Monday, October 29, 2018

The Coffee Heiress, Part 2: Gibbie's Books

Other Posts: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Final


Q (Bugliosi): What happened next?


A (Atkins): Tex told me to go into the bedrooms -- the other rooms, he didn't say bedrooms -- go in and see if there was anybody else in the house. I went into two bedrooms, walked past one room and saw a woman sitting wearing glasses reading a book. She looked at me and smiled and I looked at her and smiled.

(Cielodrive.com. Susan Atkins Grand Jury Testimony (Kindle Locations 472-481). Kindle Edition.)

Abigail Folger was a voracious reader. In 1967 she travelled to New York City to work at one the most iconic book stores ever: The Gotham Book Mart in New York City. By all reports, she read constantly. She was seldom seen without a book. Reading was her passion; a passion she shared with her mother. 

The last evening of her life Abigail Folger was sitting in bed, reading a book. We know this because of Susan Atkins' testimony. But the question remains, what book was Gibbie reading that night? 

The answer may lie in the probate court file regarding her estate. On July 10, 1969 Abigail Folger purchased 12 paperbacks and three hardcover books at the Pickwick Bookshop located at 6743 Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles. The invoice for those books appears below. The receipt was submitted by the shop as a ‘claim’ against Abigail's estate and was paid by her father. 




These are the three hardcover books she purchased: 

Kingdom and Power: Behind the Scenes at The New York Times: The Institution That Influences the World, Gay Talese (1969)




The Dolphin Smile (Twenty-nine Centuries of Dolphin Lore), Eleanor Devine and Martha Clark (1967)




Man and Dolphin, John Cunningham Lilly (1961)



Aside from confirming her passion for reading (she bought 15 books!), two of the three books are interesting for another reason. 

In July 1969, Roman Polanski was in London working on the screenplay for a movie based upon the book, The Day of the Dolphin by Robert Merle. Polanski never finished the screenplay and withdrew from the project after Sharon Tate’s death. 

The final version of the film actually bears very little resemblance to the book. Instead, George C. Scott’s character and the communicating dolphin premise behind the storyline were taken rather directly from the work of John Cunningham Lilly the author of Man and Dolphin

Dr. John Cunningham Lilly was an American physician, neuroscientist, psychoanalyst, philosopher, writer, inventor and psychonaut. That last one means he was a nut case. 

Lilly believed he could find a way to talk to dolphins. He believed the sounds dolphins made above and below water were actually a complex language and the problem was not on their end, they were trying to communicate, but on our inability to figure out what they were saying. In 1960-61 our military apparently saw some merit in the theory and Lilly’s project was funded to the tune of $500,000 a year by the government and in particular by the U.S. Navy. That was a lot of money in 1960. 


Lilly’s efforts to connect with the dolphins initially resulted in him killing several because he failed to recognize, until after a half dozen tries, that the dolphins quit breathing under the anesthetic. The dolphins were being anesthetized so Lilly could drill electrodes into their brains. That idea failed to accomplish communication between man and dolphin. 

When the electrodes proved unsuccessful he then switched to using a sensory deprivation tank to ‘connect’ with the dolphins. His experiments with the tank would provide the inspiration for Paddy Chayefsky's 1978 novel, Altered States, later adapted into a movie by director Ken Russell but it did not further dolphins-human discourse.

At one point, Lilly even came up with the creative idea that if he and the dolphin both were on LSD in the deprivation tank that they might be able to connect in that heightened state of awareness. That too failed to produce results. 

At another point one of his assistants allegedly had sex with a dolphin in an effort to find a breakthrough. All efforts proved unsuccessful. 

However, despite his reputation today, in the 1960s Lilly and his dolphins were a national and indeed an international, phenomenon. The TV show ‘Flipper’ was also inspired by his work. 


It seems rather clear that a Lilly-inspired version of Day of the Dolphin was Polanski’s original plan for the movie. That is also the final storyline. George C. Scott plays a Lilly-like character who teaches the dolphins to speak English with a limited vocabulary. 

