Bad Boy Boyfriend (Part 1)

Before there was Wojciech Frykowski... there was Jim Marshall. 

While the relationship between a high society heiress and a twice divorced Polish immigrant raised a few eyebrows, it was nothing compared to Abigail Folger's other publicly known relationship with music photographer, Jim Marshall. (left).
 Abigail and Jim met in San Francisco, where and how is anyone's guess and probably only theirs to confirm, but in contrast to Jim's wild lifestyle, he dug poetry and theater, the kind of past-times that didn't quite go with the image he projected. And the kind of past times, a certain heiress was known to enjoy too.

After speaking to a close friend of Jim's, she told me several anecdotes of their time together, which included a motorbike ride across the Golden Gate Bridge; Jim was touched that Gibbie- this "classy girl" - trusted Jim completely and encouraged him to drive faster.

Gibbie accompanied Jim to the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. Also among the party was Dr. John Luce, a doctor in SF and someone else I've had a pleasant conversation with, here is what he told me:

"The other person I remember most from Monterey is Gibby (sic). I had always thought of her as a quiet and intellectual woman. Jim Marshall by contrast was in those days a fast driving and dirty talking man whose photography was as well served by his aggressiveness as it was by his artistic sensibilities. Seeing Jim and Gibby together made me wonder how rock music and, perhaps the drugs which were part of rock, produced bedfellows I could never anticipated."
 
Fellow photographer Elaine Mayes also didn't understand the relationship between Jim and Gibbie. 

I remember her as a pleasant person, friendly, and also that I did not really understand her relationship with Jim. They were very different kinds of people.

No pictures of Gibbie have surfaced from Monterey which has always confused me, given that she accompanied several photographers to the event.
Jim Marshall died in 2010 before I could get the chance to speak to him. However, I did learn from a personal life-long friend of his, that his feelings towards Gibbie remained warm, often finding it hard to discuss the nature of her death. He harbored feelings of anger about it, saying if Charles Manson was ever released from prison, he'd be waiting for him at the gates with a shotgun.

RIP Jim. 

Peter Folger's second wedding (Photo)

While no photograph of Abigail's parents' wedding exists in the public domain. We stumbled across this photo of her father, Peter's second wedding to his much younger bride, Beverly Mater (Then 23).

Abigail, then 17, and her brother did not attend the wedding.

One wonders why....

Thank you LadyNoel for contributing the photograph.

Rare previous unseen pictures of Abigail Folger

Enjoy. Credit to Chris & Joseph

Gibbie Folger, 1965

Gibbie Folger, 1961

"She is dead" (VOID)

Five months after his daughter's death, Peter Folger received a cruel reminder of the life she had left behind.
 With an endless supply of money to burn, Abigail, like most 25 year old women, loved to shop for clothes and on July 11th, 1969, one month before she died, she stopped by a small boutique store called Revolution Boutique and ordered some clothes totaling $480. Today. $480 would be $3,150, so it is fair to say her tastes were expensive and why wouldn't they be? Despite her work with those less fortunate, she was brought up in the cusp of high society San Francisco and an heiress to a fortune.
 One of the items she ordered was a black velvet dress which was to be made especially for her. As it neared its completion, Abigail died without ever trying on the finished product.
 Despite the tragedy, the boutique still had to be paid for the work they carried out. And here is how the manager, Monique Papke reminded her estate:

 

There's nothing quite like having an outstanding bill to sum up the status of your dead child.

Here's what the items might have looked like. Both items below are from the late 60s, one black velvet dress and one yellow crepe blouse.

My Sister's Keeper

It's been 44 years since the murders and younger siblings of each victim have grown older than the brothers and sisters they have outlived. 

 Debra Tate was 17 when her 26 year old sister, Sharon died, and since the death of their mother, Doris, she has provided the Tate family presence at various parole hearings.
 Due to this, she has also put herself under the microscope of the media where she is often targeted for ridicule. Her desire to see justice served has many times been lost under the constant reminders of her own past personal mistakes. (Yes, we are referring to the Oui spread *shudder*). 

 Elizabeth Folger was 8 when her 25 year old sister, Abigail died. Too young to be told how Gibbie's life had come to an end, but old enough to know she was never coming back.
 Nothing is known of the relationship the two Folger sisters had, given the 17 year age gap, but a tragedy such as this would surely define a moment of the younger girl's childhood.
 Elizabeth has never attended a parole hearing, never publicly spoke of Abigail and as a result is only known through extensive research on Abigail's life. 

On one hand, we have one sister, who time has not been kind to as she continues to fight for justice, and whose past mistakes often overshadow her crusade. But on the other hand, we have the rarely spoke of sister, who has remained silent and nearly anonymous, whose only public contribution to her sister's legacy is funding a book endowment (The Abigail Folger Library Fund).

 Debra Tate might stretch the truth now and again but she has given Sharon what Abigail's family never gave her in death: A voice.

 Elizabeth Folger, classy she may be, will one day be the only surviving immediate family member of Abigail Folger and if by some divine miracle, you happen to read this little blog... It's never too late to give your sister a voice.

Wojciech - Voytek - Wojek.... fuck it... Frykowski.

Some say it was December, 1967, others say January, 1968, either way at some point during this period, Abigail Folger met Wojciech Frykowski. It was to be a love-affair that would come under the microscope for the next forty years. No one really knows just how deep their relationship went or whether they had grown weary each other and wanted out. That's the fact, everything else is pure speculation.  

