"All I wanted was to look him in the eyes because I felt that I would have a true idea of who he was," confidently states Debra Tate (72), whose last name is linked to one of the bloodiest massacres in the United States. Her sister, actress Sharon Tate, eight and a half months pregnant from her relationship with Roman Polanski (92), was murdered at 26 by Charles Manson and his cult called The Family.
That night of August 8-9, 1969, also killed at the Beverly Hills mansion located at 10050 Cielo Drive were celebrity hairstylist Jay Sebring; coffee heiress Abigail Folger and her Polish partner, Voytek Frykowski, and Steven Parent, an 18-year-old who had come to visit the owner.
At the time of that massacre, Debra was 17 years old. She was a stunning woman - still so at 72 - with long red hair, light eyes, freckles, and an unheard-of strength for a teenager. From the very beginning, she knew she wanted to seek justice for her sister and, of course, for the others. That's why she set out from the start to do everything possible to prevent any of them from getting parole.
In December 1969, Debra was able to come face to face with Charles Manson in a special area of the Men's Central Jail in Los Angeles, where Manson was detained pending trial. Neither of them spoke. Debra compared the killer's eyes to those of a shark. "They were dark and still. And you couldn't see anything. Nothing there. Deep black pools of nothing," she asserts in The Telegraph.
Six decades later, the images are unforgettable, as is the pain. It is possible that one of Debra Tate's worst nightmares is about to come true, as the still-living killers of the Tate-LaBianca massacre may be released by a penitentiary system that deems them "rehabilitated" simply to meet a political agenda. She states that "all these people have had the word 'psychopath' in their mental evaluations. Each one of them. Rehabilitation is not in their nature." After spending 53 years in prison, former beauty queen Leslie van Houten (76), one of Manson's disciples, was granted parole on July 11, 2023 after being involved in the murders of the LaBianca couple. Following various sentence reviews, the decision for her release was made due to the lack of risk of reoffending, rehabilitation, and compliance with legal requirements.
Debra Tate was not in agreement with that decision. Currently, she is about to relive the same nightmare because in early 2025, two of the most notorious Family clan killers, Bobby Beausoleil and Patricia Krenwinkel, were granted parole and unless there are appeals or an intervention by Gavin Newsom, the Governor of California, they could be out of prison by the end of the year. It seems that a miracle would be the only solution for them to remain incarcerated.
Furthermore, the serious circumstance arises that Beausoleil has amassed a small fortune in prison by publishing, along with his late wife, zines of illustrations he had made of naked children being violently spanked with the title Sassy Bottoms, and it was later discovered that he was creating illustrated child pornography covertly for active pedophiles based in the United States, who had written to him with specific requests for age, sex, and race.
On the other hand, Debra is uneasy about the potential release of the criminals, especially Krenwinkel, whom she considers one of the most brutal killers of the Manson clan. "They have a very structured lifestyle and are monitored by armed guards - she asserts. Remove that and the pressures and stresses of 'normal' life multiply exponentially. When the restrictions of that controlled environment are removed, they revert to their original nature."
Of all the participants in the massacres, only two remain in prison, Tex Watson and Bruce Davis, as Susan Atkins passed away in 2009 at the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla.
Debra has attended parole hearings for 28 years, often several times a year, where through signature collections and a narrative about the psychological-social impact of what happened, she has managed to keep the culprits incarcerated. When Doris, the mother of the Tate sisters, had enough strength, she joined a nationwide advocacy group called Parents of Murdered Children and campaigned for a Victims' Bill of Rights in the California constitution that was enshrined in law in 1982.
When the events of early August 1969 occurred, Debra Tate knew her life had changed completely. She became the mother to her younger sister, Patti, as "my purpose became trying to keep the family together," she states. Obviously, she also had to take care of her mother, as she was deeply depressed. Valium was a staple for her.
Time does not heal wounds, but perhaps it soothes the pain. Throughout all this time, Debra has felt that "God has given me a gift" (...) the only thing I really have to offer is that I give people hope of being able to survive the atrocity. They look at me and say, 'If she has done it, maybe I can too."