Jay Sebring fought for his life and defended his friends before he was brutally killed by members of the Manson Family.
On Aug. 9, 1969, the celebrity hairstylist, actress Sharon Tate (who was eight and a half months pregnant), coffee heiress Abigail Folger, her boyfriend Voytek Frykowski and recent high school graduate Steven Parent were murdered at Tate’s Benedict Canyon home. The following night, grocery chain owner Leno LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary, were slain in their Los Feliz house.
Nearly 60 years after the massacre, Sebring’s nephew, Anthony DiMaria, wants to “set the record straight” about the celebrity hairstylist and what happened at 10050 Cielo Drive.
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“If we look at the 35 years of Jay’s actual life, it’s an extraordinarily inspiring, glorious, amazing life,” DiMaria told Fox News Digital. “And if we include even the horrific last 10, 15, 20 minutes – whatever it was – in the most unspeakable situations, Jay fought. People don’t know this, but he courageously stood up to evil against all odds… He is an unknown hero in one of the most notorious murders in United States history.”
DiMaria teamed up with author Marshall Terrill to pen the book, “Jay Sebring: Cutting to the Truth.” It explores the 35-year-old’s life, groundbreaking work in Hollywood and the circumstances surrounding his grisly death.
DiMaria was 3 years old when his uncle passed away. He beamed when discussing the “dynamic and charismatic” figure who visited him and his parents at their Las Vegas home. However, he has more vivid memories of how Sebring’s death left behind a wound that has never healed.
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“I was looking at a photo album and there was a beautiful black-and-white picture of Jay looking at me,” DiMaria recalled. “I said, ‘Mom, when can I see him again?’ And she said, ‘Well, Anthony, you can’t. He’s in heaven.’ I must have been 4 or 5. That’s something you don’t understand.”
“But something that hit me to my core was the look in my mother’s eyes,” he shared, fighting back tears. “Asking about my uncle caused my mother deep pain. And I felt I [didn’t] ever want to do that again.”
“As a family, we protected each other,” he quietly said. “But these crimes, as personal and painful as they were to us, they were treated as popcorn, as entertainment.”
Growing up, DiMaria wanted to know everything about his famous uncle from Hollywood. With Terrill’s help, he uncovered surprising stories about Sebring, a sought-after groomer and trusted confidante to Frank Sinatra, Steve McQueen, Paul Newman and Marlon Brando, among others.
“As the story goes regarding Jim Morrison, Elektra [Records] sent him to Jay’s salon,” Terrill told Fox News Digital. “He came to Jay with this photo of Alexander the Great, and he said, ‘I want you to make me look like him.’ Jay probably thought about it for a few minutes and said, ‘OK.’ That was the iconic look that Jay created for him.”
Sebring’s innovative approach to men’s hairstyles made him fast friends in showbiz. When celebrities weren’t sitting in his chair, he trained with a popular martial arts instructor in town – Bruce Lee.
When Lee was ready to make his mark as a performer, it was Sebring who vouched for him.
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“In Jay, he found someone who was his advocate,” said Terrill. “When [producer] William Dozier was looking for someone to play Kato in ‘The Green Hornet,’ it was Jay Sebring who said, ‘Bruce is your man.’ Dozier at first balked. And Jay kept on… He finally decided to give him a film test. Well, Lee blew up that film test. He was Kato.”
However, one of Sebring’s closest friends was Tate. While the pair were engaged at one point, the “Valley of the Dolls” actress broke up with Sebring and later married Roman Polanski. The trio were close pals.
“Some say that they were still involved,” Terrill said about Sebring and Tate. “We don’t know that as a fact. But they had a… very mature relationship… And they did a lot of things together [as a group]. It was only natural, I felt, that Jay was with her the night they were murdered.”
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Terrill believes that Polanski, who was in London at the time preparing for a film project, asked Sebring if he could look after Tate, who was nesting at home and eagerly awaiting the birth of her son.
Meanwhile, a cult-like group was gearing up to “do something witchy.”
