Who is Sharon Tate

Sharon Marie Tate (January 24, 1943 - August 9, 1969) was an American actress. During the 1960s she played small television roles before appearing in several films. After receiving positive reviews for her comedic performances, she was hailed as one of Hollywood's promising newcomers and was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for her performance in Valley of the Dolls (1967). She also appeared regularly in fashion magazines as a model and cover girl.

Married to the film director Roman Polanski in 1968, Tate was eight and a half months pregnant when she was murdered in her home, along with four others, by followers of Charles Manson.

A decade after the murders, Tate's mother, Doris, in response to the growing cult status of the killers and the possibility that any of them might be granted parole, organized a public campaign against what she considered shortcomings in the state's corrections system which led to amendments to the California criminal law in 1982, which allowed crime victims and their families to make victim impact statements during sentencing and at parole hearings. Doris Tate was the first person to make such an impact statement under the new law, when she spoke at the parole hearing of one of her daughter's killers, Charles "Tex" Watson. She later said that she believed the changes in the law had afforded her daughter dignity that had been denied her before, and that she had been able to "help transform Sharon's legacy from murder victim to a symbol of victims' rights".

Roman Raymond Polanski (; born 18 August 1933) is a French-born and resident Polish film director, producer, writer and actor. Polanski began his career in Poland, and later became a critically acclaimed director of both art house and commercial films. Polanski's first feature-length film, Knife in the Water (1962), made in Poland, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. He has since received five more Oscar nominations, and in 2002 received the Academy Award for Best Director for his film, The Pianist. He has also been the recipient of two Baftas, four Césars, a Golden Globe and the Palme d'Or. He left the People's Republic of Poland in 1961 to live in France for several years, then moved to Britain, where he collaborated with Gérard Brach on three films, beginning with Repulsion (1965). In 1968 he moved to the United States, immediately cementing his burgeoning directing status with the 1968 groundbreaking Academy Award winning horror film Rosemary's Baby.

In 1969 his pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, was murdered by the Manson Family. He returned to Europe and spent much of his time in Paris and Gstaad, but didnt make another film until he shot Macbeth (1971) in England. The following year he went to Italy to make What? (1973) and subsequently spent the next five years living near Rome. However, he traveled to Hollywood to direct Chinatown (1974) for Paramount Pictures, with Robert Evans serving as producer. The film was nominated for eleven Academy Awards, and was a critical and box-office success; the script by Robert Towne won for Best Original Screenplay. Polanski's next film, The Tenant (1976), was shot in France, and completed the "Apartment Trilogy", following Repulsion and Rosemarys Baby.

In 1977, Polanski visited Los Angeles again to shoot photographs for Vogue magazine and was arrested for the sexual assault of a thirteen-year-old in Los Angeles, and later pled guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor. To avoid sentencing, Polanski returned to his home in London, but quickly moved on to France the following day, and has had a U.S. arrest warrant outstanding since then, and an international arrest warrant since 2005, being considered by U.S. authorities as a fugitive from justice. Polanski avoided visits to countries that were likely to extradite him to the United States. In September 2009, Polanski was arrested by Swiss police, at the request of U.S. authorities, when he traveled there to receive an award at the Zurich Film Festival. The United States formally requested his extradition on October 23, 2009.

Polanski continued to make films such as The Pianist (2002), a World War II-set adaptation of Jewish-Polish musician W?adys?aw Szpilmans autobiography of the same name, which echoed some of Polanski's earlier life experiences. Like Szpilman, Polanski escaped the ghetto and the concentration camps while family members were killed. The film won three Academy Awards including Best Director, the Cannes Film Festival's Palme d'Or, and seven French César Awards including Best Picture and Best Director. Harrison Ford accepted the awards on his behalf.

Charles Milles Manson (born November 12, 1934) is an American criminal who led what became known as the Manson Family, a quasi-commune that arose in California in the late 1960s.Linder, Doug. The Charles Manson (Tate-LaBianca Murder) Trial. UMKC Law. 2002. Retrieved April 7, 2007.Bugliosi, Vincent with Gentry, Curt. Helter Skelter ? The True Story of the Manson Murders 25th Anniversary Edition, W.W. Norton & Company, 1994. ISBN 0-393-08700-X. Pages 163?4, 313. He was convicted of conspiracy to commit the Tate/LaBianca murders, carried out by members of the group at his instruction. He was found guilty of the murders themselves through the joint-responsibility rule, which makes each member of a conspiracy guilty of crimes his fellow conspirators commit in furtherance of the conspiracy's object.[http://www.2violent.com/closing_argument.html Prosecution's closing argument] Page 1 of multi-page transcript, 2violent.com. Retrieved April 16, 2007.Prosecution's closing argument Page 37 of multi-page transcript, 2violent.com. Retrieved March 28, 2009.

Manson is associated with "Helter Skelter," the term he took from the Beatles song of that name and construed as an apocalyptic race war the murders were putatively intended to precipitate. This connection with rock music linked him, from the beginning of his notoriety, with pop culture, in which he became an emblem of insanity, violence, and the macabre. Ultimately, the term was used as the title of the book prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi wrote about the Manson murders.

At the time the Family began to form, Manson was an unemployed ex-convict who had spent half his life in correctional institutions for a variety of offenses. In the period before the murders, he was a distant fringe member of the Los Angeles music industry, chiefly via a chance association with Beach Boy Dennis Wilson. After Manson was charged with the crimes, recordings of songs written and performed by him were released commercially. Artists including Guns N' Roses and Marilyn Manson have covered his songs in the decades since.

Manson's death sentence was automatically reduced to life imprisonment when a 1972 decision by the Supreme Court of California temporarily eliminated the state's death penalty.[http://www.deathpenalty.org/article.php?id=48 History of California's Death Penalty] deathpenalty.org. Retrieved March 28, 2009. California's eventual reestablishment of capital punishment did not affect Manson, who is an inmate at Corcoran State Prison.