Sharon Tate and the Manson Murders (Hardcover)

~ Greg King (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Veteran celebrity biographer King (The Duchess of Windsor, etc.) gives us a thorough account of Sharon Tate's brief life, her star-crossed career and her tragic death at the hands of Charles Manson's Family. King counters the grisly familiarity of the Tate-LaBianca murders by approaching the oft-told story from the perspective of Tate's innocent Hollywood ambitions, presenting her as representative of the 1960s-era woman in pursuit of L.A. stardom and liberation. He recounts her youth as a soldier's daughter in Italy, her struggles in films like Valley of the Dolls (which presented her as a nascent sex kitten) and her ominous relationship with the volatile, philandering Roman Polanski. King portrays Tate as an essentially simple, generous-hearted person who possessed an unfortunate na?vet? regarding the hidden social storms she traversed. But King's narrative gets less interesting as he begins to reconstruct the Family's development, its descent into the mad butchery of Tate, Leno LaBianca and others, and the arrests. Although King coherently re-creates the stale hippie dreams, criminal tensions and drug-tainted glamour of the cultural milieu in which Manson operated, he breaks little new ground, rehashing what is already known from prosecutor Bugliosi's seminal Helter Skelter. Albeit capably researched and written, this account in the end occupies that uneasy perch between veneration and exploitation.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

An oddly timed, incredibly detailed account of the most famous of the Manson Family's victims.Throughout the summer of 1969, America was transfixed by a series of brutal murders in and around Los Angeles. The victims ranged from an anonymous, well-to-do couple to an heiress to the pregnant wife of director Roman Polanski, Sharon Tate. Exhibiting an almost voyeuristic passion for his topic, King (The Duchess of Windsor, 1999) unearths a staggering trove of information on Tate, an actress who died at 26 with barely a handful of films and television appearances to her credit. Beyond limning Tate's short life, King takes readers into the midst of the Manson family, profiling her killers' pasts, the sex and drugs rites of the Manson family, and the career of Manson himself (the criminal and failed pop idol who was convicted of compelling them to murder). Making extensive use of seldom-seen material (including police and detective reports, photographs of the murder scene, Manson family-member parole trial transcripts, and interviews with principal and secondary characters like Tate's mother, Doris, and surviving relatives of other Manson family victims), King unflinchingly recreates the brutality and utter randomness of the events of early August 1969. Beyond the sensational reportage (including a harrowing and grisly, minute-by-minute account of the murders of Tate and the four others at 10050 Cielo Drive), King reveals the condition and whereabouts of Manson family members while including some lucid and trenchant observations on the continuing cult of Manson (e.g., the merchandising of Manson's image). King also details the victims'-rights advocacy work of Tate's mother and sister.Readers might wonder why King's account suddenly surfaces 31 years after the killings, but true-crime fans and Manson fetishists (you know who you are) will find it irresistible. -- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Barricade Books; First Edition edition (May 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1569801576
• ISBN-13: 978-1569801574
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (61 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #658,102 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Well researched, and extremely disturbing., June 27, 2000

By	Eileen Grimes "Titanic Astrology author" (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I've found Sharon Tate fascinating ever since Valley of the Dolls. When she was murdered in 1969, I, like so many others, were horrified when she was murdered in the manner she was. I found that I couldn't get enough information on this whole incident.

I ordered this book as soon as I knew it was available, and I was pleased, overall, and impressed with Greg's extensive research and new view into this terrible incident in our history. I hadn't realized that Manson and some other followers had returned to the Tate residence after the murders were committed, and was absolutely mortified that they had planned on doing more damage there. Just reading that the bodies were carried out to the front porch and then later, put back was something that made my skin crawl.

