Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson Hardcover (38 page)

•  •  •

William Garretson felt hungry, but there was no food in the Cielo guesthouse. He walked down the steep hill and hitched a ride to Sunset Strip,
where he purchased cigarettes and a TV dinner. Then he hitched back to Cielo, arriving sometime after 10
P.M
. The lights were on in the main house as usual, but there were only three cars parked outside—a Porsche belonging to Jay Sebring, Abigail Folger’s Firebird, and a rented Camaro that Sharon Tate was driving. That meant it wasn’t one of the tenants’ big party nights. Garretson didn’t really know much about them. He just wanted to do his assigned job of keeping an eye on the property and
caring for Altobelli’s dogs. Garretson went back inside the guest cottage. He heated his TV dinner and settled in for a quiet night.

•  •  •

With Tex primed, it was time for Charlie to pick the women who would go with him. Ruth Ann Moorehouse would later speculate that Charlie “sent out the expendables,” but each of the three was selected because she had something specific to contribute. Charlie took them aside one by one—Susan, who had been with Beausoleil at Hinman’s house and knew what had been written on the walls there; Pat, whose shyness and lack of social skills led most people to believe she was cold and unfeeling; and Linda Kasabian, who had a valid driver’s license. Charlie knew that Susan was capable of anything, that Pat believed she had no option other than to obey him in all things, and that Linda wanted to impress the rest of the Family. Charlie’s instructions to each of the women were the same: Dress in dark clothes, get a change of clothes and your knife, then go with Tex and do exactly what he tells you. They scurried off to obey.

•  •  •

Eighteen-year-old Steve Parent had recently graduated from high school and wanted to attend junior college in the fall. To earn tuition money he juggled two jobs, full-time work as a plumbing company delivery boy and occasional evening shifts as a salesman at a stereo shop. A few weeks earlier Parent had picked up William Garretson hitchhiking and driven him to Cielo. Garretson appreciated the ride and told Parent to drop by anytime and visit—he lived in the back in a guesthouse. That gave Parent the impression that Garretson probably had a lot of money.

On Friday the 8th, Parent decided to sell his AM/FM clock radio to raise a few more dollars for school. He remembered the guy he’d given a ride to a while back. Parent, out for the evening in his parents’ white
Rambler, decided to drive to Cielo and see if his passenger wanted to buy the clock radio. If the guy was loaded, he might be prone to making impulse purchases. Parent knew all about those from his sales stints at the stereo shop. It was worth a try—even if he didn’t make a sale at Cielo, Parent could drive away and have a nice rest of the night hanging out with friends.

•  •  •

Tex and Susan got ready in an additional way that hadn’t been suggested by Charlie. They sneaked off to their Meth stash and snorted some. As always, the drug made them edgier and more aggressive—exactly the effect they wanted.

Pat couldn’t find her knife. It wouldn’t do to keep everyone else waiting while she continued looking for it, so she rejoined Charlie, Tex, Susan, and Linda without it.

Charlie told Tex to take ranch hand Johnny Swartz’s yellow 1959 Ford. Tex fetched the car and the girls piled in. Even though Linda was the only one with a valid driver’s license, Tex stayed behind the wheel. Linda sat with him in front. Susan and Pat were in the back. As the car was about to pull away Charlie called out to Susan, “Do something witchy,” a reference to the words “POLITICAL PIGGY” written in blood at Gary Hinman’s. Despite the talk that day about copycat murders, as Tex drove the old Ford out of the ranch’s front gate
the three women didn’t know yet that they were going to kill anyone. They’d been ordered to take their knives, but there was nothing new about that. Since Charlie had first mentioned Helter Skelter, Family members usually went around armed so that they could defend themselves in case of attack.

Tex didn’t talk as he drove, and so the women whispered to each other about the purpose of this expedition—maybe they were going to creepy-crawl again and steal things. A week earlier, Pat had been sent out with Tex to steal a dune buggy off of a car lot. Some of the other women, not Pat or Susan or Linda, had creepy-crawled and come back with filched items. So it was probably going to be something like that. The women stopped whispering and settled back in their seats, wondering where they were going. Tex hadn’t told them and they didn’t ask.

•  •  •

At about 11:45
P.M
., William Garretson was surprised by a knock on his door. Steve Parent had driven up to Cielo, opened the electronic gate by pushing the outside button, and pulled his Rambler onto the long driveway. Parent reminded Garretson about picking him up and showed him the clock radio. Garretson wasn’t really interested in buying it, but he politely allowed Parent to plug it in, set it for the current time, and demonstrate how well the radio worked.

