Slain actor’s mom became advocate
Killed by Manson’s followers, Tate rose as face of victim rights
Sharon Tate begged for more time. She was due to give birth to a son in two weeks and pleaded, “Please don’t kill me. I just want to have my baby.” One of Charles Manson’s followers then stabbed the actress 16 times, and with a towel dipped in her blood, wrote “PIG” on her front door.
Fifteen years after her daughter’s death, Doris Tate conjured that futile plea as she sat across from a Manson Family member convicted of killing Tate and four others at the star’s home on Aug. 9, 1969.
“What mercy, sir, did you show my daughter when she was begging for her life?” Doris Tate asked Charles “Tex” Watson during his 1984 parole hearing. “When will I come up for parole? Can you tell me that? Will the seven victims and possibly more walk out of their graves if you get parole?”
The moment was powerful not only because of the words Tate chose, but because of what they represented: The first victim impact statement in California.
Manson, who died Sunday, will be remembered for many things: his ability to manipulate, his failed musical aspirations and his capacity for evil.
But his legacy will also include an unintended, positive consequence that has benefited countless people in the decades since Tate’s death.
Because of the work her mother began and her sisters continued, victims’ voices carry a weight in nation’s legal system and none of Manson’s minions, including Watson, have seen freedom.
Doris Tate helped get the Victim’s Rights Bill, which allowed for victim impact statements, passed in California in 1982. All 50 states now allow victims to speak either written or orally at certain phases of the legal process, according to the National Center for Victims of Crime.
“Victim impact statements are often the victims’ only opportunity to participate in the criminal justice process or to confront the offenders who have harmed them,” the National Center’s website reads.
Doris Tate wasn’t a natural activist. She spent more than a decade after her oldest daughter’s brutal death devastated by her grief. She came forward publicly only after she learned that one of Manson’s devotees, Leslie Van Houten, had gathered 900 signatures in support of her obtaining parole.
Tate, working with the National Enquirer, which printed coupons for people to sign and mail, made sure that didn’t happen. She gathered 350,000 signatures against Houten’s parole.
Tate later founded the Coalition on Victim’s Equal Rights and worked the rests of her life toward victims’ rights. She died in 1992 at age 68.
Sharon Tate was the oldest daughter of Doris and Paul Tate. She was only six months old when her beauty first gained her recognition. She was named a Miss Tiny Tot of Texas.
She married director Roman Polanski on Jan. 20, 1968. Later that year, she became pregnant and the two started looking for a larger home. They found one on 10050 Cielo Drive.
Manson knew the address. He had been there before.
Record producer Terry Melcher had lived there, and Manson had hoped Melcher, who had auditioned him, was going to sign him to a record deal. But he didn’t.
“Manson was mad about that,” Michael McGann, a detective at the time, recalled in a Los Angeles Magazine oral history. “It’s no accident he sent his group to Cielo.”
“Now is the time for Helter Skelter,” Manson told a group of his followers the afternoon before the murders, referring to the race wars he hoped to start, prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi told the magazine. “Go to the former home of Terry Melcher and kill everyone on the premises.”
Bulgliosi said Watson, who was later confronted by Tate’s mother, then gathered Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel and Linda Kasabian to help with the task.
Killed alongside Tate were Jay Sebring, Wojciech Frykowski, Abigail Folger and Steven Parent. Polanksi was out of town at the time.
The next night, Manson followers killed two more people — Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, and wrote “Healter Skelter” in blood on a refrigerator.
Manson and the others were convicted and sentenced to death in 1971. Because the California Supreme Court ruled the death penalty unconstitutional in 1972, their sentences were changed to life in prison.
After her mother’s death, Tate’s sister, Patti Tate, continued to fight for victims and to keep the Manson family in prison.
When Patti died of breast cancer in 2000, her sister, Debra Tate, took on that role.
She wrote an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times earlier this year that ran under the headline, “Why members of the Manson family still don’t deserve parole after murdering my sister.”
Tate wrote the piece after attending the 14th parole hearing of Krenwinkel.
“Look up the word ‘sociopath,’ ” Tate wrote. “You will see there is no cure for this affliction. There is no medication, no programming that can relieve it… Krenwinkel — and all the members of the Manson family — should never be granted parole.”