Charles Manson was a failed musician and petty criminal who had been in and out of jail since childhood, when he began surrounding himself with runaways and other lost souls. Portraying himself as a philosopher, he targeted young women whom he used and bartered to others for sex.
According to prosecutors, Manson ordered his disciples to butcher some of LA’s rich and famous to trigger a race war. He got the idea from a twisted interpretation of the Beatles song “Helter Skelter.”
“They were labeled a ‘hippie cult,’ which is a false premise,” said DiMaria. “They were not a hippie cult. They were a group with hippie earmarks and optics, but they were a counterculture gang whose crimes extended from late 1967 through the 1970s.”
“These killers are referred to as ‘Manson Followers,’” DiMaria continued. “A follower – that really mitigates the profundity, the severe nature of how they killed and how their victims suffered.”
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“These people were not followers. These people were cold-blooded killers who were so wired and driven beyond killing and terrorizing society that they splashed messages – horrifying messages – in their victims’ blood at the crime scene, who laughed, who sang, who performed for cameras at their trials and received all the fame and notoriety that they couldn’t get in life.”
On the last day of his life, Sebring didn’t go down without a fight, stressed DiMaria. According to the book, Sebring fought “with everything he had,” attempting to give his friends a chance to escape.
Manson ordered some of his disciples to go to the property and kill everyone. He was familiar with the home because its previous tenant, music producer Terry Melcher, refused to give him a recording contract.
Shortly after midnight, members of Manson’s “family” broke into the house and ordered everyone inside to the living room. Parent, who was visiting the home’s caretaker, was shot to death.
Sebring first attempted to reason with the group, emphasizing that Tate was heavily pregnant. For one moment, Tex Watson, armed with a gun and a bayonet, turned his back, and Sebring charged him. His accomplice, Susan Atkins, yelled out to warn Watson. Sebring was closing in on Watson and threw a left punch towards his head. Sebring was shot in his left armpit, piercing his lung. As Sebring collapsed, Watson repeatedly stabbed him.
Watson and Atkins, along with Patricia Krenwinkel, then focused their attention on Tate, Folger and Frykowski. Sebring struggled to get back on his feet, catching Watson’s attention. A bleeding Sebring attempted to fight back against his assailants. He was overpowered and tortured.
As Watson repeatedly attacked Sebring, Frykowski attempted to escape out the front door as Folger ran down the hallway, escaping through Tate’s bedroom to the backyard. The killers caught up with them.
The details were corroborated by both investigators and the perpetrators.
Despite the horrors they caused, the Manson Family became a pop culture fixation.
“The people who committed these horrible crimes… somehow were propped up and catapulted to rock star serial killer status,” said DiMaria. “And it has had consequences… with people looking up to these killers or thinking that these crimes are somehow cool or titillating. That’s another reason why it is now timely to introduce Jay’s true story.”
In 1972, a California Supreme Court ruling found the state’s death penalty unconstitutional. This resulted in the sentences of the convicted killers being changed to life in prison with the possibility of parole. For decades, DiMaria and other loved ones of the victims have spoken out at parole hearings.
Manson died in 2018 after spending nearly a half-century in prison. He was 83. However, the fight to keep other members of his family behind bars continues.
Leslie Van Houten, who helped carry out the killings of the LaBiancas, was released on parole in 2023. Krenwinkel, who participated in the Tate murders, was recommended for parole for the second time in June of this year.
“When my mother learned that the Manson people might be released on parole, she said, ‘Anthony, I need to know if this is an actual reality,’” said DiMaria. “My parents and grandparents were told by the district attorney’s office when the original death sentences were reversed that it was purely a technicality. There was no way whatsoever that any of these people would ever be released… That’s when we became involved in these parole hearings.”
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Today, DiMaria wants people to remember Sebring not as a “sad, tragic figure,” but as someone who achieved the American dream in his brief life.
“Here was a young man… from Michigan, who arrived in Hollywood with dreams, ideas and a sleeping bag,” said DiMaria. “Jay would encourage all of us to live life with the same passion and zeal that he did, to go out to be your best, to express your best, to seek out the best in other people and… make a mark.”
