By Ewah Chika.
Sharon Tate was a renowned Hollywood top class act and model in the 1960's after playing several roles in television series and movies. Tate was also a cover girl for several high profile magazines at the time . Tate starred in several high profile movies like Cult Classic (Jennifer North), Valley of the Dolls and Orson Wellas earning a Golden Globe Award nomination in the process.
The actress married her movie director and co-star in the movie 'The Fearless Vampire Killers' Roman Polanski in London in 1968. Tate was born in Dallas, Texas in 1922 and had won the "Miss Tiny Tot of Dallas Pageant aged six months . In 1962, she met and dated Jay Sebring who was a former sailor and a leading hair stylist in Hollywood at the time. The couple broke up after Tate rejected Sebring's marriage proposal so as to focus on her successful acting career.
On 9 August 1969, while Polanski was filming in London, Tate was brutally murdered along with three others namely (Abigail Folger -25, Voytek Frukowski-32 and Jay Sebring at the couples hilltop home in the Upmarket Bel Air district of Los Angeles. Tate's housekeeper rang the police after noticing some odd things in the house. Sebring and Tate were tied together with nylon nooses around their necks.
Tate was also stabbed a sickening 16 times and the word 'pig' written on the front of the door with blood. The murder looked exactly like a ritual killing although Steven Parent 18, was found unconscious inside the car with multiple gunshots on his body.
House caretaker William Garretson, 19 was invited by Police for questioning with Garretson released after passing a polygraph test. The next day after the killing of Tate, a couple Leno LaBianca and Rosemary were murdered in identical fashion in the same neighbourhood with Tate. The Tate's murder remained unsolved until November the same year, when Susan Atkins who was in jail for car theft confessed to a fellow inmate of participating In the murder of the actress. Later on, Atkins 22, Patrick Krenwinkel 23, Leslie Yan Houten 21 and Tax Watson 25, were all arrested for their roles in the murder of Tate . The killers revealed they were only following orders from failed musician Charles Manson who instructed them to "destroy everyone in the house of Tate as gruesome as they could."
Mason and his followers were later convicted of the crime and sentenced to death in January 1971, before their sentences were commuted to life imprisonment after California briefly abolished the death penalty in 1972. While it was rumoured that Mason and his followers were going to be paroled, Tate's mother Doris campaigned against the impending parole which led to the implementation of the "victims statement" in the state of California till date.
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