Randy Starr was a ranch hand and stuntman who
worked and lived at Spahn Ranch. For a little background George
Stimson did a piece on the blog about RandyHERE .
Randy comes into play because he was said to have
owned and given to Charles Manson the gun used at the Tate house during the
murders.Randy did not testify at the
Tate LaBianca trial because he became ill with an ear infection which went
untreated and he developed meningitis and died August 4 1970.
Vincent Buliosi writes in his book Helter
Skelter (1994 page 376, in the chapter titled April 1970)-
Another find was Randy Starr, whom I interviewed
the same day as Ruby.A Sometime movie
stunt man who specialized in fake hangings, Starr said the Tate Sebring rope was “identical”
to a rope he’d once used to help Manson pull a vehicle out of the creek bed.Starr told me, “Manson always kept the rope
behind the seat in his dune buggy.”
Even more important was Randy Starr’s positive
identification of the .22 Longhorn revolver, for Starr had once owned the gun
and had given it to Manson.
There is a footnote at the bottom of the page
which reads-
The gun, serial number 1902708, had been among a
number of weapons taken from the Archery Headquarters in El Monte California,
during a burglary on the night of March 12, 1969.According to Starr, he obtained it in trade
with a man only known as “Ron.”Manson
was always borrowing the gun for target practice, and Randy finally gave it to
him in trade for a truck that belonged to Danny DeCarlo.
Randy Starr testified to a grand jury convened
for the death of Gary Hinman. Charles
Manson, Susan Atkins and Bruce Davis were the defendants and it was held on
April 9 and 12 1970 in Los Angeles.This is the only
known testimony given under oath by Starr.
While Randy’s testimony does mention the gun, it
is more focused on the knife used to stab Gary Hinman and found in Bobby
Beausoleil’s possession when he was arrested August 6 1969.
The testimony also focuses on a sword in
Manson’s possession. Starr says it was
usually kept in holder in Manson’s dune buggy.
There is nothing in the testimony about the rope
used at the Tate murders, nor should there have been because this was a grand
jury for the Hinman murder.Which makes
me wonder why the gun was mentioned.There was a gun used at Hinman’s, not to shoot Gary but during a scuffle
it went off and struck the kitchen cabinets and wall.The bullets that were dug out matched the 9mm
Random automatic that Bruce Davis bought under a false name on July 14 1969.Randy mentions a long barreled 9-shot
revolver and a .45 but not a 9mm in his testimony.
All in all I went away a little confused by Randy’s
testimony.It seemed as if Randy was
trying to take credit for having provided Manson with many of the weapons used
in the Hinman and Tate murders.I was
unaware that the knife Bobby used had originally belonged to Starr.
I have to wonder how Randy would have stood up under cross examination at a trial.
Among the newly surfaced images and documents is a property report for items confiscated during the Barker Ranch Raids.
This property report essentially transfers items collected in the raids from Inyo County to Los Angeles County to be investigated and used in future trials. The transfer was made February 18 1970.
Listed among the items are numerous checks, some blank and some made out to specific people. A Hedman Check Protector is the first item listed. There are also office supply type items, OTC drugs, receipts, envelopes which are possibly addressed to certain people and the attache case where Shorty stored his guns. Going down to item 29 on the second page of the report, a suitcase is listed.
The suitcase contains more checks, ledgers, a pink slip for a '55 Mercury,a hotel key, 15 Master Lock keys and various odds and ends.
Some of the checks were stolen from Spahn Movie Ranch and made out with the check protector to William Rex Cox. Hummmm.... that sounds a lot like William Rex Cole. All of the checks were made out in the amount of $137.35 and signed by George C. Spahn. (More than likely George Spahn's signature was forged)
Numerous other checks were stolen from H B Irwin Plumbing Inc. located at 20555 Superior St. Chatsworth. Some of those checks were made out partially or completely to James M Miller, John Phillip Haught and Dwayne Ernest Schwarm. Manson used the last name of Miller on occasion, we know who John Phillip Haught was and Dwayne Schwarm was an alias used by Bill Vance.
