Samantha [Gailey] had met Polanski through her mother, Susan, a television actress. The director said he had an assignment to photograph young girls for a Paris fashion magazine, Vogue Hommes, and had heard about Samantha from a mutual friend.
Polanski went to her home on the afternoon of Feb. 20 and took some pictures in the hills nearby. He picked her up again on March 10, stopped at Jacqueline Bisset’s house and, as the light was fading, went to Nicholson’s compound on Mulholland Drive.
Polanski dropped Samantha off at her home a few hours later and went about his business. He met with Robert De Niro that evening to discuss making a movie based on a William Goldman novel, “Magic.”
The next night, a team of seven police investigators and prosecutors pulled up to the Beverly Wilshire Hotel.