They Came to Kill
Wednesday, December 3rd, 1969
HOLLYWOOD, Dec. 3 — They came to kill Sharon Tate and her friends.
No one knows why.
Last Aug. 9 sometime near midnight, a mass murder in Benedict Canyon left five persons dead and the motion picture colony in a state of fear and shock.
A maid discovered the bodies early the following morning and ran to a neighbor for help.
Police found actress Sharon Tate, blonde, beautiful and eight months pregnant, stabbed to death in the living room of the home she rented with her husband, director Roman Polanski.
Tied to Miss Tate by a rope thrown over a beam was hair stylist Jay Sebring, 35. He wore a black hood over his head. Miss Tate was clad only in bras-siere and bikini panties.
Outside Voityck Frokowsky, 37, — a friend of Polanski — was found shot and stabbed to death. Nearby was the body of coffee heiress Abigail Folger, 26, who lived with Frokowsky, often described as a playboy.
A fifth body, that of Steven Parent, 18, was found riddled by gunfire in his automobile.
On the front door scrawled in blood was the word “Pig.”
The weird linking of Sebring and Miss Tate by the rope — I they were formerly romantically paired — the inscription on the door, drugs found in Sebring’s autmobile gave the impression that the murders resulted from a ritualistic orgy.
William Garretson, 19, a caretaker who lived in another building on the estate, was arrested and freed after being questioned by police.
The brutal murders appeared senseless.
No valuables were missing. According to investigating officers there was no mutilation.
Parent appeared to have innocently stumbled upon the killer or killers at their grisly work and was slaughtered with the others. He had been visiting Garretson.
Neighbors reported they had heard shots and cries in the night from the murder scene. But for weeks and months little else was known, except the Polanski home was invaded by persons intent to kill.
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