Helter Skelter Read online

  Although DeRosa, Whisenhunt, and Burbridge were patrolmen, not homicide detectives, each, at some time in the course of his duties, had seen death. But nothing like this. 10050 Cielo Drive was a human slaughterhouse.

  Shaken, the officers fanned out to search the rest of the house. There was a loft above the living room. DeRosa climbed up the wooden ladder and nervously peeked over the top, but saw no one. A hallway connected the living room with the south end of the residence. There was blood in the hall in two places. To the left, just past one of the spots, was a bedroom, the door of which was open. The blankets and pillows were rumpled and clothing strewn about, as if someone—possibly the nightgown-clad woman on the lawn—had already undressed and gone to bed before the killer or killers appeared. Sitting atop the headboard of the bed, his legs hanging down, was a toy rabbit, ears cocked as if quizzically surveying the scene. There was no blood in this room, nor any evidence of a struggle.

  Across the hall was the master bedroom. Its door was also open, as were the louvered doors at the far end of the room, beyond which could be seen the swimming pool.

  This bed was larger and neater, the white spread turned back to reveal a gaily flowered top sheet and a white bottom sheet with a gold geometric pattern. In the center of the bed, rather than across the top, were two pillows, dividing the side that had been slept on from the side that hadn’t. Across the room, facing the bed, was a TV set, on each side of which was a handsome armoire. On top of one was a white bassinet.

  Cautiously, adjoining doors were opened: dressing room, closet, bath, closet. Again no signs of a struggle. The telephone on the nightstand next to the bed was on the hook. Nothing overturned or upset.

  However, there was blood on the inside left side of the louvered French door, suggesting that someone, again possibly the woman on the lawn, had run out this way, attempting to escape.

  Stepping outside, the officers were momentarily blinded by the glare from the pool. Asin had mentioned a guest house behind the main residence. They spotted it now, or rather the corner of it, some sixty feet to the southeast, through the shrubbery.

  Approaching it quietly, they heard the first sounds they had heard since coming onto the premises: the barking of a dog, and a male voice saying, “Shhh, be quiet.”

  Whisenhunt went to the right, around the back of the house. DeRosa turned left, proceeding around the front, Burbridge following as backup. Stepping onto the screened-in porch, DeRosa could see, in the living room, on a couch facing the front door, a youth of about eighteen. He was wearing pants but no shirt, and though he did not appear to be armed, this did not mean, DeRosa would later explain, that he didn’t have a weapon nearby.

  Yelling “Freeze!,” DeRosa kicked in the front door.

  Startled, the boy looked up to see one, then, moments later, three guns pointing directly at him. Christopher, Altobelli’s large Weimaraner, charged Whisenhunt, chomping the end of his shotgun. Whisenhunt slammed the porch door on his head, then held him trapped there until the youth called him off.

  As to what then happened, there are contrary versions.

  The youth, who identified himself as William Garretson, the caretaker, would later state that the officers knocked him down, handcuffed him, yanked him to his feet, dragged him outside onto the lawn, then knocked him down again.

  DeRosa would later be asked, re Garretson:

  Q. “Did he fall or stumble to the floor at any time?”

  A. “He may have; I don’t recall whether he did or not.”

  Q. “Did you direct him to lay on the ground outside?”

  A. “I directed him, yes, to lay on the ground, yes.”

  Q. “Did you help him to the ground?”

  A. “No, he went down on his own.”

  Garretson kept asking, “What’s the matter? What’s the matter?” One of the officers replied, “We’ll show you!” and, pulling him to his feet, DeRosa and Burbridge escorted him back along the path toward the main house.

  Whisenhunt remained behind, looking for weapons and bloodstained clothing. Though he found neither, he did notice many small details of the scene. One at the time seemed so insignificant that he forgot it until later questioning brought it back to mind. There was a stereo next to the couch. It had been off when they entered the room. Looking at the controls, Whisenhunt noticed that the volume setting was between 4 and 5.

