On its item description, the auction house — which also currently has a few tufts of Michael Jackson’s hair “collected from the room he was staying in at the Carlyle Hotel” going for a cool thousand bucks, — claims the bauble is Sharon Tate’s “engagement ring, given to her by fiancé Roman Polanski.” But the New York Daily News reported Wednesday that parent company Gotta Have It partner Pete Siegel asserts that Tate was wearing it when she was killed. He adds, “Who knows where the bidding will end up? She was so beautiful and innocent, and very popular.” And you thought those thrill seeking true-crime fans of a recent episode of “American Horror Story,” thrilled to hold the same ashtray a killer bashed a victim with, were just make-believe.

On the evening of Aug. 9, 1969, the eight-months pregnant Tate, four other individuals and Tate’s unborn son were killed by the Manson’s family’s Charles “Tex” Watson, Patricia Krenwinkel and Susan Atkins. Tate was the last to die. As she begged for her life and that of her child, Atkins told her, “Look, bitch, I don’t care about you. I don’t care if you’re going to have a baby. You had better be ready. You’re going to die and I don’t feel anything about it.” Tate was then stabbed 16 times. Once she was dead, Atkins used Tate’s blood to scrawl the word “PIG” on a porch wall. Makes you want to run right out and buy some bling, doesn’t it?

Though Tate’s sister Debra acknowledges Sharon owned the ring, she strongly disputes the ring was on Tate’s finger the night of the murder, or that it was even her engagement ring. (Should you choose to study the images of her wedding or have the stomach for the grisly photos of the murder scene for a glimpse of her hand, they’re inconclusive.) Debra told TMZ Tuesday week that “The ring was not Sharon’s style and she never wore it,” and added, “Because Sharon was pregnant, she couldn’t fit any rings on her finger.”

On Wednesday, the auction house clarified via a spokesman that “it was speculated that the ring was on Sharon Tate’s finger at the time of death but never confirmed so we do not dispute Tate’s sister Debra’s claim.” There is, however, one existing photo of Tate wearing the ring on her pinky, adjacent to her slim wedding band.

Gotta Have It’s Siegel calls the ring simply “a great item of Hollywood collectibles.” But come on. Surely macabre curiosity is why Gotta Have It has played up “Sharon’s tragic murder” in its description of the ring, and encouraged the notion that it played a more central role in Tate’s life than it may in fact have had.

Maybe the ring’s significance doesn’t matter if you’re not the sort of person who cares about owning something a famous woman had on as her pregnant belly was being hacked into. But why would someone shell out 10 grand or more for an item if not for Manson family bragging rights? Gotta Have It knows what it’s really auctioning here, and it’s not just a “Hollywood collectible.” Instead, it’s a little bit of what Susan Atkins said she felt the night she killed Tate. It’s a lot less gruesome and a lot more expensive, but it comes from the same place. Repulsively, it’s the opportunity, as Atkins once put it, “to taste death.”

“The Ghost Writer” is an example of a vanishing type of film direction rooted in the values of classical (pre-TV) Hollywood. Although Polanski didn’t make his first feature until 1962 (“A Knife in the Water“), he has done most of his work in that tradition. The subject matter of his movies is often disturbing — jealousy, insanity, conspiracy, the triumphs of chaos and evil — but his style is usually conservative, with a touch of elegance. He doesn’t cover action with two or three or 10 cameras to produce enough usable footage to create the illusion of comprehensiveness. Polanski more often tries to plan and shoot action from one, maybe two angles, and he doesn’t cut to a new angle unless he can get a better result than by staying where he is. Polanski’s screenwriting sensibility is just as exact — a point vividly demonstrated on “The Ghost Writer,” which Polanski co-adapted with Robert Harris, from Harris’ novel. The filmmaker doles out words the way he doles out shots: sparingly, never giving the viewers more than is necessary to keep them on the hook and waiting for the next revelation. This is a nearly perfect entertainment, never more so than in its final few minutes. 

Swiss officials say their ruling was purely technical and hinged on the United States’ refusal to supply a confidential transcript of a hearing with the prosecutor in charge of the case. This should come as no surprise to Swiss authorities: A court ruling barred the release of the requested material. As a result, though, the Swiss say they were unable to “exclude with the necessary certainty” that Polanski had already served his sentence. He was ordered to serve a 90-day psychiatric evaluation and was released after only 42 days, thanks to a favorable review. But even more important: he fled sentencing.