•  •  •

Tex was sure that he knew the best route from Spahn to Cielo, but he took some wrong turns and got lost. They ended up in Beverly Hills and had to take Sunset Boulevard toward Benedict Canyon.

•  •  •

Garretson told Parent that he didn’t want the clock radio, and by way of consolation offered the eighteen-year-old a beer. Parent sipped it and asked if he could use Garretson’s phone. He called a friend who said that he was having trouble setting up a stereo system—could Steve come over and give him a hand? Parent said he would, and chatted with Garretson as he finished his beer. Then he unplugged the clock radio, which indicated the time was 12:15.

•  •  •

Tex guided the Ford up steep Cielo Drive, passing houses scattered at short intervals along the way. Besides its narrow width and tight curves, there was the additional pressure of keeping a wary eye for deer that ventured out to graze after dark. At the very top of the hill Tex stopped in front of the closed electronic gate and told the women to wait. From that vantage point, none of them could actually see the house or the guest cottage behind it. Grabbing the bolt cutters as Charlie had instructed, Tex nimbly climbed a telephone pole and snipped the wires connecting to the main house and guest cottage. Then he backed the car down the hill, a tricky maneuver he managed without a hitch, and led the women back up on foot. Tex tucked the .22 in his pants and slung a coil of three-ply white rope over his shoulder.

•  •  •

Garretson walked Parent out to the Rambler. As they said good night, Altobelli’s Weimaraner began to bark. Garretson told Parent that it was
the dog’s “people bark,” meaning that humans were walking around the property. There seemed to be no reason for alarm; maybe somebody was just leaving the main house. Garretson said goodbye and went back inside the guest cottage.

•  •  •

Tex whispered instructions for the women to follow him climbing up over the fence. There was an incline on the right side of the road, so it wasn’t especially difficult. Once they were inside, Tex said in a matter-of-fact tone that they were going into this big house where Terry Melcher had lived, and they were going to kill everybody inside. The women didn’t recoil; they hadn’t expected to kill anyone, but at that point, Pat remembered more than forty years later, “we were little kitty cats who were mentally gone.” Charlie had commanded them to do what Tex said. They would.

•  •  •

Parent got into the Rambler and began slowly moving down the long, curving driveway toward the main gate. It was closed, so he had to stop and roll down his window to push the button that would open it.

•  •  •

Tex heard the car approaching, and hissed to the women that they should jump into the bushes and lie down. He pulled the .22 out of his pants with his right hand and grasped a knife with his left. Parent flinched as Tex emerged from the shadows at his open car window. He blurted, “Please, please don’t hurt me. I’m your friend. I won’t tell.”
Tex slashed at him with the knife—Parent was cut across his left arm. Then Tex either ignored or forgot Charlie’s instructions to use the Buntline only as a last resort. He shot the teenager four times at point-blank range. Parent fell dead across the front seat of the car.

•  •  •

A hundred yards away at the next house down the Cielo Drive slope, Mrs. Seymour Kott sat up in bed, awakened by what she thought might be “three or four gunshots.” But she didn’t hear anything more, so she went back to sleep. A private security patrol officer, sitting in his car parked on a street nearby, also thought he heard shots. Since he couldn’t tell specifically which direction they came from—area acoustics were baffling—he called in a report to the West Los Angeles Division of the L.A. Police
Department. The officer who took the call commented, “I hope we don’t have a murder,” but didn’t send out anyone to investigate.

•  •  •

Tex thought for a moment about how the flashes from the gunshots reflected off Parent’s glasses, then reached inside the open driver’s side window and shifted the Rambler into neutral. He pushed it a short way back down the driveway and left the car parked there. Tex whispered for the women to come out of the bushes and go with him to the main house. They eased their way down the driveway, and as they negotiated the curve they could see the main house, and the pretty Christmas lights sparkling on the fence outside.

•  •  •

The peculiar acoustics of the canyon swallowed the sound of the gunfire for those inside the main house. Abigail Folger was reading a book in the guest bedroom of the main house. Voytek Frykowski was asleep on the couch in the living room. In the master bedroom, Sharon Tate and Jay Sebring perched on the bed, talking quietly. Folger wore a white nightgown. Tate was in her underwear, which was often her home attire during very hot weather. She had a negligee tossed over her shoulders. Both men were fully clothed.

