Peter Folger (December 26, 1905- August 27, 1980) was an American coffee heir, socialite, and member of the prominent United States Folger family. He was also the long time Chairman of the board and President at the Folgers Coffee Company. He is the grandson of founder J. A. Folger, and the father of Manson murder victim Abigail Folger.
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Born and raised in California, Folger studied business and graduated from Yale University where he was an athlete on their football, track and field, and polo teams. Peter Folger later served in World War II as a Marine Major.
In 1963, after having helped to build the family firm into the third largest coffee wholesaler in the United States, Folger sold the company to Procter & Gamble for 1,650,000 shares of P&G common stock. However, he and the Folger family continued to operate Folgers as a P&G subsidiary.
He married twice in his life. The first being to Ines Mejia, the daughter of a prestigious California land grant family. They went on to have two children, Abigail, born in 1943 and Peter, Jr, born in 1945. Ines filed for divorce which was granted in 1952. They shared joint custody of their two children.
On June 30, 1960, Peter married his then 24-year-old secretary Beverly Mater. They had one daughter together, Elizabeth, in January 1961. Peter and Beverly lived with their daughter at the Folger mansion located in Woodside, California until 1974 when they moved to a newly built home on Roberta Drive. The murder of his eldest daughter, Abigail, in 1969, was said to have dimmed Peter's desire to continue living at the Woodside estate, where she grew up. Folger Estate For Sale
After Abigail died, Peter conducted his own investigation into her death and spent the rest of his life protecting her from being the subject of salacious gossip, threatening legal action against anyone who tried to use her name in damning articles or books about the Tate-LaBianca murders. As a result, very little information is available of her, as opposed to the rest of the victims, a true testament to her father's desire to protect her in death.
Folger died at his home in Woodside, California, at the age of 74 on August 27, 1980, and was buried in the Folger family plot at Mountain View Cemetery, in Oakland, California. He was survived by his wife, Beverly, then 45. She never remarried following his death.