Sometime after Polanski became associated with the project he promised Wojciech Frykowski a ‘staff’ role in the film and according to Polanski was reading books about dolphins shortly before the murders.  

“Recently since I was preparing this (inaudible), I told him [Frykowski] because I saw that he was a little uptight doing nothing next to this girl [Abigail] like a kid. I said, “Believe me, you will have job on my staff” and a few letters I got in London from him were full of enthusiasm about this thing. He’s reading books about dolphins because that was the subject and he has ideas and he can’t wait and he was really loved me that guy, you know?”

(Lt. Earl Deemer interview of Roman Polanski (polygraph) August 16, 1969.) 

Abigail likely discussed the film project with Frykowski (or maybe even Polanski or Sharon Tate) around July10th and learned about Lilly's connection to the film. She then purchased Lilly’s book, probably for Frykowski. Lilly and his work is also extensively discussed in The Dolphin Smile, the more recent work. It appears then that these two dolphin-related books were purchased for Frykowski as background, to bring him up to speed on Polanski's project. The Day of the Dolphin was to be Frykowski's entree into the film industry, even if only on a limited basis.

Although she could have been reading one of the paperbacks, Kingdom and Power: Behind the Scenes at The New York Times: The Institution That Influences the World by Gay Talese is likely the book Gibbie was reading that night. Not exactly ‘light’ reading.

The image to the left is a book actually purchased by Abigail Folger in the fall of 1968. The book contains two works by the author Nathaniel West: A Cool Million and The Dream Life of Balso Snell. Both stories give a little insight into Abigail and her sense of humor. 

Nathaniel West wrote a series of books during the 1930’s that were intended to be comic satires of the Horatio Alger books of the late 1800’s; books that exhorted young men (only men) to go forth into the world and make their fortune. Ragged Dick, the most popular of Alger’s tales, for example, tells the story of a vagabond boy who through a series of fortunate coincidences and sheer determination pulls himself by his bootstraps to become the wealthy and respectable Richard Hunter, Esq. (an unfortunate name if you ponder it for a moment). 

West’s books follow the Horatio Alger storyline but with typically disastrous results, reflecting the times when he was writing. While I have never read The Dream Life of Balso Snell, I have read A Cool Million, actually titled A Cool Million: The Dismantling of Lemuel Pitkin for good reason. 

A Cool Million, as its subtitle suggests, is about the physical 'dismantling’ of the protagonist, Lemuel Pitkin, piece by piece. Lemuel sets out on the road like a good Horatio Alger figure to get money to pay his mother’s mortgage. He encounters a character named Mr. "Shagpoke Whipple, a former president of the United States, who tells him to work hard and persevere and good things will come his way. Lemuel accepts the challenge with dire consequences.

During the course of his quest, Lemuel is arrested, falsely accused of a crime and thrown in prison barely avoiding a life sentence for a crime he didn’t commit. He loses his thumb, teeth, one eye, one leg and his scalp while trying to accomplish his goal. The girl of his dreams, Betty Prail, is sexually assaulted, kidnapped and sold as a sex slave. A native American he encounters and befriends named Jack Raven is lynched by a crowd in Mississippi. Lemuel never accomplishes his goal. His mother loses her home. Even when he manages to collect any cash he is robbed.

In the end Lemuel is a performer in a vaudeville-like show where ‘losing’ his artificial parts is his ‘role’. Before one final show Whipple, who appears throughout the book, sends a messenger to Lemuel informing him that Whipple’s National Revolutionary Party is taking over NYC and gives him a speech to read to announce the event.Lemuel reads two lines before he is shot from the crowd. 

Lemuel gains some success posthumously: as the martyr of the National Revolutionary Party, also known as the 'Leather Shirts', an organization he never embraced. The book ends with marching young men singing songs about Lemuel and chanting “Hail!”