  Garretson, meantime, had been led past the two bodies on the lawn. It was indicative of the condition of the first, the young woman, that he mistakenly identified her as Mrs. Chapman, the Negro maid. As for the man, he identified him as “the young Polanski.” If, as Chapman and Asin had said, Polanski was in Europe, this made no sense. What the officers couldn’t know was that Garretson believed Voytek Frykowski to be Roman Polanski’s younger brother. Garretson failed completely when it came to identifying the young man in the Rambler.[2]

  At some point, no one recalls exactly when, Garretson was informed of his rights and told that he was under arrest for murder. Asked about his activities the previous night, he said that although he had remained up all night, writing letters and listening to records, he had neither heard nor seen anything. His highly unlikely alibi, his “vague, unrealistic” replies, and his confused identification of the bodies led the arresting officers to conclude that the suspect was lying.

  Five murders—four of them probably occurring less than a hundred feet away—and he had heard nothing?

  Escorting Garretson down the driveway, DeRosa located the gate-control mechanism on the pole inside the gate. He noticed that there was blood on the button.

  The logical inference was that someone, quite possibly the killer, had pressed the button to get out, in so doing very likely leaving a fingerprint.

  Officer DeRosa, who was charged with securing and protecting the scene until investigating officers arrived, now pressed the button himself, successfully opening the gate but also creating a superimposure that obliterated any print that may have been there.

  Later DeRosa would be questioned regarding this:

  Q. “Was there some reason why you placed your finger on the bloody button that operated the gate?”

  A. “So that I could go through the gate.”

  Q. “And that was intentionally done?”

  A. “I had to get out of there.”

  It was 9:40. DeRosa called in, reporting five deaths and a suspect in custody. While Burbridge remained behind at the residence, awaiting the arrival of the investigating officers, DeRosa and Whisenhunt drove Garretson to the West Los Angeles police station for questioning. Another officer took Mrs. Chapman there also, but she was so hysterical she had to be driven to the UCLA Medical Center and given sedation.

  In response to DeRosa’s call, four West Los Angeles detectives were dispatched to the scene. Lieutenant R. C. Madlock, Lieutenant J. J. Gregoire, Sergeant F. Gravante, and Sergeant T. L. Rogers would all arrive within the next hour. By the time the last pulled up, the first reporters were already outside the gate.

  Monitoring the police radio bands, they had picked up the report of five deaths. It was hot and dry in Los Angeles, and fire was a constant concern, especially in the hills, where within minutes lives and property could vanish in an inferno. Someone apparently presumed the five people had been killed in a fire. Jay Sebring’s name must have been mentioned in one of the police calls, because a reporter phoned his residence and asked his butler, Amos Russell, if he knew anything about “the deaths by fire.” Russell called John Madden, president of Sebring International, and told him about the call. Madden was concerned: neither he nor Sebring’s secretary had heard from the hair stylist since late the previous afternoon. Madden placed a call to Sharon Tate’s mother in San Francisco. Sharon’s father, a colonel in Army Intelligence, was stationed at nearby Fort Baker and Mrs. Tate was visiting him. No, she hadn’t heard from Sharon. Or Jay, who was due in San Francisco sometime that same day.

  Prior to her marriage to Roman Polanski, Sharon Tate had lived wit
h Jay Sebring. Though thrown over for the Polish film director, Sebring had remained friends with Sharon’s parents, as well as Sharon and Roman, and whenever he was in San Francisco he usually called Colonel Tate.

  When Madden hung up, Mrs. Tate called Sharon’s number. The phone rang and rang, but there was no answer.

  It was quiet inside the house. Though anyone who called got a ringing signal, the phones were still out. Officer Joe Granado, a forensic chemist with SID, the Scientific Investigation Division of LAPD, was already at work, having arrived about 10 A.M. It was Granado’s job to take samples from wherever there appeared to be blood. Usually, on a murder case, Granado would be done in an hour or two. Not today. Not at 10050 Cielo Drive.

