Excerpt from Richard Burton's diary...

I went down to the local library, and decided to get a book that wasn't, for once about true crime. I was in desperate need to give that particular subject a rest, even though that is what I mainly read about. I chose to get "The Richard Burton Diares" which has been extremely entertaining. Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor lived a celebrity dream life back in the day, and he wrote all about it in his diaries. Of course, the diary is in order of the dates he wrote in it. When I got to August of 1969, I was a little surprised to find that he had written about the Tate murders briefly. Here is what Richard had to say about it when him and Elizabeth were on their yacht, the Kalizma in London on the river Thames.

Sunday 10th of August 1969, Kalizma, Thames

The wedding went off without a hitch and there were a few moist eyes here and there. Quite a lot of photographers to give tiny air of importance to the whole proceedings and last night we were all on the TV in the news. All good stuff and very nice for Bob and Gwladys. Not very nice, however was the news that lovely Sharon Tate, wife of film director Roman Polanski, was one of the victims of a mass-murder in LA. She was pregnant, which somehow or other makes it worse. It is all very odd, and perfectly like one of Polanski's films, because all his films have bizarre sex killings, etc. in them, and E (his nickname for Elizabeth Taylor) wonders if it was some "nut" who was carrying out in practice what Polanski preached in theory. In which case Elizabeth is due to be beheaded. The poor little thing was apparently strangled and then hung from a beam. We shall find out more details today from the newspapers. And then we must send off a letter of condolence to Polanski because E likes him very much, and says he's a sweet, little man. I do believe that Mrs. Polanski is the only person I've ever met who was murdered. Friends of mine have been killed, but not murdered.....