As one critic has said:

“However, West makes a viable point about the American Dream. It is a well-constructed myth backed by air and dream clouds, and perhaps stories of the lucky few. He reveals the timeless truth that everyone wants so desperately to ignore: the American Dream is one great big, lie, well-advertised for the sake of developing economy and putting to work little hopeful bees. And all the while, as vaguely sickening and bizarre as Lem’s experiences are, West’s humor is catching. The ridiculous racist gestures, poking ridicule, and hysterical happenings, all drawn in such nonchalance as if the world was built off an M.C. Escher drawing and walking sideways was standard practice; no one is spared from West’s mocking. Every character is wholly a part of West’s strange view of America, and each fits in just perfectly.”


And as to The Dream Life of Balso Snell:

“The title character, a lyric poet, takes a nightmare tour through the bowels of the Trojan Horse, meeting a series of failed and frustrated writers along the way. Each surrealistic episode underscores the futility of the literary vocation and gleefully mocks the pipe dreams of amateurs who aspire to wealth and immortality. 

Deborah Wyrick, one of the book's few defenders, sums up the novel's customary place in the West corpus: "critics agree that it is formless, chaotic, a juvenile pastiche of bathroom jokes, college magazine parody, and borrowings from contemporary avant-garde authors"


Abigail took notes throughout the book. She gave the book to a teenager whom she met through his mother, a friend in Los Angeles. You can hear more about the book, here:

http://www.mansonblog.com/2015/12/a-painting-pinocchio-manson-murders.html

I think Abigail’s choice of this book revels something about her. A Cool Million is not for everyone. The reader encounters rape, scalping, lynching, racism and, foreshadowing today, anti-immigrant politics. The subjects are presented with dark nihilistic humor. There is no ‘happy ending’ and West certainly does not offer even a glimmer of hope. 

I also believe the book provides a glimpse of how Abigail may have actually felt about the problems she confronted through her volunteer social work. It seems to me that Abigail may have felt the situation was hopeless. There is certainly a hint of that in this quote that has been attributed to her: 

"A lot of social workers go home at night, take a bath and wash their day off, I can't. The suffering gets under your skin".

While some point to this quote as evidence of her dedication, remember, she quit.

At the same time, I think her choice of books may reveal the depth of the conflict she likely experienced because of her ‘inherited’ socio-economic status. Abigail was a member of the "1% Club". She certainly was never going to have to work a day in her life.

Her book choices reveal an interest in the structures of the establishment. She had purchased Gay Talese's book about the intrigues and personalities of the New York Times. The inner workings of the New York Times and its ability to shape public opinion likely would not appeal to many.

Her reading choices also reveal a certain level of rebellion against that same 'establishment'. While she was born into the upper crust, West's books may have given a voice to her concerns about the plight of those less fortunate than her. West may, initially, have encouraged her to get involved. Then again, it may be that her experiences as a volunteer social worker simply confirmed a belief she held, like West, that the American Dream was a fiction, for most. 

She certainly abandoned the path of volunteerism after Tom Bradley's failed May 1969 mayoral campaign. After that she seems to have increased her level of 'self-medication' while at the same time she was seeing a therapist five days a week. And those facts, I believe, reveal the depths of her internal struggles and is evidence she suffered from depression.

Pax vobiscum

Dreath 





38 comments:

Dan S said...

Life imitating art ( roseMarys baby/"the devil's business"); a year or two later Tate might've been strabbed by dolphins

Robert C said...

David -- appreciate part 2.

Since I'm personally old enough to have witnessed a lot of this, I can say that during the 60's it was quite fashionable for those with deep pockets to employ an analyst or shrink. This was done not just because a rich person had a head problem but rather to gain insight and alternate perspectives on issues of interest at that time.

