A. “Sorry.”
Q. “Look at the increase in your blood pressure when you start to lie about your cigarettes. Boom, boom, boom, just like a staircase. O.K., let’s start over again…
“Are you now in Los Angeles?”
A. “Yes.”
Q. “Did you have anything to do with taking the life of Voytek and the others?”
A. “No.”
Q. “Have you eaten lunch today?”
A. “No.”
Q. “Do you feel any responsibility for the death of Voytek and the others?”
A. “Yes. I feel responsible that I wasn’t there, that is all.”
Q. “From running this thing through your mind, repeatedly, as I know you must have, who have you come up with as the target? I don’t think it ever crossed your mind that Sharon might be the target, that anyone had that kind of mad on for her. Is there anyone else who was up there that you can think of who would be a target for this type of activity?”
A. “I’ve thought everything. I thought the target could be myself.”
Q. “Why?”
A. “I mean, it could be some kind of jealousy or plot or something. It couldn’t be Sharon directly. If Sharon were the target, it would mean that I was the target. It could be Jay was the target. It could be Voytek. It could also be sheer folly, someone just decided to commit a crime.”
Q. “What would Sebring be doing, for instance, that would make him a target?”
A. “Some money thing, maybe. I’ve also heard a lot about this drug thing, drug deliveries. It’s difficult for me to believe…” Polanski had always believed Sebring to be “a rather prosperous man,” yet he’d recently heard he had large debts. “The indication to me is that he must have been in serious financial trouble, despite the appearances he gave.”
Q. “That’s a hell of a way to collect debts. It’s no ordinary bill collector that goes up there and kills five people.”
A. “No, no. What I’m talking about is for this reason he might have got into some dangerous areas to make money, you understand? In desperation, he may have got mixed up with illegal people, you know?”
Q. “Eliminating Sharon and the kid, of the three remaining you think that Sebring would be the logical target, huh?”
A. “The whole crime seems so illogical.
“If I’m looking for a motive, I’d look for something which doesn’t fit your habitual standard, with which you use to work as police—something much more far out…”
Deemer asked Polanski if he had received any hate mail after
“I wouldn’t be surprised if I were the target. In spite of all this drug thing, the narcotics. I think the police like to jump too hastily on this type of lead, you know. Because it is their usual kind of lead. The only connection I know of Voytek with any kind of narcotic was he smoked pot. So did Jay. Plus cocaine. I knew he was sniffing. In the beginning I thought it was just an occasional kick. When I discussed it with Sharon, she said, ‘Are you kidding? He’s been doing it for two years, regularly.’”
Q. “Did Sharon mess with narcotics to any extent, other than pot?”
A. “No. She did take LSD before we met. Many times. And when we met we discussed it…I took it three times. When it was legal,” he added, laughing. Then, serious again, Polanski recalled the only time they had taken it together. It was toward the end of 1965. It was his third trip, and Sharon’s fifteenth or sixteenth. It had begun pleasantly enough, with them talking all night. But then “in the morning she started flipping out and screaming and I was scared to death. And after that she said, ‘I told you I couldn’t take it and this is the end.’ And it was the end, for me and for her.
“But I can tell you this, without question. She took no drugs at all, except for pot, and not too much. And during her pregnancy there was no question, she was so in love with her pregnancy she would do nothing. I’d pour a glass of wine and she wouldn’t touch it.”
Once more Deemer took him through the questioning, then ended the examination, satisfied that Roman Polanski had no involvement in, or any hidden knowledge of, the murder of his wife and the others.
Before leaving, Roman told him, “I’m devoted now to this thing.” He intended to question even his friends. “But I’m going to do it slowly, so they don’t get suspicious. No one knows I’m here. I don’t want them to know that I’m trying in any way to help the police, you know? I’m hoping in this way they’ll have more sincerity.”
Q. “You have to go on living.”
Polanski thanked him, lighted a cigarette, and left.
Q. “Hey, I thought you didn’t smoke cigarettes!”
But Polanski had already gone.
On August 20, three days after Peter Hurkos accompanied Roman Polanski to the Cielo residence, a picture of Hurkos appeared in the
“FAMED PSYCHIC—Peter Hurkos, famed for his consultation in murder cases (including the current Sharon Tate massacre), opens Friday night at the Huntington Hartford, appearing through Aug. 30.”
Madigan and Jones had been eliminated as suspects. Wilson and Pickett remained.
Because of his familiarity with the case, it was decided to send Lieutenant Deemer east to interview the two.
Jeffrey “Pic” Pickett had been contacted through a relative, and a meeting was set up in a Washington, D.C., hotel room. The son of a prominent State Department official, Pickett appeared to Deemer to be “under the influence of some narcotic, probably an excitant drug.” He also had a bandaged hand. When Deemer expressed curiosity about it, Pickett vaguely replied that he had cut it on a kitchen knife. Though he agreed to a polygraph, Deemer found that Pickett couldn’t remain still or follow instructions, so he interviewed him informally. He claimed that on the day of the murders he had been working in an auto company in Sheffield, Massachusetts. Asked if he owned any weapons, he admitted he had a Buck knife, purchased, he said, in Marlboro, Massachusetts, on a friend’s credit card.
Later Pickett gave Deemer the knife. It was similar to the one found at Cielo. He also turned over a roll of videotape which he claimed showed Abigail Folger and Voytek Frykowski using drugs at a party at the Tate residence. Pickett didn’t say how he came into possession of the film or what use he had intended to make of it.
Accompanied by Sergeant McGann, Deemer went to Massachusetts. A check of the time cards at the auto company in Sheffield revealed that Pickett’s last workday was August 1, eight days before the homicides. Moreover, though two stores in Marlboro sold Buck knives, neither had ever stocked this particular model.
Pickett’s status as a suspect rose appreciably, until the detectives interviewed the friend he had mentioned. Going through his credit card receipts, he produced the one for the Buck knife. It had been purchased in Sudbury, Massachusetts, on August 21, long after the murders. The friend and his wife also recalled something Pickett had apparently forgotten. He had gone to the beach with them the weekend of August 8–10. Pickett was subsequently polygraphed, twice. Both times it was decided he was telling the truth and was not involved. Eliminate Pickett.
Flying to Toronto, Deemer interviewed Herb Wilson. Although initially reluctant to submit to a polygraph, Wilson consented when Deemer agreed not to ask any questions that might make him liable to Canadian prosecution on narcotics charges. He passed. Eliminate Wilson.
The fingerprints of both Pickett and Wilson were checked against the unmatched Tate latents, with no match.
Although the first Tate investigative report—covering the period August 9–31—concluded that Wilson, Madigan, Pickett, and Jones “have been eliminated at the time of this report,” in early September Deemer and
