STAR PHOTOGRAPHER
HEAVILY pregnant Sharon Tate stares into the camera in a final, eerie photo just three days before she and her friends were slaughtered.
Posing for a celebrity photographer, the model and actress wife of film director
Roman Polanski held baby clothes for the tot she was due to have a fortnight later.
That joyous day would never come because Sharon, 26, fell victim to a crime that shocked the world... the
Manson Family murders in 1969.
Four members of Charles Manson’s hippie cult wreaked mayhem on the orders of their evil leader. One of the killers, Tex “Mad Charlie” Watson, told his terrified victims: “I’m the Devil and
I’m here to do the Devil’s business.”
What happened next is so grisly that, to this day, looking at the photos of
Sharon sends a cold shiver down the spine of photographer Terry O’Neill.
Sharon’s tragic story is retold in
Quentin Tarantino’s new film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
Starring Margot Robbie as Tate, the film tells the fictional story of an actor called Rick Dalton, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, and his stuntman – played by Brad Pitt – as their lives intersect with Tate’s.
EXCITED
World-renowned snapper Terry – who had declined an invitation to join Sharon’s get- together that fateful night – tells the Sunday Mirror: “Fifty years later these are still difficult photos to look at.
“Sharon was a beautiful young woman. Her ending is one of the most tragic stories of our generation. Sharon was a delight, as lovely as she was beautiful. And she was so excited about becoming a mum.
“I worked with her a year or so before she was expecting; some really beautiful studio portraits of her. I also took photos of Sharon with her husband.
“It’s hard for me to look at these photos, especially because there’s no way in the world anyone would have predicted what would happen next.”
Terry recalls how he was “shocked to the core” by news of Sharon’s death – and reveals how he made an excuse to avoid going along that night.
He explains: “I just happened to be in Los Angeles at the same time. She rang me and invited me over. She was going to have friends around and wanted to know if I wanted to join them. That was pretty typical in Hollywood, especially.
“Initially I said yes. But then she told me who was going to be there and there was this fellow who was invited that I just didn’t want to see.
“So I told her I was exhausted, just landed in Los Angeles, was jet-lagged – but I’d see her soon. Turns out, that guy didn’t go to the house that night either.”
Terry, who has captured Hollywood legends, royalty, supermodels and rock stars, last saw Sharon for their photoshoot in London. She was eight months pregnant.
Now 80, he adds: “I took a series of really lovely photos of her that August. Incredibly happy and settled in her
Sharon was beautiful... it’s one of most tragic stories of a generation TERRY O’NEILL WHO TOOK HER LAST PICTURES
upcoming new role as mother.”
What occurred days later, the night of August 8, 1969, was so savage it beggars belief. Manson ordered cult members Tex Watson, Susan Atkins, Linda Kasabian and Patricia Krenwinkel to drive to the rented home in Cielo Drive, Los Angeles and “totally destroy everyone in it, as gruesome as you can”. First to die was 18-year-old Steven Parent, who was pulling away from the property