And quite a large percentage of people back then were testing & experimenting with 'self-medications' of all types, not just 'hippies' but well healed mcmansion owners and everyone else in between as well. The books you mentioned she was reading reflect this as well -- this was a moment in history when many were considering or evaluating alternative lifestyles, cultures, viewpoints and etc. Back then that was all novel stuff and it all continues to flourish today ... one legacy of that period. You see these periodic enlightenment periods throughout history (I'm a buff) like the Utopians for example.

But I'm not saying you're wrong regarding your take it was about dealing with internal struggles and suffering from depression. I've known a few eternally wealthy young people who have had difficulty finding a path in life (lack of self-discipline among other things). And depression ... well, I've had clinical mild depression since puberty and when it sets in the last thing you feel like doing is reading. In fact, brushing your teeth becomes as difficult as climbing Mt. Everest.

Cheers.

brownrice said...

David said:
" ...psychonaut. That last one means he was a nut case. "

Geez David... that's like saying that James Joyce was "just a one-eyed man".

Much of the music you've listened to throughout your life and many of the scientific breakthroughs that have changed the world are the direct product of such "nut cases".

AustinAnn74 said...

Money doesn't always mean endless happiness I found out. I work for an individual who has a trust worth millions, a beautiful ranch, and several homes, but still is a miserable, uptight, asshole who treats others, especially me, like a slave. Nothing seems to make this guy happy. Abigail Folger on the other hand seemed decent, however, and to truly care about her fellow man (or woman.)

Logan said...

Essays like this are why I love this blog & will keep reading it as long as it exists.
I had ever heard of Nathaniel West but i will check him out now!

Orwhut said...

I hope this was a joke.
Lost Dog:
Mange on head, one eye blind, cripple in both hind legs, castrated, no tail, comes when called Lucky.
Reminds me of the poor man in one of Abigail's books.

G. Greene-Whyte said...

Wonderful writing. I went back and re-read Part 1 because June feels like two years ago. I'm glad I did. Thanks for 45 awesome minutes of reading this morning with my coffee. You paint a great picture of her. I hope Quentin does as well. Gibbie is ultimately responsible for putting herself in that situation at the end but I also blame Frykowski for her death. Good girls sometimes pay steep prices for liking bad boys I suppose. I'm a dad with three girls, and I'm also a reformed reprobate, probably the worst type of father in the eyes of a teenage girl, and I'm constantly telling my girls to beware of guys with sob stories or fishy stories and et cetera. VF seems like he had a lot of those stories. And not much in the street smarts department based on his demise at the hands of Watson.

This question has been asked in similar ways many times before but if only Parent, VF, and Sebring were killed at Cielo how many people would be remain interested enough half a century later to figure out what books Jay was reading?

Torque said...

Excellent work here. I'm curious if the hand written notes Abigail made in the book are available on the Intetnet.

Also, even though Susan Atkins said she saw an eyeglass wearing Abigail reading a book in bed, I took the part about the eyeglasses with a grain of salt. This is basically because I have not seen a picture of Abigail wearing glasses.

Yet after viewing a certain photo of Abigail, who was in conversation with Frakowski, several times, I'm almost certain that there is a pair of black framed eyeglasses folded up in front of her on a coffee table. Students of this case will be very familiar with the picture I mention: it is the photo taken at what appears to be an a living room scene, on the sofa, in an apartment. Abigail and Voytek are surrounded by books seated talking in front of a low coffee table. The eyeglasses appear to be on that table.

Can anyone verify this?

Chris Till said...

"Although she could have been reading one of the paperbacks, 'Kingdom and Power: Behind the Scenes at The New York Times: The Institution That Influences the World' by Gay Talese is likely the book Gibbie was reading that night." While this is certainly possible, I find nothing in this post to support this wild guess.

AstroCreep said...

GreenWhite said:

“Gibbie is ultimately responsible for putting herself in that situation at the end but I also blame Frykowski for her death”

I tend to blame only the people responsible for taking the lives for murder. That’s like blaming Leno for Rosemary LaBianca’s taste for gambler men for her death.