Another slug of checks came from Oregon. Some of them were from Lear Siegler Inc. Holly Division 7340 NE Sandy Blvd. in Portland. Those, too, were completely or partially made out to James M Miller, John Phillip Haught and Diane Marie Von Ahn. More checkbooks were found printed with the name Duane E Schwarm at the Sandy Blvd. address.
Duane Ernest Schwarm was a real person who, as near as I can tell, lived and worked for majority of his life in Oregon. He married in Oregon four times, 1953, 1969, 1976 and 1982, and died in 2010. He was born in Chicago IL Dec. 1 1933 and his first name was spelled Dwayne on his birth record but all subsequent records spell his first name as Duane with the same birth date. There is no indication that he had any relationship to the Family.
Diane Marie Von Ahn was a Family member, she used an alias of Mary Ann Schwarm and she was from Gresham OR. She died in a motorcycle accident in Oregon June 30 1972. Her death record is in the name Diana Vonahn. Her mug shot is #49 here.
What we do not know is how many checks Family members may have cashed before they were arrested. It's probably a safe bet to believe that forged checks were cashed, Nancy Pitman took off with Bruce Davis because she was facing bad check charges. The Missouri articles about William Rex Cole and his "flock" stated that Claudia Leigh Smith aka Linda Baldwin was wanted on some kind of check charges. There may be more of those types of charges that we never knew about because stolen and forged checks pale in comparison to the murders.
On to the enigma of Bill Vance. Nothing has been solved but more information has come to light.
Generally when people take aliases they use a name of a real person.
Bill Vance had three different drivers licenses.
The oldest one was in the name of William Joseph Vance. It was issued November 2 1965 and gives his address as Spahn Movie and TV Ranch on Susana Pass Rd. Chatsworth. On the application for the license Vance said he had a previous license in Tennessee and that it was lost. It appears the license expired in 1968.
The next license was in the name William Rex Cole. It was issued September 8 1969 and gives an address of Spahn Movie Ranch Chatsworth. The application claims that his previous license was issued in Texas and it was lost.
The third license was in the name of Dwayne Ernest Schwarm, it was issued September 19 1969, just 11 days after the William Rex Cole license was issued, This time there is an address in Reseda CA given as his residence. The house number and street are redacted. The application states that his previous license was issued in Oregon and, you guessed right, it was lost.
The birth dates on all three licenses are redacted but they all give the same general age. The signatures on all three look to be written by the same hand.
What is interesting is that the Schwarm license uses Schwarm's legal first name though the checks are printed with the first name as Duane according to the report.
A little bit of research was done on the other two names.
There were two William Rex Cole's found but both were quite a bit older than the age on the license in that name. One was born in 1917 and lived in Virginia and the other was born in 1919 and lived in West Virginia. There was another William Rex Cole who was born in Arizona December 13 1951 and died the next day.
There were five William Joseph Vance's but one stood out to me. When doing research on Windy Bucklee, true name Lee Saunooke, I found an obit for her step-father. His survivors listed Lee as well as his wife Theressa Vance Longano. The Vance name jumped out and I learned it was her maiden name. Searching Theressa's family tree I found that she had a brother named William Joseph Vance.
Is it possible that Windy Bucklee supplied Bill Vance with the name of her uncle? According to his driver's license he was at Spahn Ranch in 1965 and so was Windy. Does Windy know Bill's true name?
Circling back to the stolen checks, if John Haught was indeed murdered, did it have something to do with the stolen checks? Could he have expressed a desire to come clean to the authorities about the checks and, like the later murder of James Willett, was he killed for saying he was thinking about it?
And, I think now we know the answer to an often asked question, "Where did the Family get their money?" Steal, forge and cash checks.
Recently the blog received images that were used as exhibits by the Los Angeles District Attorney's office in the four trials for the murder of Gary Hinman. The photos do not include Gary's body but do show blood stains. There are pictures of various rooms in the house, Gary's prayer beads and the sword Manson used to slice Gary's face. These pictures are very sobering and underscore the Family's capacity to exert brutality in the course of their crimes.