  Mrs. Tate called Sandy Tennant, a close friend of Sharon’s and the wife of William Tennant, Roman Polanski’s business manager. No, neither she nor Bill had heard from Sharon since late the previous afternoon. At that time Sharon had said that she, Gibby (Abigail Folger), and Voytek (Frykowski) were staying in that night. Jay had said he’d be dropping over later, and she invited Sandy to join them. No party was planned, just a quiet evening at home. Sandy, just over the chicken pox, had declined. Like Mrs. Tate, she had tried to call Sharon that morning but had received no answer.

  Sandy assured Mrs. Tate that there was probably no connection between the report of the fire and 10050 Cielo Drive. However, just as soon as Mrs. Tate hung up, Sandy put in a call to her husband’s tennis club and had him paged. It was important, she said.

  Sometime between 10 and 11 A.M., Raymond Kilgrow, a telephone company representative, climbed the pole outside the gate to 10050 Cielo Drive and found that four phone wires had been cut. The cuts were close to the attachment on the pole, indicating that the person responsible had probably climbed the pole too. Kilgrow repaired two of the wires, leaving the others for the detectives to examine.

  Police cars were arriving every few minutes now. And as more officers visited the scene, that scene changed.

  The horn-rimmed glasses, first observed by DeRosa, Whisenhunt, and Burbridge near the two trunks, had somehow moved six feet away, to the top of the desk.

  Two pieces of gun grip, first seen near the entryway, were now under a chair in the living room. As stated in the official LAPD report: “They were apparently kicked under the chair by one of the original officers on the scene; however, no one is copping out.”[3]

  A third piece of gun grip, smaller than the others, was later found on the front porch.

  And one or more officers tracked blood from inside the residence onto the front porch and walk, adding several more bloody footprints to those already there. In an attempt to identify and eliminate the later additions, it would be necessary to interview all the personnel who had visited the scene, asking each if he had been wearing boots, shoes with smooth or rippled soles, and so on.

  Granado was still taking blood samples. Later, in the police lab, he would give them the Ouchterlony test, to determine if the blood was animal or human. If human, other tests would be applied to determine the blood type—A, B, AB, or O—and the subtype. There are some thirty blood subtypes; however, if the blood is already dry when the sample is taken, it is only possible to determine whether it is one of three—M, N, or MN. It had been a warm night, and it was already turning into another hot day. By the time Granado got to work, most of the blood, except for the pools near the bodies inside, had already dried.

  Within the next several days Granado would obtain from the Coroner’s Office a blood sample from each of the victims, and would attempt to match these with the samples he’d already collected. In an ordinary murder case the presence of two blood types at the crime scene might indicate that the killer, as well as the victim, had been wounded, information which could be an important clue to the killer’s identity.

  But this was no ordinary murder. Instead of one body, there were five.

  There was so much blood, in fact, that Granado overlooked some spots. On the right side of the front porch, as approached from the walk, there were several large pools of blood. Granado took a sample from only one spot, presuming, he later said, all were the same. Just to the right of the porch, the shrubbery appeared broken, as if someone had fallen into the bushes. Blood splatters there seemed to bear this out. Granado missed these. Nor did he take samples from the pools of blood in the immediate vicinity of the two bodies in the living room, or from the stains near the two bodies on the lawn, presuming, he’d later testify, that they belonged to the nearest victims, and he’d be getting samples from the coroner anyway.

  Granado took a total of forty-five blood samples. However, for some reason never explained, he didn’t run subtypes on twenty-one of them. If this is not done a week or two after collection, the components of the blood break down.

  Later, when an attempt was made to re-create the murders, these omissions would cause many problems.

  Just before noon William Tennant arrived, still dressed in tennis clothes, and was escorted through the gate by the police. It was like being led through a nightmare, as he was taken first to one body, then another. He didn’t recognize the young man in the automobile. But he identified the man on the lawn as Voytek Frykowski, the woman as Abigail Folger, and the two bodies in the living room as Sharon Tate Polanski and, tentatively, Jay Sebring. When the police lifted the bloody towel, the man’s face was so badly contused Tennant couldn’t be sure. Then he went outside and was sick.