Anyone know what’s on that reel of film sitting on the floor? I know other film was discovered in the loft above the family room, but have never seen anything mentioned about this reel of film.

G. Greene-Whyte said...

I agree with you, Astro. I was unfair.

Torque said...

Since we're on the subject of Abigail reading in bed, I'd like to revisit a question I had some months ago. Namely, the possibility of music playing in the living room at Cielo when Tex and the girls entered.

To be sure, one can find online a scale drawing of the Cielo Drive house(although the actual scale in feet does not appear on the drawing, it may exist in an unseen margin), and from here one may approximate the distance from where Voytek was on the couch to where Abigail was on the bed in the bedroom.

I approximate the distance to be about ten feet, maybe a little more. If Susan is to be believed about Abigail's door being open, and if no music were playing, we are asked to accept that Abigail did not hear Tex walk across the living room in cowboy boots, open the (possibly) heavy deadbolt and Dutch door, let the girls in, kick Voytek in the head, speak with Voytek, and threaten him, order Susan to tie up Voytek, give instructions for Linda to remain outside, and instruct Susan to check the other rooms for people.

All of that, and not a single indication that Abigail(or Jay and Sharon, for that matter)heard anything that would alert them to the presence of intruders?! Extraordinary.

I have always considered this a significant, but largely unanswered question. Does anyone have any information from parole hearing transcripts that may help answer this?

Also, yes, I have also seen a reel of tape on Abigail's bedroom floor on Cielodrive.com, but did not see the book she was reading in the photo. Also curious in that photo are the various items scattered on the floor, as if Abigail or Voytek may have been working on a project with these items before bed time?

AstroCreep said...

Similarly, and I’ve always questioned this aspect but the Folger bedroom pic jogged my memory- the bedroom window is open and probably 8 feet from where Abigail is reading. I can’t imagine gunshots going off less than a hundred feet away and her not thinking “that was close” or “maybe firecrackers” or something along those lines. Although a .22 is a small caliber, it’s still a loud report. And yes, it was directed into the car which definitely absorbed some of the sound. Just always curious about that.

Doug said...

I am thinking this reel may be the answer to BOTH mysteries. Perhaps it us an AUDIO 1/4" reel and, that machine a PORTABLE 4 track player like this:

https://www.pinterest.ca/amp/pin/813603488904417012/

I have a few commercially released 4 track 33/3 reels. You'd think that the hip, upper crust would be utilizing the finest available technology...no?

Perhaps the music was even closer to Abigail - explaining her impaired hearing.

https://m.ebay.com/itm/CREAM-LOT-OF-4-REEL-TO-REEL-BEST-OF-GINGER-BAKER-GOODBYE-FRESH-4-TRACK-3-3-4/401624492701?ul_ref=http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-53200-19255-0/1?icep_ff3=2&pub=5574735181&toolid=10001&campid=5336086427&icep_item=401624492701&ipn=psmain&icep_vectorid=229466&kwid=902099&mtid=824&kw=lg&srcrot=711-53200-19255-0&rvr_id=1721918735309&rvr_ts=c1b4a4531660aca6f534ce13fff9b726&_mwBanner=1&_rdt=1&ul_noapp=true&pageci=3b492459-c7de-45d6-ac5e-1bc9cd58839a

Food for thought

Doug said...

This photo?

http://i67.tinypic.com/k47ddz.jpg

Torque said...

Yes, that is the photo. It appears to me that there is a pair of eyeglasses on the table, just to Abigail's left.

David said...

Torque said: "I'm curious if the hand written notes Abigail made in the book are available on the Intetnet."

Not that I could find.

I have posted that photo at the end of the post. Yes, they are glasses.

CarolMR said...

Two excellent Nathanael West books are MISS LONELYHEARTS and THE DAY OF THE LOCUST. The latter was made into a movie, I believe.

David said...