Here's what we do know: 

Gibbie and Wojciech were introduced by their mutual friend, author Jerzy Kozinsky, in New York. 

At the time, neither of them was familiar with the other person's native tongue; Wojciech's English wasn't exactly littered with a variety of expressions, instead just a courteous greeting. It was left to Jerzy to act as the go between. 

Pictured in NY, 1968

  Wojciech had brought from Poland only a small suitcase and little money. Gibbie, on the other hand was roaming around New York with an unlimited supply of cash courtesy of her Daddy dearest and his credit card, although she was working to support herself, while living in the ground floor apartment on W 69^th Street. Wojciech's home was whichever sofa he landed up on of a night. Usually Jerzy's, his friend from childhood.

  Jerzy and Gibbie had met through his ex-wife, Mary Hayward Weir, an heiress to an American steel company. When Gibbie made her way to New York in the summer of ‘67, it was Mary, 28 years her senior, who was there to greet her and who chaperoned her round the city. She was a pleasant distraction for the older woman, who would have usually been emptying the contents of a liquor bottle before lunch.

 From very early 1968, Gibbie and Wojciech lived together in New York at her apartment. There is no official record of him ever having a paid job to support himself and so the twice-divorced father of one, who could barely speak English, was being supported by his 24 year old lover. 

More to follow, as Gibbie and Wojciech make their way to California... 

The Folger Family - Scandals in high society

Although it is commonly assumed that the last few months of Abigail's life caused her family embarrassment , it is a 'fact' based on assumption. The truth is, none of us know how the family viewed Abigail, not truly anyway. We have various snippets we will be posting, that will hopefully dispel the theory within the community, that the family were ashamed of her. 
 But let's say there is some truth to it. It brings us very nicely to the scandals that rocked one of California's pioneering families. If the death of Abigail Folger bore a striking resemblance to some kind of twisted horror film, then the shenanigans of her family could have been lifted from a soap opera desperate for ratings, introducing one outlandish plotline after another.
 Money, sex and scandal, three primary adjectives- associated with one of San Francisco’s oldest families- purposely overlooked and cast aside in favor of the more heroic tales of James Athern Folger I, striking it rich in the gold fields of California.
 Let's dig a little deeper into the family that molded our heroine.

Home Invasion 

June 20th, 1923. It was still dark at 4:00 in the morning and a wisp of fog was resting on the acres of field surrounding Hazelwood Hills. The fog would later roll away leaving the radiant clarity of a beautiful sunny day in it's wake, as nearby residents woke up to the events of what occurred over the next few minutes. Peter Folger, 18, Abigail's father, was fast asleep when he was woken by the sound of a gun shot. Not one, but two. Rushing from his room into the pathway of his mother, Clara, the Folger matriarch, the two found themselves at the top of the staircase looking down on Peter's brother, James, who had just emptied his gun on would-be thief, William Lee. A petty crook, who eventually met his demise in the bushes on the grounds of the Folger estate. Mortally wounded, he fled from the house and was dead before the police arrived. He died with a loaded gun in one pocket and $15,000 dollars’ worth of jewellery in the other, which he had stolen from the Folger mansion. $15,000 dollars was pennies to the family but the sacred comfort zone of their home was priceless. As far as James Folger was concerned, he was simply protecting his family and his home, and anyone who violated either was deserving of a bullet or two. 46 years later, James' niece, who he outlived by just three years when he died in 1972, would become an unwitting victim during one of the most prolific home invasions in history. And by a cruel twist of fate, there was a gun on the grounds of Cielo Drive that night, to protect the residents from potential intruders.

Love Hurts 

October, 1948. The daughter of James A Folger III, Clair Dean Folger, (Abigail's first cousin) found herself on the receiving end of physical violence when a former boyfriend took her rejection harder than she expected. Just 17, Clair had briefly dated a young man by the name of James Gallagher and quickly moved on to a new suitor, Paul Andrew, two years her senior. Believing Clair to have mixed feelings about the courtship and breakup, James decided to do the only thing which made sense to him at the time and proposed. The proposal was met with a resounding no. This rejection led James taking matters into his own hands, and when we say hands, we mean literally. He blackened the eyes of the new suitor and slapped Clair round the face, resulting in his arrest, conviction and sentencing to community service, where he was ordered by a judge to pack lettuces in a garbage dump for ten days. His arrest was demanded by Clair's father, who 25 years earlier, had been lauded by society for killing a petty thief in the grounds of the family estate.

The Young Bride

Love never runs smoothly for many folk, which brings us to the last chapter in a series of scandals which had potential to damage the good Folger name; The one where Big Daddy Folger brought home a 23-year-old

tennis enthusiast and introduced her to his teenage children as his bride to be. She was just seven years older than his daughter. Beverly Mater wasn’t a name one would find in the social registers of San Francisco. She had no place in high society and her only connections to its members was when they sat on the sidelines of center court, ogling her as she ran back and forth during a volley. It was what led her to Peter Folger, who ended up employing her as his personal secretary. Despite an ocean sized age gap of 30 years, Beverly Mater very quickly became the second Mrs. Folger and the lady of the house at Hazelwood Hills in Woodside. Little known at the time of the private wedding was that the new Mrs. F was already knocked up with a little Folger baby of her own. Which is how Abigail Folger came to have a sister seventeen years younger than her. More on this little gem to follow...