After all is said and done, and reading this in one sitting - yes its a page turner - I realized that I had had enough of reading about this whole incident. Sometimes one's search for truth in such a bizarre instance in history can lead one down paths they wish they had never gone down. Frankly, after seeing the death pictures on the internet, and now, in this book, of Sharon (yes there's one picture of her, in death in this book), I just would rather remember this beautiful woman the way she was, in life. Her life was interesting, from the perspective of how someone with great beauty isn't always extremely well-adjusted or happy. Having the outside not match the inside must have created enormous inner conflict within herself. She seemed to accept life and its roughness, but deep down she was a sensitive soul that just didn't wish to make waves with those she loved, probably out of the enormous fear of not being loved and accepted. In psychological terms, we would say, in today's language, that she had a huge fear of abandonment. I kept thinking, what if she had developed spiritually, and stopped looking in the directions she looked in for satisfaction. There was a fatalism about her attitudes towards life - she had experiences that seemed to validate this. My sense is that she might have known she wasn't going to live very long. Her last interview seemed to bear this out - she stated she was a victim of fate, and that she never knew which direction life would lead her in.

Often times our cultural icons don't live long- which in a very obscure way, she was. This incident in history was a major turning point, and a disillusionment for many, given our ways of living back then. All that peace and love had just ended with reality smacking society in the face.

My criticisms for this book which lead me to give this 3 stars, is that there was a lot of repetitive information from other sources in this book, as well as a poor editing job - there were many typos, and misspellings. My last concern was with the fascination of the morbid side of this crime - I really didn't want to see her death picture again, or know how Sharon had a slight smile on her face in death, which seemed to fly in the face of the violent manner of her death. It took me many hours to shake off this feeling after reading this book - a similar feeling I had when I first saw Sharon's death photos. I don't want to go there again - I just want to remember this beautiful soul the way she was.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Sharon Tate was more than just a victim!, September 1, 2003

By	Eddy Matten (Wrenshall, MN United States) - See all my reviews

Watching the few films Sharon Tate made I could see that the possiblity of so much more was apparent. Especially her role in the Matt Helm flick "The Wrecking Crew" opposite Dean Martin. Although after her murder none of it seemed to matter and Sharon as a person and actress was outshined by the gory murders that took her and her child's and friends' lives.

Now finally Greg King has given us Sharon Tate and The Manson Murders. And Sharon as a person comes through. Most people really knew very little of her outside of the Manson/crimes. So I give King credit for taking her too short life and writing a fine book on this the most beautiful woman ever. I too must agree though that the typo's throughout are disturbing and I too would have liked to have seen more photos of Sharon herself. The inclusion of the death photo though at once seems a bit sensationlistic, it lends the reader a view of just what actually happened to Miss Tate et al.

A book on Sharon' life has long been overdue and I hope if this one is updated or another is published it will spend more time quoting from the long list of Hollywood elite friends of the actress'.

All in all this is a book to purchase and read for anyone who has ever been interested in Sharon Tate as a person more than just a victim of Manson's Family!

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Sharon Tate remembered, March 29, 2001

By	C.H. (Beach Park, IL) - See all my reviews

Long overdue but well written biography on Sharon Tate. Even though Sharon was well known in her Hollywood and London circles, the rest of the world never really "knew" her until her death. This book writes about her as a person and emphasizes her life, rather than simply reducing her to "that Manson Family victim". The book covers her entire life, as well as going into detail about her relationships with Jay Sebring and Roman Polanski. It's sad to read about Polanski's (emotional) mistreatment of her while gentle and loving Jay Sebring is off on the periphery, pining for his lost love until the end. We're also given more back story on victims Voyteck Frykowski, Abigail Folger, and Steven Parent, as well as Leno and Rosemary LaBianca. Leno's former wife Alice and Steven Parent's sister Janet have come forward after years of silence to share their memories as well as their outrage over the convicted killers' parole bids. The book also covers the lives of the murderers, before and after their convictions. Unlike Charles Manson and Susan Atkins, Charles "Tex" Watson, Pat Krenwinkel, and Leslie Van Houton have made progress in prison, although it's pretty unlikely that they will be paroled anytime soon. Sharon's mother and sister became powerful victims rights advocates in the 1980's, and you can't help but to feel their pain. The vivid retelling of the two nights of murder may be upsetting to some readers, but what I remember most about the book is the relationship between Sharon and Jay, the starry-eyed girl from Texas who wanted fame, and the lonely hair stylist who wanted her love.