The Life photographer took a number of Polaroid shots first, to check lighting, placement, angles. Usually these are thrown away after the regular pictures are taken, but Hurkos asked if he might have several of them, to aid in his “impressions,” and they were given to him, a gesture the photographer, and Life, would very soon regret.
As Polanski looked at objects once familiar, now turned grotesque, he kept asking, “Why?” He posed outside the front door, looking as lost and confused as if he had stepped onto one of his own sets to discover everything immutably and grossly changed.
Hurkos later told the press: “Three men killed Sharon Tate and the other four—and I know who they are. I have identified the killers to the police and told them that these men must be stopped soon. Otherwise they will kill again.” The killers, he added, were friends of Sharon Tate, turned into “frenzied homicidal maniacs” by massive doses of LSD. The killings, he was quoted as saying, erupted during a black magic ritual known as “goona goona,” its suddenness catching the victims unawares.
If Hurkos did identify the three men to LAPD, no one bothered to make a report on it. All publicity to the contrary notwithstanding, those in law enforcement have a standard procedure for handling such “information”: listen politely, then forget it. Being inadmissible as evidence, it is valueless.
Also skeptical of Hurkos’ explanation was Roman Polanski. He would return to the house several times over the next few days, as if looking for the answer no one else had been able to give him.
There was an interesting juxtaposition of stories on the B, or lead local news, page of the Los Angeles Times that Sunday.
The big story, Tate, commandeered the top spot, with its headline, “ANATOMY OF A MASS/MURDER IN HOLLYWOOD.”
Below it was a smaller story, its one-column head reading, “LA BIANCA COUPLE,/VICTIMS OF SLAYER,/GIVEN FINAL RITES.”
To the left of the Tate story, and just above an artist’s drawing of the Tate premises, was a much briefer, seemingly unrelated item, chosen, one suspected, because it was small enough to fit the space. Its headline read, “POLICE RAID RANCH,/ARREST 26 SUSPECTS/IN AUTO THEFT RING.”
It began: “Twenty-six persons living in an abandoned Western movie set on an isolated Chatsworth ranch were arrested in a daybreak raid by sheriff’s deputies Saturday as suspects in a major auto theft ring.”
According to deputies, the group had been stealing Volkswagens, then converting them into dune buggies. The story, which did not contain the names of any of those arrested but did mention that a sizable arsenal of weapons had been seized, concluded: “The ranch is owned by George Spahn, a blind, 80-year-old semi-invalid. It is located in the Simi Hills at 12000 Santa Susana Pass Road. Deputies said Spahn, who lives alone in a house on the ranch, apparently knew there were people living on the set but was unaware of their activity. They said he couldn’t get around and he was afraid of them.”
It was a minor story, and didn’t even rate a follow-up when, a few days later, all the suspects were released, it being discovered they had been arrested on a misdated warrant.
Following a report that Wilson, Madigan, Pickett, and Jones were in Canada, LAPD sent the Royal Canadian Mounted Police a “want” on the four men; RCMP broadcast it; alert reporters picked it up; and within hours the news media in the United States were heralding “a break in the Tate case.”
Although LAPD denied that the four men were suspects, saying they were only wanted for questioning, the impression remained that arrests were imminent. There were phone calls, among them one from Madigan, another from Jones.
Jones was in Jamaica, and said he would fly back voluntarily if the police wished to talk to him. They admitted they did. Madigan showed up at Parker Center with his attorney. He cooperated fully, agreeing to answer any questions except those which might tend to involve him in the use or sale of narcotics. He admitted having visited Frykowski at the Cielo residence twice during the week before the murders, so it was possible his prints were there. On the night of the murders, Madigan said, he had attended a party given by an airline stewardess who lived in the apartment below his. He had left about 2 or 3 A.M. This was later verified by LAPD, which also checked his prints against the unmatched latents found at the Cielo address, without success.
Madigan was given a polygraph, and passed, as did Jones, when he arrived from Jamaica. Jones said that he and Wilson had been in Jamaica from July 12 to August 17, at which time he had flown to Los Angeles and Wilson had flown to Toronto. Asked why they had gone to Jamaica, he said they were “making a movie about marijuana.” Jones’ alibi would have to be checked out, but after his polygraph, and a negative print check, he ceased to be a good suspect.
This left Herb Wilson and Jeffrey Pickett, nicknamed Pic. By this time LAPD knew where both men were.
The publicity had been bad. There was no disputing that. As Steven Roberts, Los Angeles bureau chief for the New York Times, later put it, “All the stories had a common thread—that somehow the victims had brought the murders on themselves…The attitude was summed up in the epigram: ‘Live freaky, die freaky.’”
Given Roman Polanski’s affinity for the macabre; rumors of Sebring’s sexual peculiarities; the presence of both Miss Tate and her former lover at the death scene while her husband was away; the “anything goes” image of the Hollywood jet set; drugs; and the sudden clamp on police leaks, almost any kind of plot could be fashioned, and was. Sharon Tate was called everything from “the queen of the Hollywood orgy scene” to “a dabbler in satanic arts.” Polanski himself was not spared. In the same newspaper a reader could find one columnist saying the director was so grief-stricken he could not speak, while a second had him night-clubbing with a bevy of airline stewardesses. If he wasn’t personally responsible for the murders, more than one paper implied, he must know who committed them.
From a national news weekly:
“Sharon’s body was found nude, not clad in bikini pants and a bra as had first been reported…Sebring was wearing only the torn remnants of a pair of boxer shorts…Frykowski’s trousers were down to his ankles…Both Sebring and Tate had X’s carved on their bodies…One of Miss Tate’s breasts had been cut off, apparently as the result of indiscriminate slashing…Sebring had been sexually mutilated…” The rest was equally accurate: “No fingerprints were found anywhere…no drug traces were found in any of the five bodies…” And so on.
Though it read like something from the old Confidential, the article had appeared in Time, its writer apparently having some tall explaining to do when his editors became aware of his imaginative embellishments.
Angered by “a multitude of slanders,” Roman Polanski called a press conference on August 19, where he castigated newsmen who “for a selfish reason” wrote “horrible things about my wife.” There had been no marital rift, he reiterated; no dope; no orgies. His wife had been “beautiful” and “a good person,” and “the last few years I spent with her were the only time of true happiness in my life…”
Some of the reporters were less than sympathetic to Polanski’s complaints about publicity, having just learned that he had permitted Life to take exclusive photos of the murder scene.
Not quite “exclusive.” Before the magazine reached the stands, several of the Polaroid prints appeared in the Hollywood Citizen News.