferring to just leave after the killers were caught. I know all about slash and burn and I don’t blame Polanski one bit. But go ahead and judge him. Everyone has taken a strip of flesh from him

  10. Fiona says:

    Yes, don’t worry about Roman going out with a bunch of stewardesses almost immediately after the murder. Laughing and joking around with the lie detector test cop..even lying to him about smoking cigarettes…successfully..and lighting up as he left.
    and let’s not worry about a 13-year-old girl, drugged and raped. Making her go into the swimming pool, following her in, demanding to know when her period was..and then saying to be safe ‘Would you want I should go in through your back?” (anal sex)..just in case you think it’s made up, that Polish-accented line shows it isn’t.
    Terrified frozen girl doesn’t know how to say no to this powerful man.
    This man evinced zero remorse for that saying it is quite normal for men his age to ‘want to fuck young girls. Everybody wants to fuck young girls, the judge, the jury”
    13 years old..and even if he thought she was 18..which is utter bullshit, there’s a massive difference…that’s till very young to have a man offer to take your picture and then just assume he has a right to your body.

  11. chris says:

    A wonderful read, and thank you for posting. I never knew about Roman accepting five grand for the photos. If I remember correctly he had a self proclaimed psychic with him as well. If you want to find out more about the darker side of frykowski and folger I would suggest John Phillip’s book “Papa John” also the Stones original manager/producer Andrew Loog Oldam had some damning words about Frykowski in his memoir “Stoned” & “2Stoned” I’ve always been inclined to suspect Mama Cass’s boyfriend of being his true partner in the drug enterprise. when you start doing more of the product than what you’re actually selling this almost always ends badly. Ripping off biker gangs and selling fake drugs to hippies on the Strip just doesn’t end well. regardless I feel for Sharon and even though Roman is a pedophile rapist who had sex with a flight attendant on the flight back from London to LA hours after hearing the news of Sharon’s demise.

  12. Peter says:

    A broken man. Drowning his sorrows in a tight, teenaged sphincter. What else could one do?

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