Out in the guest cottage Garretson didn’t hear gunfire either. He put on some music, watched TV, and began writing letters. Garretson also tried to make a phone call, but even though Parent had just used the phone, now for some reason the line was dead.

•  •  •

As the four Family members neared the main house, Tex told Linda to go to the back and see if there might be an unlocked door or window. Linda was hesitant, but she walked around the house out of Tex’s sight and stayed there for a few moments. Then she returned and told him that everything was shut tight, which wasn’t true. The freshly painted nursery windows were still cracked open and their screens hadn’t been snapped back in place. But in front of the house, just to the side of the front door, a window into the entry hall was open behind a screen. Tex quietly cut a long horizontal slit in the screen, pulled the screen loose, then pushed up the window. He told Linda to go back down to the gate and keep
watch—someone might have heard the shots that killed Steve Parent. Then Tex climbed through the window and motioned for Susan and Pat to follow him.

Linda crept back down the driveway, passing the Rambler with the teenager’s body in the front seat. Though she later recalled that her mind had gone blank, she kept a lookout as Tex had ordered.

Inside the main house, Tex, Susan, and Pat crept down the entry hall into the living room. They saw Voytek Frykowski sleeping on the couch. Tex whispered to Susan to go check the rest of the house to see who else was there. Frykowski, roused by the soft sound of Tex’s voice, muttered, “What time is it,” and then, “Who are you? What do you want?” Tex kicked him in the head, hard, before replying, “I’m the devil and I’m here to do the devil’s business.” Susan had frozen in place when Frykowski spoke. Now Tex sent her on her way with an impatient jerk of his head toward the hallway. Dazed, Frykowski tried to say something else, but Tex hissed, “Another word and you’re dead.”

Pat remembered she had not brought a knife. While Susan explored and Tex hovered over the dazed Frykowski, Pat went down the driveway to where Linda stood guard. She borrowed Linda’s knife and returned to Tex in the living room.

Susan walked down the hall and looked through an open door into the guest bedroom. Abigail Folger glanced up from her book and smiled. She wasn’t shocked to see a stranger in the house. Tate and Polanski regularly welcomed all-hours guests. This woman seemed like one more. Susan smiled and gave a little finger wave. Folger waved back and resumed reading. Further down the hall, Susan peered into the main bedroom and saw Sharon Tate and Jay Sebring talking. They apparently were in deep conversation; neither noticed her. Susan made her way back to the living room, passing Folger’s room again, waving to her for a second time. When she rejoined Tex, she quietly told him that there were three other people inside. Tex told her to bring them to him.

Susan went first to the guest bedroom, where she brandished her knife at Folger and ordered her to go into the living room. Pat held her there at knifepoint while Susan went to the main bedroom for Tate and Sebring. She told them, “Come with me. Don’t say a word or you’re
dead.” They meekly got up from the bed and walked ahead of her down the hall. When they reached the living room Tate could see Tex and Pat waiting there. She hesitated, and Tex roughly grasped her arm and dragged her forward.

Frykowski reeled on the couch, still stunned from being kicked in the head. Tex had the three-ply rope, but he told Susan to tie Frykowski’s hands behind him with a towel. She had trouble knotting the thick towel, but did the best that she could. Tex used the rope to tie Sebring’s hands. Sebring complained that Tex was being too rough, and Tex warned him, “One more word and you’re dead.” Frykowski gasped, “He means it.” Tex looped more rope around Sebring’s neck and then flipped the other end up over a beam in the ceiling. Tex then tied the rope around Tate’s neck. Tate began crying, and Tex snarled at her to shut up. Sebring protested, “Can’t you see that she’s pregnant?” and Tex shot him in the abdomen. Sebring collapsed on the living room rug. Tate screamed, then continued sobbing.

Tex looked around the living room and announced, “I want all the money you’ve got here.” Folger said that she had money in her room. Susan marched her there and Folger removed some bills from her pocketbook. Susan gave Tex the money—it was about $70. Disgusted, Tex said, “You mean that’s all you’ve got?” Tate said that they didn’t have any money in the house, but if they had time they could get some. Tex thought she might be stalling, hopeful that help was somehow on the way. He said, “You know I’m not kidding,” and Tate said that she knew.