Singer Cass Elliot’s Ex-Fiance Quizzed, Released in Tate Case
August 29, 1969
By Dial Torgerson
Times Staff Writer
A former fiancé of singer Mama Cass Elliot has been questioned about the Tate
murder case in Canada and released Canadian authorities reported Thursday.
But another man, also identified as a former fiancé of the singer, is still
wanted for questioning, Los Angeles police said.
Ms. Elliott was a friend of actress Sharon Tate and director Roman Polanski.
Miss Tate and four other persons were slain early August 9 at the Tate-Polanski
home in Benedict Canyon.
Canadian authorities later put out an all-points bulletin listing four men as
suspects in the Tate case, two of them Canadians who had at one time been
identified as fiancés of the plump singer.
Los Angeles police talked to one of the four men, then said he was being
released and that the others were being sought only for questioning.
On Thursday, a Los Angeles' detective interviewed William (Billy) Doyle, 28,
in Toronto, the Royal Canadian Mounted police reported. The RCMP said the LAPD
officer told them he was going home. No hold was placed on Doyle.
At police headquarters in Los Angeles, officers said they were still seeking
to question Harris P. Dawson, 26, who had been described in Hollywood gossip
columnist as Ms. Elliott’s fiancé before she announced that she and Doyle were
engaged.
At a party in May she introduced Doyle as her fiancé. Also present at the
party were three of the five victims of the August 9 killing: Miss Tate, Voyteck
Frykowski and Abigail Folger.
Ms. Elliott, formerly a member of the Mamas and the Papas singing group, was
divorced earlier this year and has not remarried.
"Billy Doyle and I were engaged once," Miss Elliot told a reporter Thursday
night. "I’ve known him a long time, and he's a fine person."
The other two men named in the RCMP broadcast are Thomas Michael Harrigan and
Charles Tacot. It was Harrigan who came to Los Angeles police, while he was
being sought in Canada, and offered alibis for all four men.
He said that he had been at a party 20 miles from the Tate home the night of
the slayings, that Doyle and Tacot were in Jamaica and Dawson was working as a
truck driver in New York State.
C. R. Doey, superintendent of the RCMP criminal investigation branch in
Toronto said that his officers-acting on a Los Angeles request-had first
interrogated Doyle on his return to Toronto from Jamaica.
Dawson was described by Harrigan as the son of an American diplomat. The
State Department in Washington said that Harris P. Dawson, whose son, Harris,
was born in 1943, is now a supervisory commercial officer in Bonn, West Germany.
Police said that there were no charges against Dawson and that he was only
being sought for questioning. They would give no reasons why he was wanted an
added that they no longer wished to talk to Tacot.
Friends of Frykowski informed police that he had told them he had to meet two
Canadians arriving at International Airport August 6, and the four were
apparently sought as police began questioning all known Canadian contacts of
Frykowski.
Detectives have been known to be delving into Frykowski’s contacts in the
narcotics underworld and there were reports that he received some drugs from
Canada. Friends said he used marijuana, mescaline and cocaine, and that he had
said just before he died that he was on an 8-to-13-day "trip" with mescaline.
"I was in a Hollywood after-hours place five days before the murders," said
Hollywood writer Steve Brant, "and Frykowski and Gibby Folger joined me.
"Frykowski's eyes were unfocused, staring. He looked like something from the
movie, ‘The Village of the Damned.’ I said," Voyteck are you on something? "
"He said, ‘Yes, it's the greatest mescaline. Want to buy some?’ And he spoke
of some new drug he was getting-something he called" fairy dust. "I told him,
‘I'd pass, Voyteck.’ I never did find out what ‘fairy dust’ was."
