Tour 2017: NorCal Facts About The Victims

We began the tour in earnest on Thursday morning.  Our first stop was in the Marin County town of Sausalito where Jay Sebring had a houseboat that he rented with a friend.  Jay had opened a new hair cutting salon on Commercial Street in San Francisco in May of 1969.  He stayed at the houseboat while setting up his new shop and on visits to the shop after it was opened.

The houseboat was in what is now called Waldo Point Harbor, it is a large community of docked and seemingly permanently tied up boats often with whimsical additions or bizarre shapes.

We were told that one houseboat, which was for sale, was previously owned by Shel Silverstein, poet, singer-songwriter, cartoonist and author who moved to the floating community in 1967.  The one bedroom, one bath houseboat built on a WWII balloon barge is yours for the ridiculously cheap price of $390,000.  Silverstein named his floating home Evil Eye.

Back in 1969 the community was just called Waldo Point and wasn't as organized and legal as today.  We spoke to the folks in the office who were not sure if the same houseboat that Jay had lived on was still there and possibly rebuilt.  However they were interested in making a copy of the following  article we took with us from the August 11, 1969 edition of the San Rafael Daily Independent Journal which tells about Jay and his houseboat.  They did know that Jay had lived there but not the particulars about the boat.

Colonel Paul Tate, Sharon's father, as the article says, often visited Jay on his houseboat because he lived and worked nearby.  Col. Tate was stationed at Fort Baker, a five minute drive from Waldo Point.  It was where Tate was when Doris Tate called him with the news about Sharon's murder.

Fort Baker today is a National Recreation Area  with an absolutely stunning view of the San Francisco Bay and Golden Gate Bridge.

Above are the buildings where Paul Tate would have worked.

We also made the trip to Colma and Holy Cross Cemetery where Abigail Folger is interred. 'Gibby' and her mother are next to each other in the mausoleum at the cemetery.  Going to visit the resting places of the victims is always a very humbling experience.

The San Francisco Bay Area has a surprising number of connections to the murders, we wanted to be sure to include the victims when doing our Northern California tour.

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