All of the images have at least a portion of an LADA watermark on them but it is an opaque watermark so it doesn't obliterate a major portion of the image. The home is still furnished in the photos so you get a very good idea of what happened and where.
A few years ago Matt posted a link to an Associated Press video of the interior of Gary's home, the link at his post still works so you might want to revisit that, too. In this video the home has been cleared out of all of Gary's belongings so you get a different perspective.
We will start with a couple of the tamer pictures.
This is what looks to be an enclosed porch off of the kitchen. You can see the refrigerator in the window.
The dinette set in the kitchen.
Another view of the dinette set.
The dinette set again, notice the musical instrument case in the foreground.
Not sure where this is in the house. You can see circles drawn on the floor near the wood stove. Presumably they circled blood splatters.
The living room where Gary died. You can see Gary's prayer beads in the lower middle of the photo.
Another angle of the living room.
You can see a faint chalk outline of exactly where Gary was found. His arm would have been where the right side of the first A in the watermark is located. The prayer beads were probably in his right hand.
The prayer beads.
The knife found in the spare tire well of the Fiat when Bobby was arrested.
The sword that was used by Manson to slice Gary's face. It has been said that when George Knoll, president of the Straight Satan's found out that his sword had been used in a murder he became enraged and broke the sword in half.
In the interest of things not getting out of hand in the comments section regarding the letter addressed to Robert Beausoleil in Gary's home here are images of the letter, envelope and related documentation for its being entered as an exhibit in the first trial for Gary's murder.
It's been a long time coming but it appears Anthony DiMaria's project has found a studio to distribute his film. Many people have been looking forward to something on film about Jay and his life. And it's something we will get to see later this year!
'Jay Sebring....Cutting to the Truth' chronicles the 1960s rise of the celebrity Hollywood hairstylist before he became one of the Charles Manson cult's grisly murder victims.
Shout! Studios has nabbed the North American rights to Jay Sebring....Cutting to the Truth — a documentary feature from director Anthony DiMaria, 1010 Films and Halation — about the 1960s Hollywood trendsetter Jay Sebring.
Sebring is mostly remembered as a faceless victim of the grisly Charles Manson cult murders of Roman Polanski's pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, and three others at the director's Benedict Canyon residence in August 1969. But the film by DiMaria, Sebring's nephew, chronicles the late haircutter's rise as a Hollywood celebrity who styled the hair of Frank Sinatra, Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, Marlon Brando, The Rat Pack and Elvis Presley, among other stars.
Jay Sebring....Cutting to the Truth, co-produced by Noor Ahmed, DiMaria and Johnny Bishop and executive produced by Chad Layne and Voss Boreta, will screen at film festivals this spring before a commercial release on streaming, digital and other major platforms later in 2020.
"This is an intimate, fascinating portrait of a man whose legacy is so much more than how he died. It’s how he lived that is the main subject here, and his profound contribution to an entire industry, as well as to the style of the 1960s, is expertly — and finally — celebrated,” Jordan Fields, vp acquisitions at Shout! Studios said in a statement.
Sebring was played by Emile Hirsch in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. DiMaria's documentary has interviews collected over 12 years with Dennis Hopper, Nancy Sinatra, Tarantino, Quincy Jones, Debra Tate, Manson prosecutor Stephen Kay and Vic Damone.
The distribution deal was unveiled by Shout! Factory’s founders and CEOs, Bob Emmer and Garson Foos, DiMaria and Fields, who negotiated the pact with Ahmed on behalf of the filmmakers.
Did you know that there was a lawsuit filed by Shorty's first wife, Phyllis Shea, on behalf of herself and daughter Karen?
The lawsuit called for a $1.5 M payoff.
There was a small article published in various California newspapers in March of 1971 before the trial charging Manson, Davis and Grogan with Shorty's murder had been scheduled. As it was explained to me by David, our resident attorney, a wrongful death suit needs to be filed within one year of the death. In this case Shorty was considered missing until a grand jury in December 1970 issued an indictment against Manson, Davis and Grogan for the murder of Shorty. So, the clock starts at the indictment.