Of course, his supporters point to judicial misconduct — by way of inappropriate communication between the judge and the prosecutor — and argue that the charges should be tossed out as a result. As Brian Palmer explained in Slate, however:

Outright dismissal is an exceedingly rare remedy for ex parte communications, especially when the communications came after the plea agreement was reached. It’s far more common for the plea agreement to stand, with a new judge brought in to preside over the sentencing.

That didn’t happen, though, because Polanski fled sentencing. Did I mention that Polanski fled sentencing? Yeah, Polanski fled sentencing.

It’s amazing how much about this case has to be repeated, again and again — as Kate Harding did with her Broadsheet post titled, “Reminder: Roman Polanski raped a child.” One rarely thinks of child rape as the sort detail that is easily forgotten — not to mention the initial charges of child molestation, rape by use of drugs and sodomy — but so it was in the wake of the director’s arrest late last year. And, once again, I find myself resorting to a single, though different, refrain.

Some are grasping for an optimistic angle, suggesting that the extradition denial might be a good thing for Polanski’s victim, who has voiced her desire for the whole thing to just disappear. As Jezebel’s Anna North pointed out during the BBC segment this morning, it would have disappeared a long time ago if the state of California hadn’t waited over 30 years to actively pursue and settle the case — or if Polanski hadn’t fled sentencing.

According to a press release issued Wednesday by the Académie des Beaux-Arts, a leading French cultural institution, Polanski is showing “signs of grave depression,” which might not be surprising. This ailment, the academy’s release went on, had an obvious remedy: the filmmaker’s “rapid liberation” from house arrest at his villa in Gstaad, Switzerland. “Since the sentence initially expected [for Polanski's 1977 offense] has in every possible sense been served for more than 30 years, we cannot see why the demand for his extradition continues.”

Also on Wednesday, the magazine La Règle du Jeu (Rules of the Game) published the pro-Polanski petition signed by Godard, Varda, Bertrand Tavernier, Olivier Assayas, actor-director Mathieu Amalric and six other prominent filmmakers who are here at Cannes this week. (Two of the 11 are female: Varda and young French director Katell Quillévéré.) Like the Beaux-Arts press release, this petition focuses on legal issues surrounding Polanski’s extradition case and possible sentencing, and not at all on his original offense. This essential mistrust of the American judicial system — and perhaps the entire American social climate — is the central issue that divides European and American opinion on the Polanski matter.

“The undersigned have learned with astonishment of new information brought to our attention by Roman Polanski,” the petition begins. Citing Polanski’s own public statement published by La Règle du Jeu on May 2, the petition goes on to discuss former Los Angeles District Attorney Roger Gunson’s February testimony to the effect that “Roman Polanski had served, 33 years ago in the penitentiary at Chino, the entirety of the sentence decided by the judge at the time.” This “essential piece,” the petitioners write, “has been strangely cared for on the scales of American justice.”

Here comes the big finish: “Conscious of how much this festival … owes to the great auteur of ‘The Pianist,’ conscious, also, of some basic rights such as the impossibility of judging and condemning a man twice for the same offense, conscious, in the end, that the demand for extradition expressed by the United States is based on a lie, we appeal to the Swiss authorities and urge them not to believe the word of Governor Schwarzenegger and his prosecutors.”

It’s a bravura performance: No jurisdiction that would actually elect Arnold Schwarzenegger can presume to judge an artist of Roman Polanski’s greatness! Now, the facts about exactly what deals were made and broken at the time Polanski fled to France in 1978 are by no means clear. Depending on how you interpret them, he may indeed have a viable legal case for receiving a minimal or symbolic sentence. But this week’s publicity offensive in the European media, which has included absolutely no discussion of Polanski’s original crime, is about something larger than that. It’s about the enduring sense on this side of the Atlantic that America, even in the Obama era, remains a land of philistine, puritanical barbarity.

Much of the pro-Polanski passion has been stirred up by journalist and philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, who publishes La Règle du Jeu and has campaigned vigorously for the director’s release. It’s logical to conclude that Lévy played a leading role in crafting the filmmakers’ petition, and may indeed be its real author. Lévy is a prominent public intellectual with no precise American parallel, so famous here he is often simply called “BHL.” (If you took Bill O’Reilly and gave him Harold Bloom’s education, you might get Lévy.) He’s no left-winger and no knee-jerk anti-American; his controversial positions in recent years have included supporting the Iraq war and favoring laws to limit the public role of Islam in European life. But Lévy embraces the traditional, nationalist conception of France as the home of reason and human rights. He has evidently concluded that sending Polanski back to L.A. is the moral equivalent of shipping Chinese or Iranian political dissidents back home to face the firing squad.