  When the police photographer finished his work, another officer got sheets from the linen closet and covered the bodies.

  Beyond the gate the reporters and photographers now numbered in the dozens, with more arriving every few minutes. Police and press cars so hopelessly jammed Cielo Drive that several officers were detailed to try and untangle them. As Tennant pushed through the crowd, clutching his stomach and sobbing, the reporters hurled questions at him: “Is Sharon dead?” “Were they murdered?” “Has anyone informed Roman Polanski?” He ignored them, but they read the answers on his face.

  Not everyone who visited the scene was as reluctant to talk. “It’s like a battlefield up there,” police sergeant Stanley Klorman told reporters, his features grim with the shock of what he had seen. Another officer, unidentified, said, “It looked ritualistic,” this single remark providing the basis for an incredible amount of bizarre speculation.

  Like the shock waves from an earthquake, news of the murders spread.

  “FIVE SLAIN IN BEL AIR,” read the headline on the first AP wire story. Though sent out before the identity of the victims had become known, it correctly reported the location of the bodies; that the telephone lines had been cut; and the arrest of an unnamed suspect. There were errors: one, to be much repeated, that “one victim had a hood over his head…”

  LAPD notified the Tates, John Madden, who in turn notified Sebring’s parents, and Peter Folger, Abigail’s father. Abigail’s socially prominent parents were divorced. Her father, chairman of the board of the A. J. Folger Coffee Company, lived in Woodside, her mother, Inez Mijia Folger, in San Francisco. However, Mrs. Folger was not at home but in Connecticut, visiting friends following a Mediterranean cruise, and Mr. Folger reached her there. She couldn’t believe it; she had talked to Abigail at about ten the previous night. Both mother and daughter had planned to fly to San Francisco today, for a reunion, Abigail having made a reservation on the 10 A.M. United flight.

  On reaching home, William Tennant made what was, for him, the most difficult call. He was not only Polanski’s business manager but a close friend. Tennant checked his watch, automatically adding nine hours to get London time. Though it would be late in the evening, he guessed that Polanski might still be working, trying to tie up his various film projects before returning home the following Tuesday, and he tried the number of his town house. He guessed right. Polanski and several associates were going over a scene in the script of The Day of the Dolphin when the telephone rang.

  Polanski would remember the conversation as follows:


  “Roman, there’s been a disaster in a house.”

  “Which house?”

  “Your house.” Then, in a rush, “Sharon is dead, and Voytek and Gibby and Jay.”

  “No, no, no, no!” Surely there was a mistake. Both men now crying, Tennant reiterated that it was true; he had gone to the house himself.

  “How?” Polanski asked. He was thinking, he later said, not of fire but a landslide, a not uncommon thing in the Los Angeles hills, especially after heavy rains; sometimes whole houses were buried, which meant that perhaps they could still be alive. Only then did Tennant tell him that they had been murdered.

  Voytek Frykowski, LAPD learned, had a son in Poland but no relatives in the United States. The youth in the Rambler remained unidentified, but was no longer nameless; he had been designated John Doe 85.

  The news spread quickly—and with it the rumors. Rudi Altobelli, owner of the Cielo property and business manager for a number of show-business personalities, was in Rome. One of his clients, a young actress, called and told him that Sharon and four others had been murdered in his house and that Garretson, the caretaker he had hired, had confessed.

  Garretson hadn’t, but Altobelli would not learn this until after he returned to the United States.

  The specialists had begun arriving about noon.

  Officers Jerrome A. Boen and D. L. Girt, Latent Prints Section, Scientific Investigation Division, LAPD, dusted the main residence and the guest house for prints.

  After dusting a print with powder (“developing the print”), a clear adhesive tape was placed over it; the tape, with the print showing, would then be “lifted” and placed on a card with a contrasting background. Location, date, time, officer’s initials were noted on the back.

  One such “lift” card, prepared by Boen, read: “8-9-69/10050 Cielo/1400/JAB/Inside door frame of left French door/from master bedroom to pool area/handle side.”