Also, included were Steve Grogan's parents, named as John Doe Grogan and Mary Doe Grogan in the lawsuit, because Steve was a minor at the time of Shorty's disappearance/death. Steve turned 18 years old on July 13th 1969 and was considered a minor at that time because he was under the age of 21. Many articles about the Manson Family say that Leslie Van Houten was the youngest member of the Family to have been convicted of murder but actually Steve was the youngest.
Phyllis Shea's lawsuit claimed that Shorty had been the sole support for her and their daughter. In fact, Phyllis and Shorty separated five months after their marriage May 15, 1959. Their daughter was born November 10, 1959, a month after the separation. There is no record of a divorce for Phyllis and Shorty. There is also no evidence that Shorty ever paid Phyllis any alimony or child support although Shorty may have given Phyllis money from time to time but considering Shorty's record of earning and borrowing money even that is doubtful.
Phyllis did hook-up with a man not long after she and Shorty split up and had four children with that man before Shorty was killed. I think it's safe to say that Phyllis did not depend on Shorty for an income. But, no one can fault her for trying to get a little something for the daughter she had with Shorty.
The lawsuit went on for years but eventually petered out due to unknown reasons.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbionese_Liberation_Army The United Federated Forces of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) was an American left-wing terrorist organization active between 1973 and 1975 that considered itself a vanguard army. The group committed bank robberies, two murders, and other acts of violence.
The SLA became internationally notorious for the kidnapping of heiress Patricia Hearst, abducting the 19-year-old from Berkeley, California. Interest increased when Hearst, in audiotaped messages delivered to (and broadcast by) regional news media, announced that she had joined the SLA. Hearst later said that members of the terrorist group threatened to kill her, held her in close confinement, and sexually assaulted and brainwashed her.
Similarities with the Manson Family:
--Both groups were led by charismatic ex-cons.
For the SLA it was Donald DeFreeze (aka General Field Marshall Cinque DeFreeze):
From the book Season of the Witch: Enchantment, Terror, and Deliverance in the City of Love, by David Talbot c. 2012 pg174
The SLA leader mesmerized his followers with his revolutionary gibberish ....
https://escholarship.org/content/qt8tw2935x/qt8tw2935x.pdf
Hearst... stated that whenever Cinque had a point of view, “no one doubted anything he said.”
General Field Marshall Cinque* DeFreeze
*(pronounced 'sin-Q')
--Both Charlie and Cinque had delusions of divinity:
https://escholarship.org/content/qt8tw2935x/qt8tw2935x.pdf
... Cinque gathered his small army together for what he considered a major announcement. While drinking his ever present plum wine, he told his troops that he had just discovered that “I am really a prophet. I am here on earth to lead the people.”
--Their philosophies were similar:
The Voices of Guns by Vin McClelland and Paul Avery pg19
This was to be a black revolution, a neo-Maoist Helter Skelter, the triumph of the nonwhite overthe bourgeois white capitalists.
Season of the Witch by David Talbot pg174
..."the revolutionary vanguard" believed that it was its duty to set an example and inspire the people to rise up*. A thick air of doom and drama hung over the youth... 'As the SLA assassins ran for their getaway car, she was heard giggling. When Steiner asked Nancy how she felt about killing a person, she said, "He's not a person, he's a pig." '
*just like Charlie would have to show the blacks how to do it.
--Manson had his well-known 'get out of jail free' card. And so did DeFreeze:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbionese_Liberation_Army
DeFreeze escaped from Soledad State Prison on March 5, 1973, by walking away while on work duty in a boiler room located outside the perimeter fence.
Soledad
Season of the Witch by David Talbot pg174
As Cinque roamed around the Bay Area, prison authorities seemed surprisingly lax about tracking him down. ...
pg193
Lake Headley, a Los Angeles private investigator hired ... to dig into Cinque's shadowy past,.. ran down Cinque's long rap sheet and the special treatment he had received from police and the courts as a multiple offender. Headley, whom Manson prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi once hailed as "the best private investigator on earth" .... came the closest to understanding Cinque. He was a "monster," Headley said, created in the dark criminal netherworld where police and government agencies manufacture their agents of chaos. And when their Frankenstein went rogue and began imagining that he truly was a revolutionary hero, he had to be put down.
