The Tate-LaBianca Homicide Research Blog

Everything you ever wanted to know about Abigail Folger

(and more, LOL)... by Katie.

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Abigail Anne "Gibbie" Folger

(August 11, 1943 – August 9, 1969)

Abigail was born in San Francisco, California to Peter Folger & Ines Pui Mejia. Peter was Chairman and President of the Folger Coffee Company. Abigail wasn’t gorgeous like Sharon, but she was very handsome in her own right.

Her parents divorced in 1952 when she was still young, after her mother ended the marriage on the grounds of extreme cruelty (which means he was cheating on her). In 1960, her father married again, this time to his 24-year-old private secretary, Beverly Mater, who was already pregnant with his youngest daughter, Elizabeth, born in January 1961.

Growing up in San Francisco, Folger was raised in the closed tradition of San Francisco society. As a young girl she was interested in art, books, poetry and playing the piano.

Gibby in The Goldoliers play

Abigail was very intelligent and accomplished. She attended Santa Catalina School in Monterey, California, near Carmel. She graduated with honors in June 1961.
She then matriculated at Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the fall of 1961. During her stay at Radcliffe she became an active member of the college's Gilbert and Sullivan Players, a musical theatre group. She starred in two of its productions, starting with The Sorcerer in April 1963 where she played the part of one of the town's villagers. In December 1963 she starred in The Gondoliers as one of the Contadine. She graduated with honors from Radcliffe College in 1964. 

While a freshman in college, she became a

debutante on December 21, 1961 at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, where she made her official debut into San Francisco's high society. Her debutante ball was one of the highlights of the social season, with Folger wearing a bright yellow Christian Dior gown that she had purchased in Paris the previous summer.

St. Francis Hotel

After graduating from Radcliffe, she enrolled in the fall of 1964 at Harvard University, also in Cambridge, where she did graduate work and received a degree in Art History. After graduating in the spring of 1967, she took a job at the University of California Art Museum in Berkeley, California as a publicity director.

In September 1967, Folger decided to move away from California in order to find herself and to probe the other side of life. She soon made the move to New York City, where she got a job working for a magazine publisher. She eventually left for a job at the Gotham Book Mart on 47th Street. While living in New York, she lived well below her means. As the daughter of an incredibly wealthy family, Folger's annual income from her inheritances, after taxes, was $130,000 a year. That was a LOT of money in 1967.

It was at a bookstore party in December 1967 where she met Polish author Jerzy Kosinski, who was  married to American steel heiress Mary Hayward Weir. Weir ran in the same wealthy circle as Folger, and it was she who introduced Kosinski to Folger. In early January 1968, Kosinski introduced Folger to his friend, aspiring writer Wojciech Frykowski, at a party and the two hit it off. Frykowski had been living in the United States for about a month at the time.

Frykowski was not then fluent in English, but, like Folger, he was fluent in French. She gave him a tour of New York, began to teach him English, and they fell in love (or something).

He moved into her New York City apartment and she supported him financially.

In August 1968, both Folger and Frykowski decided to move to Los Angeles, California.

He wanted to pursue his writing career while Folger wanted to get involved with a new welfare project that was currently under way. She rented a car, and she and Frykowski drove across the country. She could easily have afforded airline tickets, but decided to drive all the way. I’ve read that she was doing a “drive return”, which is cheaper. 

2774 Woodstock

In Los Angeles, she found a two-story hilltop home to rent at 2774 Woodstock Road for her and Wojciech in Laurel Canyon, and bought a 1968 yellow Firebird.
Their neighbor was singer Cass Elliot of the rock group The Mamas & the Papas, whom the couple quickly befriended. Through Frykowski, she met Roman Polanski and his wife, Sharon Tate. Through the Polanskis, Folger and Frykowski were introduced to Jay Sebring. The five quickly began to hang out together and were known to be a part of 'the beautiful people crowd' in Hollywood.


Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic

Like her mother, Ines, who was active doing charity work with the Haight-Ashbury Free Medical Clinic in San Francisco, Folger continued to be involved with volunteer work. Earlier, in the spring and summer of 1968, she attended fundraisers set up by her mother to aid the Haight-Ashbury Free Medical Clinic. It was around the same time many of the Manson family women were being treated there. Folger's work as a social worker soon began to take a toll on her and she became depressed.

From April to May 1968, Folger became a political volunteer for the ill-fated presidential campaign of New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy. She donated both time and money to the Kennedy campaign. The campaign soon came to an end when Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles in early June.

The next year during the month of April and continuing through most of May, she was a political volunteer for the campaign of Tom Bradley, a black councilman running for mayor of Los Angeles. She contributed both her time and a large amount of her own money to the Bradley campaign. Bradley lost to Sam Yorty in late May, which left Folger feeling bitter and disillusioned. This led her to become very involved with the civil rights movement that summer.

On April 1, 1969, while Roman Polanski was away in Europe filming movies, Folger and Frykowski moved into the Polanskis' Cielo Drive home in Benedict Canyon, at Polanski's request. It was around this time Abigail made the decision to quit her job with the Welfare Department, and she also started considering leaving Wojciech. Their relationship had begun to sour, they fought constantly and both started using drugs more frequently.

On Wednesday August 6, 1969 film director Michael Sarne invited Folger, Frykowski and Tate over for a dinner party at his rented Malibu beach house. After dessert had been served, Tate began to feel unwell, so it was decided that Folger and Frykowski would drive her home.

On August 8, 1969, Folger, Tate, Sebring & Frykowski all went to eat at El Coyote. And we all know what happened after that.

Abigail Folger's funeral was held on the morning of August 13, 1969, at Our Lady of the Wayside Church in Portola Valley, a church that had been built by her grandparents, the Mejias, in 1912. Following a Catholic requiem mass, Abigail Folger was entombed at Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma, California.

After her death, investigators reported that Folger's estate was worth $530,000.

She left no will.