Steven and his parents lived at 3627 Longview Valley Road in Sherman Oaks. Running parallel to Longview, atop the hill, was Beverly Glen.
The gun was lying next to the sprinkler, under a bush, about seventy-five feet—or halfway—up the steep hill. Steven had watched “Dragnet” on TV; he knew how guns should be handled. Picking it up very carefully by the tip of the barrel, so as not to eradicate prints, Steven took the gun back to his house and showed it to his father, Bernard Weiss. The senior Weiss took one look and called LAPD.
Officer Michael Watson, on patrol in the area, responded to the radio call. More than a year later Steven would be asked to describe the incident from the witness stand:
Q. “Did you show him [Watson] the gun?”
A. “Yes.”
Q. “Did he touch the gun?”
A. “Yes.”
Q. “How did he touch it?”
A. “With both hands, all over the gun.”
So much for “Dragnet.”
Officer Watson took the cartridges out of the cylinder; there were nine—seven empty shell casings and two live rounds. The gun itself was a .22 caliber Hi Standard Longhorn revolver. It had dirt on it, and rust. The trigger guard was broken, the barrel loose and slightly bent, as if it had been used to hammer something. The gun was also missing the right-hand grip.
Officer Watson took the revolver and shells back to Valley Services Division of LAPD, located in Van Nuys, and after booking them as “Found Evidence” turned them over to the Property Section, where they were tagged, placed in manila envelopes, and filed away.
Between September 3 and 5, LAPD sent out the first batch of confidential “flyers” on the wanted Tate gun. In addition to a photograph of a Hi Standard .22 caliber Longhorn revolver, and a list of Hi Standard outlets supplied by Lomax, Deputy Chief Robert Houghton sent a covering letter which asked police to interview anyone who had purchased such a gun, and to “visually check the weapon to see if the original grips are intact.” To avoid leaks to the media, he suggested the following cover story: such a gun had been recovered with other stolen property and the police wished to determine its ownership.
LAPD sent out approximately three hundred of the flyers, to various law-enforcement agencies in California, other parts of the United States, and Canada.
Someone neglected to mail one to the Valley Services Division of the Los Angeles Police Department in Van Nuys.
On September 10—one month after the Tate murders—a large advertisement appeared in newspapers in the Los Angeles area:
Roman Polanski and friends of the Polanski family offer to pay a $25,000 reward to the person or persons who furnish information leading to the arrest and conviction of the murderer or murderers of Sharon Tate, her unborn child, and the other four victims.
Persons wishing to remain anonymous should provide sufficient means for later identification, one method of which is to tear this newspaper page in half, transmit one half with the information submitted, and save the remaining half for matching-up later. In the event more than one person is entitled to the reward, the reward will be divided equally between them.
In announcing the reward, Peter Sellers, who had put up a portion of the money, together with Warren Beatty, Yul Brynner, and others, said: “Someone must have knowledge or suspicions they are withholding, or may be afraid to reveal. Someone must have seen the blood-soaked clothing, the knife, the gun, the getaway car. Someone must be able to help.”
Although unannounced in the press, others had already begun their own unofficial inquiries. Sharon’s father, Colonel Paul Tate, had retired from the Army in August. Growing a beard and letting his hair grow long, the former intelligence officer began frequenting the Sunset Strip, hippie pads, and places where drugs were sold, looking for some lead to the killer(s) of his daughter and the others.
The police were fearful Colonel Tate’s private investigation might become a private war, since there were reports he did not go on his forays unarmed.
Nor were the police happy about the reward. Besides the implication that LAPD wasn’t capable of solving the case on its own, such an announcement usually yields only crackpot calls, and of these they already had a surplus.
Most had come in following the release of Garretson, the callers blaming the murders on everyone from the Black Power movement to the Polish Secret Police, their sources imagination, hearsay, even Sharon herself— returned during a seance. One wife called the police to accuse her husband: “He was evasive as to his whereabouts that night.”
Hustlers, hairdressers, actors, actresses, psychics, psychotics—all got into the act. The calls revealed not so much the underside of Hollywood as the underside of human nature. The victims were accused of sexual aberrations as peculiar as the minds of the persons who called them in. Complicating LAPD’s task was the large number of people—often not anonymous, and in some cases very well known—who seemed anxious to implicate their “friends”—if not directly connecting them with the murders, at least involving them with the drug scene.
There were proponents of every possible theory. The Mafia did it. The Mafia couldn’t have done it because the killings were so unprofessional. The killings were
One of the most persistent callers was Steve Brandt, a former gossip columnist. Because he had been a friend of four of the five Tate victims—he had been a witness at Sharon’s and Roman’s marriage—the police ftook him seriously, at first, Brandt supplying considerable information on Wilson, Pickett, and their associates. But as the calls became more and more frequent, the names more and more prominent, it became obvious that Brandt was obsessed with the murders. Sure there was a death list and that he was next, Brandt twice attempted suicide. The first time, in Los Angeles, a friend arrived in time. The second time, in New York, he left a Rolling Stones concert to return to his hotel. When actress Ultra Violet called to make sure he was all right, he told her he had taken sleeping pills. She immediately called the desk man at the hotel, but by the time he reached the room Brandt was dead.
For such a well-publicized crime there were surprisingly few “confessions.” It was as if the murders were so horrible that even the chronic confessors didn’t want to become involved. A recently convicted felon, anxious to “make a deal,” did claim another man had bragged of involvement in the killings, but, after investigation, the story proved bogus.
One after another, leads were checked out, then eliminated, leaving the police no closer to a solution than when the murders were discovered.
Though almost forgotten for a time, by mid-September the pair of prescription glasses found near the trunks in the living room of the Tate residence had, simply by the process of attrition, become one of the most important remaining clues.
Early that month the detectives showed the glasses to various optical company representatives. What they learned was in part discouraging. The frames were a popular model, the “Manhattan” style, readily available, while the prescription lenses were also a stock item, meaning they didn’t have to be ground to order. But, on the plus side, they also learned several things about the person who had worn them.
Their owner was probably a man. He had a small, almost volley-ball-shaped head. His eyes were far apart. His left ear was approximately ? to ? inch higher than his right ear. And he was extremely myopic—if he didn’t have an extra pair, he would probably have to replace the glasses soon.