Robert C said: "Since I'm personally old enough to have witnessed a lot of this, I can say that during the 60's it was quite fashionable for those with deep pockets to employ an analyst or shrink."

Every day? There is no doubt Abigail saw Dr. Flicker every day- Monday-Friday. Her estate records confirm that. So, I don't know, was seeing your therapist every day in 1969, normal?

David said...

Chris Till said : "I find nothing in this post to support this wild guess."

I think its a bit more then a 'wild guess' but I will concede I should have said something like 'probable' 'perhaps' 'one likely option'. It was an opinion. It does seem to me it was either a paperback or Kingdom of Power and the 'tray'? in the picture suggests to me a hardcover.

David said...

Logan said: "Essays like this..."

Thank you.

David said...

GreenWhite said: "I went back and re-read Part 1 because June feels like two years ago..."

I decided to break "Part 2" into multiple parts because it was going to be very long and because I am still 'waiting' on some information so there will be several parts. I apologize for the delay, I should have made this decision earlier.

Robert C said...

David said: " There is no doubt Abigail saw Dr. Flicker every day- Monday-Friday. Her estate records confirm that. So, I don't know, was seeing your therapist every day in 1969, normal? "

For how long ? Sounds like a tryst to me but no, not normal in the late 60's 'every day' unless an emergency.

StillGrooving said...

Even today there is a Dr. Marvin Flicker practicing psychiatry in Los Angeles. What little information I can find about him says he has been seeing patients for +21 years, so that would make THIS Dr. Flicker a grandson or, perhaps, a son of the Dr. Flicker that Abigail saw.

Personally, I would think an everyday visit to a shrink would indicate a serious psychological or mental illness. Heck, I don't think even Sybil saw her therapist 5 days a week! Of course, the rich can afford to do what they want, pretty much, so if she really enjoyed spending an hour a day speaking with her psychiatrist, why not? But, if she didn't really need the therapy, it was a disservice to her to allow her to become so dependent on the sessions.

Then again, this 5-day-a-week therapy could be something the Bug got wrong in HS. It certainly wouldn't be the first untruth found in his writings.

Doug said...

Same Dr that Abigail saw. Born in 1935 in New Jersey.
His office is about 15min drive from Cielo
His brother was creator of Barney Miller too

He was approx 34yr old at time of slaughter. The "affair" angle seems possible...if, unlikely.

Craziness!

Gorodish said...

Doug Smith wrote :

Same Dr that Abigail saw. Born in 1935 in New Jersey.
His office is about 15min drive from Cielo
His brother was creator of Barney Miller too


You are correct, it is the same Marvin Flicker practicing today, age 83. His brother Ted Flicker was a creator of Barney Miller and directed numerous other TV shows in the 1960s/70s. He also wrote and directed the 1967 movie The President's Analyst, starring James Coburn, which is one of my all time favorites. Ted passed away in 2014. Here is a picture of the Flicker brothers from 2013 (Marvin is on the right).

Bob Flicker: A Writer's Ghosts

Bill Slocum said...

"Although she could have been reading one of the paperbacks, 'Kingdom and Power: Behind the Scenes at The New York Times: The Institution That Influences the World' by Gay Talese is likely the book Gibbie was reading that night."

Thanks for this dive into the reading of one of the lesser-discussed victims. "Kingdom" was a hot book of the moment, actually an easy read as it is written in Talese's lively style and is steeped in human interest. It actually follows a series of stories about the Times, raising questions about its outsized profile in American society while simultaneously revealing the hard work and inspiration that led to the newspaper's rise. I can see her picking up the dolphin books for her boyfriend's research, and diving right into "Kingdom And Power." Would Atkins have registered a paperback as readily? Of course, avid readers often have a stack of books they are reading, and Abigail might have been in the midst of one she had gotten earlier. But my gut tells me she was reading Talese.

CarolMR said...
"Two excellent Nathanael West books are MISS LONELYHEARTS and THE DAY OF THE LOCUST. The latter was made into a movie, I believe."