--Both led a small group of disaffected, fanatical followers, mostly female:
Season of the Witch, by David Talbot pg174
...Cinque's consciousness-raising class became the seedbed for the Symbionese Liberation Army, an "army" ... made up of earnest, middle-class firebrands suffering from deep self-loathing...
https://escholarship.org/content/qt8tw2935x/qt8tw2935x.pdf
...the SLA demonstrated a knack for developing alternate identities.. They kept isolated from their past lives...
https://escholarship.org/content/qt8tw2935x/qt8tw2935x.pdf
When Patricia began opening up to Angela Atwood and Willie Wolfe regarding her personal and family life, she found the love and acceptance that she had not found at home with her family. ....
The Voices of Guns, by Vin McClelland and Paul Avery pg36
In two months of isolated captivity a conventionally liberal teenage girl had been completely transformed, brought to the point where she was apparently willing to kill and smirk.
Patty, .... and 'Tania'
--Both groups had celebrity victims. Both had victims who were the heiresses of wealthy old-line blue-blood California families from the Bay Area.
(Talking of Abigail Folger and Patricia Heast.)
--Both had group sex practices.
Season of the Witch by David Talbot pg174
He strutted around the SLA's various safe houses buck naked and fully erect, quickly establishing sexual dominion over the women in his flock... Cinque and his women formed the power nucleus within the group. None of the men ever challenged him; his... prison credentials gave him supreme status.
--Both groups were steeped in talk about death and destruction:
https://escholarship.org/content/qt8tw2935x/qt8tw2935x.pdf
“Death stalked the foul air in that safe house,” wrote Patricia, “More than ever before, all of them talked of death. Hardly a day or night went by but that someone mentioned death and others quickly took up the subject.”
--Both had people linked to their groups that tried to whack the President.
In Manson's case it was of course Squeaky Fromme, who pulled a .45 on the President during an appearance in Sacramento on September 5, 1975.
In DeFreeze's case, it was Sarah Jane Moore, who sent a .45 round whizzing past President Ford's head in San Francisco just 17 days later, on Sept 22, 1975. She was not a follower, but rather a volunteer in the organization set up by Patricia Hearst's father to comply with the kidnapper's demands to deliver free food to the poor before they would release his daughter. But even before that, she was an informant for the FBI.
[She was also a visitor at the radical Wellspring Commune's Northern California retreat. Also at this camp at the time was one-time Family member Larry Bailey.]
Soliah: The SaraJane Olson Story, by Sharon Darby Hendry, pg114
She(Moore) knew people who knew its members and would admit later on, "I had a catalog--I was one of the few people around who had a copy of every one of the SLA tapes, every one its communiques."
--Both the Mansons and the SLA were media darlings, with the Media giving them all the publicity they ever wanted to spread their goals:
--Both had probable government informants planted within their ranks.
Though significantly, it appears DeFreeze was an informant himself:
Vegas PI Lake Headley pg128
During the early fall of 1968, the LAPD detective and his agents, including DeFreeze, became part of a new subversive super secret unit--the Criminal Conspiracy Section (CCS). DeFreeze's job involved moving guns and grenades to be used against the Black Panther Party.
--Both committed terrible crimes to kick start the revolution, but that just ended up advancing the agenda of The Man.
https://escholarship.org/content/qt8tw2935x/qt8tw2935x.pdf
...what
resulted from this unique opportunity to take a deeper look into the
issues and concerns of the New Left led not to the embrace of these
ideas by the middle class, but their almost total alienation from the
SLA and its goals. ... Within progressive circles, discussions concerning Cinque as an agent provocateur ensued because the actions of the SLA led directly to police actions against those involved in progressive causes.
http://disinfo.com/2013/01/the-parts-left-out-of-the-patty-hearst-trial-part-2/
The family of slain SLA member Willie Wolfe hired Lake Headley–an ex-police intelligence officer who was chief investigator at Wounded Knee–to find out what had really happened. What he discovered, with fellow researchers Donald Freed and Rusty Rhodes, was that the SLA was part of the CIA’s CHAOS program.
