Free Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders by Vincent Bugliosi, Curt Gentry

for the Los Angeles County Welfare Department, and would get up at dawn each day for assignments that took her into Watts, Pacoima, and other ghetto areas. She continued this work until the day before she and Frykowski moved into 10050 Cielo Drive.
    Something changed after that. Probably it was a combination of things. She became depressed over how little such work actually accomplished, how big the problems stayed. “A lot of social workers go home at night, take a bath, and wash off their day,” she told an old San Francisco friend. “I can’t. The suffering gets under your skin.” In May, black city councilman Thomas Bradley ran against incumbent Samuel Yorty for mayor of Los Angeles. Bradley’s defeat, after a campaign heavy with racial smears, left her disillusioned and bitter. She did not resume her social work. She was also disturbed about the way her affair with Frykowski was going, and with their use of drugs, which had passed the point of experimentation.
    She talked about all these things with her psychiatrist, Dr. Marvin Flicker. She saw him five days a week, Monday through Friday, at 4:30 P.M .
    She had kept her appointment that Friday.
    Flicker told the police that he thought Abigail was almost ready to leave Frykowski, that she was attempting to build up enough nerve to go it alone.
    The police were unable to determine exactly when Folger and Frykowski began to use drugs heavily, on a regular basis. It was learned that on their cross-country trip they had stopped in Irving, Texas, staying several days with a big dope dealer well known to local and Dallas police. Dealers were among their regular guests both at the Woodstock house and after they moved to Cielo Drive. William Tennant told police that whenever he visited the latter residence, Abigail “always seemed to be in a stupor from narcotics.” When her mother last talked to her, about ten that Friday night, she said Gibby had sounded lucid but “a little high.” Mrs. Folger, who was not unaware of her daughter’s problems, had contributed large amounts of both money and time to the Haight-Ashbury Free Medical Clinic, to help in their pioneer work in treating drug abuse.
    The coroners discovered 2.4 mg. of methylenedioxyamphetamine—MDA—in Abigail Folger’s system. That this was a larger amount than was found in Voytek Frykowski’s body—0.6 mg.—did not necessarily indicate that she had taken a larger quantity of the drug, but could mean she had taken it at a later time.
    Effects of the drug vary, depending on the individual and the dosage, but one thing was clear. That night she was fully aware of what was happening.
    Victim had been stabbed twenty-eight times.
     
     
    Wojiciech “Voytek” Frykowski, male Caucasian, 32 years, 5-10, 165 pounds, blond hair, blue eyes. Frykowski had been living with Abigail Folger in a common-law relationship…
     
     
    “V oytek,” Roman Polanski would later tell reporters, “was a man of little talent but immense charm.” The two had been friends in Poland, Frykowski’s father reputedly having helped finance one of Polanski’s early films. Even in Poland, Frykowski had been known as a playboy. According to fellow émigrés, he had once taken on, and rendered inoperative, two members of the secret police, which may have had something to do with his exit from Poland in 1967. He had married twice, and had one son, who had remained behind when he moved to Paris. Both there and, later, in New York, Polanski had given him money and encouragement, hopeful—but knowing Voytek well, not too optimistic—that one of his grand plans would come through. None ever quite did. He told people that he was a writer, but no one could recall having read anything he had written.
    Friends of Abigail Folger told the police that Frykowski had introduced her to drugs so as to keep her under his control. Friends of Voytek Frykowski said the opposite—that Folger had provided the drugs so as not to lose him.
    According to