Polanski sues over claim he tried to seduce woman before wife’s funeral

FILM director Roman Polanski told a British libel jury yesterday that it was an “abominable lie” to suggest he exploited his murdered wife’s name to seduce a girl.

He is suing Conde Naste, publishers of Vanity Fair, over a July 2002 article about the events of August 1969, when 26-year-old Sharon Tate, who was eight months pregnant, and four friends were slaughtered at her Californian home by Charles Manson's 'Family'.

It said that just afterwards, Polanski, who was in London at the time of the crime, made sexual advances to a "Swedish beauty" in Elaine's restaurant in New York, "inundating her with his Polish charm".