-- https://escholarship.org/content/qt8tw2935x/qt8tw2935x.pdf
After taking the photograph, in a manner similar to that of the American military, the members of the cell proceeded to “unceremoniously cut off” Patricia/Tania’s hair leaving “no more than a half-inch growth” around her head.
Links:
Incredibly, DeFreeze may actually have known Charlie.
Season of the Witch by David Talbot pg176
"I crave the power Charles Manson had," declared Cinque, who claimed thathe had met the fellow ex-con in Los Angeles."
aadl.org/node/200649
Who Ran The SLA? by Dick Russell
Ann Arbor Sun, January 22, 1976
(Donald) DeFreeze, as an informer for a special Public Disorder Intelligence Unit(of the LAPD), did not want for "useful" tasks. During the fall of 1969, police sources recall DeFreeze informing on the Charles Manson family concerning a planned arms burglary. He next surfaces in Cleveland on October 11...
More evidence that Charlie knew Cinque is this insert from the 'Lie' Album of Manson tunes, which was signed by fellow inmates at the Los Angeles County Jail, probably in the spring of 1970 when Charlie was there awaiting trial, and shortly after the album was released.
(contributed by DebS)
Highlighted in yellow you can clearly read "Donald DeFreeze." It's entirely possible that were even friendly during that time period.
The thing about research/journalism/writing is that the writer has a tendency to focus on their story predicated on the supposition that the reader is up to speed on things on their end. This is a mistake. Thus the Col will give you a quick summary on Debra Tate.
Debra Tate is the middle daughter of Paul and Doris Tate. She was a teenager when the murders took place. Even before the murders she was clearly troubled and a problem to her parents. Soon after the murders their father, Colonel Paul Tate discovered fully nude photos of his daughter Debra hanging out with some of the drug related suspects of the murders and lost his shit in disbelief. The relationship with Debra was always contentious with both parents at a loss as to what to do.
A fully nude pictorial in OUI magazine in the 70s didn't help things within the Tate Clan, nor did Debra's disdain for younger sister Patti's relationship with a woman. Whether Debra is fully homophobic or just hangs out with homophobes (like Robin/Vera Dreiser of this blog) is not full clear but Patti died in 1997 and Debra has not associated with her nephew and nieces since.
Mom Doris Tate was a gangster and revolutionized victim's rights. When it became clear she was dying she made sure that Patti became the next designated rep at the Parole Hearings of the asshole killers. It was too much for Paul and Debra could not be counted on. The fact that NOW Debra attends has as much to do with attention seeking as it does anything else- it was NOT what Doris or Paul would have wanted because they knew she was unreliable. Doris always also understood that here were FOUR people who were responsible for her darling Sharon's death (5 if we include Charlie) and wanted to make sure they stayed locked up- she didn't fuck around with the other killers by showing up at their Parole hearings as emotional support. She had a job to get done and by gum she did it the best she knew how.
When Doris died the house in Palos Verdes as I understand it was sold to Patti's GF though Colonel Paul and his eventual new GF would live there during their lives. Debra hated this and hated the fact that her father would not give her any of the Sharon belongings stored in the house.
The "Estate of Sharon Tate" was distributed to Col Paul and Doris (remember Polanski agreeing to this?) This did include some likeness and name rights. When Colonel Paul died the Estate of Sharon Tate was left to Patti's children and Debra's daughter.
Debra's daughter (who was at one point available for nude photography and perhaps more online) is an attractive woman whose body seems to be 96% covered in tats, in my non-educated opinion a sign that you do not really like the way you look. The ex husband had a police record of drug use and abuse.
Debra for many years in the 2000s had her "friend" Don Wilson, a convicted sex offender, as her sometimes assistant/representative, until he went away for prison stint.