You are right. Donald Sutherland played a lead character named Homer Simpson in that 1975 film. It has been suggested, refuted, and reiterated that Matt Groening used the name as a homage to West's dark comic stylings, though West would have found even Itchy and Scratchy tame. West, like Abigail, died young and tragically. He was married to Eileen McKenney, whose sister Ruth used her for the title character in her comic memoir of young single women in Greenwich Village, "My Sister Eileen," which later became the musical "Wonderful Town." The couple died in a car accident returning from a hunting trip.

From "Day Of The Dolphin" to "Day Of The Locust." This site covers a lot of territory!

David said...

Bill Slocum said: "Thanks for this dive into the reading of one of the lesser-discussed victims."

You are welcome and thank you for the additional information.

starviego said...

Gorodish said...
His brother Ted Flicker was a creator of Barney Miller and directed numerous other TV shows in the 1960s/70s. He also wrote and directed the 1967 movie The President's Analyst, starring James Coburn....

He got into serious trouble with that one. The FBI and CIA didn't like being called out publicly like that. After the film was finished, they had to eliminate all references to those agencies from the film. He was effectively blackballed from Hollywood after that.

Rock N. Roll said...

Ah the Pickwick bookstore in Hollywood, one of my favorite places.

CarolMR said...

I remember reading that Warren Beatty offered the part of Bonnie in BONNIE AND CLYDE to Natalie Wood but it was a location shoot and she didn't want to be separated from her psychiatrist whom she was seeing daily.

Matthew said...

Has anyone seen the short film Heiress69? I have not but it has gotten good reviews. Something about Abigail coming back to figure out her death. The only place I have seen it available is streaming on Amazon and I don't have that.

Torque said...

Speaking of Abigail's thought process and outlook, I have always been perplexed by the quote attributed to her by Patricia Krenwinkel, namely, "you can stop stabbing me. I'm already dead". If Abigail truly said that, did it have a psychological component? I'm referring to the possibility that she may have been suffering from long-standing depression at the time of the murders, and the quote was a way of vocalizing that.

In studying Abigail, I'm fairly certain that she underwent a fundamental change in thinking, probably after returning to San Francisco after graduating from Radcliffe. She graduated in 1965, returned to SF, took a job at the Berkeley Art Museum, and started dating the rock photographer, Marshall.

She of course leaves in the summer of 1967 for New York and returns again to California a year later, this time with Voytek. Friends of hers in NY said in a New York Daily News article that Abigail was "unhappy" there.

I also wonder aloud about how her parents' divorce may have changed her perceptions about life, and that this may also have influenced her thinking after 1965.

A Facebook tribute page exists for Abigail Folger. Indeed I've seen photographs of her there I've not seen before(mostly from her high school yearbooks). Strangely, people who knew Abigail, and who could answer many of these questions, don't post there. There is a post or two from Dr Flicker, and one from a woman who worked with Abigail on the Bradley campaign. She quotes Abigail as saying, "you either like me or you don't. There is no in-between". This probably would have been in May of 1969.

For me it's a pity that we can have so much biographical information on Sharon Tate, but so very little on Abigail, who I think of as "The Other Lady At Cielo". Hopefully people who knew her best could share information about Abigail. Those individuals are older now, and it would be sad for their memories of Abigail to be lost when they pass away.

AstroCreep said...

There are pics starting to surface from QT’s new movie- not sure if others have seen them. I checked #abigailfolger hashtags on IG and there are a few there.

Gorodish said...

Like an 86'ed belligerent drunk that keeps trying to sneak back in the bar.......

Matt said...

Gorodish said...
Like an 86'ed belligerent drunk that keeps trying to sneak back in the bar.......


Security to register one!


Gorodish said...

Matt said :

Security to register one!

Nice work there, Dalton.......unfortunately, he'll be back again.

Unknown said...

Always good stuff