They haven't made atonement to any one of my family members." She has also unsuccessfully lobbied for her sister to be awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Colonel Paul Tate preferred not to make public comments; however, he was a constant presence during the murder trial, and in the following years attended parole hearings with his wife, and wrote letters to authorities in which he strongly opposed any suggestion of parole. He died in May 2005. Roman Polanski gave away all of his possessions after the murders, unable to bear any reminders of the period that he called "the happiest I ever was in my life." He remained in Los Angeles until the killers were arrested. His 1979 film "Tess" was dedicated "to Sharon", as Tate had read Thomas Hardy's "Tess of the d'Urbervilles" during her final stay with Polanski in London and had left it for him to read with the comment that it would be a good story for them to film together. He tried to explain his anguish after the murder of his wife and unborn son in his 1984 autobiography "Roman by Polanski", saying "Since Sharon's death, and despite appearances to the contrary, my enjoyment of life has been incomplete. In moments of unbearable personal tragedy some people find solace in religion. In my case the opposite happened. Any religious faith I had was shattered by Sharon's murder. It reinforced my faith in the absurd." In July 2005 Polanski successfully sued "Vanity Fair" magazine for libel after it alleged that he had tried to seduce a woman on his way to Tate's funeral. Among the witnesses who testified on his behalf were Debra Tate and Mia Farrow. Describing Polanski immediately after Tate's death, Farrow testified, "Of this I can be sure—of his frame of mind when we were there, of what we talked about, of his utter sense of loss, of despair and bewilderment and shock and love—a love that he had lost." At the conclusion of the case, Polanski read a statement, saying in part, "The memory of my late wife Sharon Tate was at the forefront of my mind in bringing this action." The murders committed by the Manson "Family" have been described by social commentators as one of the defining moments of the 1960s. Joan Didion wrote, "Many people I know in Los Angeles believe that the Sixties ended abruptly on August 9, 1969, ended at the exact moment when word of the murders on Cielo Drive traveled like brushfire through the community, and in a sense this is true.