Debra over the last 15 years would threaten people about using Sharon's name and likeness regularly. Usually she would do this with people who didn't even need any rights in the first place, but as noted above, she doesn't have any rights ANYWAY. This doesn't stop the general public from thinking she does and acting accordingly.
Debra has claimed that while working as a Postal carrier she was damaged by a mail bomb. We know she has collected money for this but try as we might we cannot prove this actually happened.
Recently, Debra collected $18,000 on GoFundMe for breast cancer treatment. I've seen this disease up close and it is sickening. I hope Debra is cancer free- the concern is I have been told by some sources that she was always cancer free.
Last year Debra held an auction of Sharon's things to benefit her favorite cause, Debra Tate. How did she get these possessions? According to my sources, she "wanted all of Sharon's stuff" and threatened to sue her father, to commit her father, to attack her father if she didn't get them. Col Paul finally relented and had Patti's GF put together a trunk of stuff- but it was to be left at the bottom of the driveway and Debra was not to enter the house. And so it was.
In an act that made me actually hire a lawyer and do some Estate planning, Colonel Paul didn't fill out some fucking form and so his ashes went to next of kin- Debra. Colonel Paul is NOT buried in Holy Cross next to Doris and Sharon. His grandchildren from Patti have no idea where their grandpa's remains are, although it is safe to say that Debra does. Perhaps she looks at them and laughs and does all kinds of Shakespeare shit. She certainly seems small and petty enough.
---------
One of the things Debra and her fangirls wanted to do circa 2000 was get Sharon Tate a STAR ON THE HOLLYWOOD WALK OF FAME. This is a tourist thing along Hollywood Boulevard from La Brea Avenue to Vine Street. I promised you that without a book you will not know even 50% of the honorees. Since stars are based on your field, some folks have like 4 stars. It is historical, with honorees dating back to the silent era.
It is also a worthless "award". Nowadays they have ceremonies a few times a year- usually the recipient is promoting something. And someone, usually a studio, has to agree to pay $25,000 for the Star and more for the event. At one point I believe Debra et al were going to take up a collection for a star for Sharon. This never happened. As far as I know they never contacted the right people to even start the process.
Again, this is not a "worthiness" test so even a meh actor like Sharon Tate could certainly get a star. It's political and promotional more than anything.
When Tarantino announced his film ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD Debra did an early interview in which she excoriated the film sight unseen.
Debra tells TMZ she believes Leo and Brad only saw the Benjamins when they signed up to star in Quentin Tarantino's "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" ... a film about a struggling actor who lives next door to Sharon Tate at the time of the 1969 murders.
Debra says, "To [celebrities] it's a paycheck and these people just don't care. They are terribly hurtful to the actual family and all the living victims. They don't give a sh*t."
She goes on to say she'd like to believe Brad and Leo haven't thought this through because they're "throwing all their social responsibility to the wind."
As for her feelings about Quentin, Debra's adamant his movie will just end up glorifying Manson ... given Quentin's thirst for eroticizing murders.
Then a few short months later, Debra was on board, loves the script, Tarantino was amazing, the film really reflect Sharon etc etc etc.
What happened?
Mommy got paid of course. Sources tell me the number was close to $50,000 simoleons.
But think a bit- Debra is the sole surviving key member of Sharon's family. Sony cannot have her out there dissing their $90 million film with big movie stars. VICTIM!!!!!
But where did that number come from? The initial discussion from Tom Rothman the studio Chairman was to get Sharon a star. This made sense- Publicity for the film and something Debra allegedly wants. AMIRITE? Or door #2, take the money and run.
I believe my sources, but let's be chill- maybe they are wrong and the Star was never an option offered from Sony. I promise you 100% Sony would have gone for it if Debra had wanted it- they had a big problem with her as a loose cannon out there.
She didn't want it.
The "Last Word" on Debra Tate? Next time someone like Tom O'Neill (god I cannot stop hating on that guy) screams at me (or any of you) that she was a victim too, hang up on the loser. Doris, Paul and Patti were victims but they were not horrible people.
NEXT UP : The Col Presents THE LAST WORD on ROBERT HENDRICKSON
