Remembering Doris Tate

Sunday, July 10, 2022 marked the 30-year anniversary of the death of Doris Tate.

She was the mother of actress Sharon Tate.

Since I am sure Progressives Chat readers are plenty familiar with the 1969 Tate–LaBianca murders, I will not write anything very specific about the details of the heinous crime that was orchestrated by cult leader Charles Manson who instructed four of his followers—Susan Atkins, Charles “Tex” Watson (b. 1945), Patricia Krenwinkel (b. 1947), and Leslie Van Houten (b. 1949)—to directly commit the murders. The victims, along with Sharon Tate, were: Jay Sebring, 35, celebrity hairstylist; Abigail Folger, 25, the coffee heiress; Wojciech Frykowski, 32, an aspiring screenwriter; and Steven Parent, 18, a friend of the grounds caretaker. The following night were the murders of husband and wife Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, the former an executive of a supermarket chain. 

The case, even though more than 50 years in age, and with Manson (1934–2017) and Atkins (1948–2009) now dead, lives in infamy. In fact, filmmaker Quentin Tarantino created an imaginative alternative—one that was controversial but critically well-received—with his 2019 Oscar-winning Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

This is about Doris Gwendolyn Tate. She was born January 16, 1924, in Houston, Texas; was married to a military husband, Paul Tate (1922–2005); and had three daughters: Sharon (1943–1969), Debra (b. 1952), and Patricia (1957–2000). Doris Tate was a woman of courage and character.

Last March, I wrote about and published Remembering the Children, which was about the 1976 to 1977 murders of four known, pre-pubescent victims of the Oakland County Child Killer (singular or plural) in Oakland County, Michigan. That case, which overlapped on the historic timeline with the “Son of Sam” killer, David Berkowitz (b. 1953), from New York City, was never officially solved. (Many, including me, think otherwise.) The Tate–LaBianca murders, by comparison to those two other cases, was solved in a relatively short time, yes, but was also a spectacle. It was sensational—and sensationalized—for its shock. It was also, for many, remote. Growing up in the 1970s, but more memorably in the 1980s, I recall other youths who were removed from this expressing a lacking in their understanding of this case, and of the horrific nature, and what a monster was Manson. Numerous actually expressed a hero-worshipping of Manson and/or perceived him a rock-star-like figure. Perhaps some had thought and felt along those lines because, in reality, they cannot and never will relate. Most people will not die, and they will not survive numerous people who died, because of murder. So, for those who have ever imagined Manson an impressive radical…they were not only mistaken but were unreal.

Doris Tate was realistic. When I look at videos of Doris Tate, I am reminded that she was focused and had fierce determination. She was lucid. She was sharp. And she was real. She had to be. Doris revealed that it took her about three years to accept what had happened to her daughter. That Sharon, who was eight months pregnant and expecting to give birth two weeks later (to a son fathered by her husband, the future Oscar-winning film director Roman Polanski), was savagely murdered. That Doris had to come to terms with the details of Sharon’s murder. Doris Tate revealed that she battled depression for a number of years. While she and her husband Paul had two other daughters—Debra (who will turn 70 this November) was 16 and Patricia (who died of cancer at age 42 in 2000) was 11—Doris had to force herself to overcome.

What brought Doris Tate more to the consciousness of the American people occurred in the 1980s. While other surviving family members of those who were also murdered by those Manson Family members stayed out of the public spotlight, Doris had reason to demand attention.

While the Manson Family murderers were initially sentenced to death, after their convictions in 1971, the California Supreme Court, in California v. Anderson, temporarily abolished the death penalty in 1972. After the temporary ban, a new law did not allow the state to retroactively take those individuals who were sentenced to death, before 1972, and carry out those death sentences. This resulted in all five, including Manson, seeing their death sentences commuted to life in prison. 

In 1982, Van Houten—who participated in the murders not at the Polanski–Tate house but at the LaBianca residence—had a petition going for possible parole. This caused Doris to spring into action against not only Van Houten but particularly against the two—Atkins and Watson—she knows were most directly responsible for having murdered her daughter. Perhaps the most memorable moment occurred in 1990 when Doris confronted Watson. By that point, Watson became a priest. He was allowed conjugal visits. He was allowed to marry and produce children. When Watson was at his parole board hearing, Doris appeared and confronted him. While I wanted to embed a video showing Doris speaking out against Watson, YouTube informed me the account owner does not allow it to be embedded elsewhere. I strongly recommend viewing it. Here is its link: Tex Watson meets... Doris Tate.

Doris Tate became an activist. She joined “Parents of Murdered Children.” She helped get the Victims’ Rights Bill (Proposition 8) passed in 1982 California, allowing for the presentation of victim impact statements during sentencing.

Doris Tate’s activism—which includes being founder of COVER (Coalition on Victim’s Equal Rights)—brought more national attention to help make people more aware of how crimes of murder are destructive and devastating; that they have lasting damage.

In 1992, in her last months, she was awarded a “Thousand points of light” special honor, for citizen volunteerism in public service, by then-U.S. president George Bush. It marked Doris’s final public appearance.

After Doris’s death, her youngest daughter Patricia continued appearing at the parole board hearings of other Manson Family murderers until her death in 2000. Over the last 20-plus years, surviving Tate family member—daughter and sister—Debra has continued the battle to help make sure none of the surviving Manson Family murderers succeed at getting paroled. In May 2022, Krenwinkel won a parole recommendation. But, it is likely California governor Gavin Newsom will deny the recommendation and keep Krenwinkel behind bars. (This also previously occurred, in recent time, with Van Houten.)

The below videos are from an episode of ABC’s 20/20. They show Doris Tate visiting a prison to speak to inmates about the crime of murder and how it affects the victims’s survivors. (Side Note: There is a multi-part video published to YouTube in which Doris was interviewed by a writer. It was from 1990 and titled Doris Tate—In Her Own Words. The interviewer, the late Bill Nelson, turned out to be unsavory. It is mostly good because of what was said by Doris. I choose to not to include it.)