Mrs. Seymour Kott was an earwitness, her sole contribution being that she heard shots after midnight:
Helter Skelter. page 24:
At 10070 Cielo, Mr. and Mrs. Seymour Kott had already gone to bed, their dinner guests having left about midnight, when Mrs. Kott heard, in close sequence, what sounded like three or four gunshots. They seemed to have come from the direction of the gate of 10050. She did not check the time but later guessed it to be between 12:30 and 1 a.m. Hearing nothing further, Mrs. Kott went to sleep.
At 10070 Cielo, Mr. and Mrs. Seymour Kott had already gone to bed, their dinner guests having left about midnight, when Mrs. Kott heard, in close sequence, what sounded like three or four gunshots. They seemed to have come from the direction of the gate of 10050. She did not check the time but later guessed it to be between 12:30 and 1 a.m. Hearing nothing further, Mrs. Kott went to sleep.
No
where is Mrs. Seymour Kott identified as other than "Mrs. Seymour
Kott" or simply "Mrs. Kott." It is surprising, then, that Mrs. Seymour
Kott--professionally known as Ethel Fisher-- has her own Wikipedia page:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethel_Fisher
In 1961, Ethel Fisher left Miami and her family to concentrate on her painting. After traveling in Europe for a year, she resettled in Manhattan with her second husband, art historian Seymour Kott....
At the end of the decade, Fisher and Kott left New York and rented a property in the Hollywood Hills next door to the home of Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski just weeks before the Manson murders took place. Their account of that night was published in several books about the murders. In 1971, they bought a 1926, multi-level Spanish Colonial home on a slope above the Pacific Ocean in Pacific Palisades...
In 1961, Ethel Fisher left Miami and her family to concentrate on her painting. After traveling in Europe for a year, she resettled in Manhattan with her second husband, art historian Seymour Kott....
At the end of the decade, Fisher and Kott left New York and rented a property in the Hollywood Hills next door to the home of Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski just weeks before the Manson murders took place. Their account of that night was published in several books about the murders. In 1971, they bought a 1926, multi-level Spanish Colonial home on a slope above the Pacific Ocean in Pacific Palisades...
She was a painter of some renown, at least in the art world. Her works have been exhibited at, among others:
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA
Special Collections, University of California, Los Angeles, CA
The Morgan Library and Museum, New York, NY
The Museum of the City of New York, NY
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
The Norton Gallery, West Palm Beach, FL
The Security Pacific Bank Collection (now Bank of America), CA
Special Collections, University of California, Los Angeles, CA
The Morgan Library and Museum, New York, NY
The Museum of the City of New York, NY
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
The Norton Gallery, West Palm Beach, FL
The Security Pacific Bank Collection (now Bank of America), CA
---------------
So
here's the question: Was her name deliberately obscured to protect
her professional reputation? It's a small thing, but it seems just
another case of how the big names were being protected from any
association with the Manson infamy.
Mrs. Seymour Kott (1923–2017)
Another unresolved question I have is who were the guests at the Kott house that night--the ones who left "about midnight," according to Bugs' book? You'd think the investigators would have wanted to contact them, to see if they saw anything on their drive away from the house, as the killers allegedly would have arrived on scene just minutes later. Maybe they were 'prominent' in some way too, and pressure was applied to leave their names out of it.
Tom
O'Neill disclosed that an anonymous blogger-"Enty"-claimed that the
actor Dean Stockwell had some kind of encounter with Tex Watson at the
top of Cielo Drive the night of the murders:
This
recently deceased Academy award nominated movie and TV actor had
success early in his career and a second wind later in his career. In
between, he was part of a wild generation and during that time became
friends with an infamous figure who had his own family. The night of a
famous crime, he was present having driven himself there but did not go
inside the house of the actress. One of the perpetrators of this crime
gave hours of recorded testimony to his attorney and mentioned this but
no one believed him.
(referring to Stockwell, Manson, and Tex Watson, obviously)
Stockwell, of course, is best known as an actor, but he also took himself seriously as an artist:
Pacific Standard Time, Los Angeles Art 1945-1980, by Rebecca Peabody, pg78
For
many, sharing works of art was a private, intimate act, and a great
number of art works made by this circle of artists were never exhibited
publicly. This was the case with many of the works made by Stockwell, a
former Hollywood child star, who began creating intricate collages of
found pictures that mingled historical and contemporary imagery and
sources.
Stockwell,
known professionally as R. D. Stockwell in the art world, was doing
collages in this period on a professional level (he designed one of Neil
Young's album covers, for example). As was Mrs. Seymour Kott, Given
this commonality, is it possible Stockwell was a guest at the Kott
residence that night, and ran across Tex at the top of Cielo as
Stockwell left the house at about midnight? The timeline fits,
certainly.
