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Title: Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders by Vincent Bugliosi with Curt Gentry
Details: Copyright 1974, 1994, 2001, post-2015* (*updated information on the cover, no exact date given), Simon and Schuster
Synopsis (By Way of Back Cover): "The biggest-selling true crime story in publishing history
7 MILLION COPIES SOLD
"One of the best crime stories ever written."
-- CHICAGO SUN-TIMES SHOWCASE
In the summer of 1969, in Los Angeles, a series of brutal, seemingly random murders captured headlines across America. A famous actress (and her unborn child), an heiress to a coffee fortune, a supermarket owner and his wife were among the seven victims. A thin trail of circumstances eventually tied the Tate-LeBianca murders to Charles Manson, a would-be pop singer of small talent living in the desert with his "family" of devoted young women and men. What was his hold over them? And what was the motivation behind such savagery? In the public imagination, over time, the case assumed the proportions of myth. The murders marked the end of the sixties and became an immediate symbol of the dark underside of that era.
Vincent Bugliosi was the prosecuting attorney in the Manson trial, and this book is his enthralling account of how he built his case from what a defense attorney dismissed as only "two fingerprints and Vince Bugliosi." The meticulous detective work with which the story begins, the prosecutor's view of a complex murder trial, the reconstruction of the philosophy Manson inculcated in his fervent followers...these elements make for a true crime classic. Helter Skelter is not merely a spellbinding murder case and courtroom drama but also, in the words of The New Republic, a "social document of rare importance.""
Why I Wanted to Read It: If you've been reading this project, you might know that while I don't care for crime fiction, mostly, I do read true crime (not that that's not without its own problems).
So it's kind of strange that I'd never read Helter Skelter, widely considered a classic of true crime books.
While the Manson story doesn't haunt me the way some do, it's fascinating from a cultural standpoint, and I've seen several documentaries and movies about it, listened to Karina Longworth's excellent series on it, and read John Waters's impassioned, if somewhat misguided/questionable in places plea for parole for his friend, convicted murderer and Manson Family member Leslie Van Houten. I'm familiar with Bugliosi's reputation as an anti-sensationalist and the fact he generally had a reputation as a thoughtful, evenhanded person, always a benefit in a book of this nature.
How I Liked It: CONTENT WARNING! THIS BOOK CONTAINS SEXUAL VIOLENCE (INCLUDING TO CHILDREN), MURDER, AND SUICIDE, AND THE REVIEW MAKES MENTION OF IT. PLEASE PROCEED ACCORDINGLY.
How do you consume a classic when it's informed so many books you've already read, so many movies and TV shows you've watched? How do you evaluate one of the firsts in the genre when so many have taken the path paved by it and gone further? Especially when it's about something as heavily publicized and dissected like the Manson case, still generating buzz and content over a half century after it ended? How do you even begin to start sorting all of that out in order to read it? Well, we're going to try!
But first! Hot summer in Los Angeles of 1969, and something isn't right. In third person narration, the slow horror and mystery of the discovery of the Tate Polanski home. Horror, confusion, and hype abound, and then a similar (but it doesn't look that way to police at the time) double murder of a successful businesswoman and her supermarket-chain owner husband. The victims are introduced and we're led along the investigation, such as it is. Cops are confused and in over their heads (more on THAT later) and mistakes, mistakes, mistakes mean these cases aren't getting solved. Some local weirdo criminal and his weirdo followers start coming up in conversation for their love of stealing cars. One hide-out was raided and the weirdos arrested, and then one of the weirdos implicated another, Susan Atkins, aka "Sadie Mae Glutz", for something far worse, the murder of Gary Hinman, an acquaintance of the gang of weirdos who supposedly had a lot of money. While in prison, Atkins started bragging about her involvement in the infamous murders and both women to whom she confided went to authorities with the story she gave them. But it wasn't Atkins alone. Her cult leader, Charles Manson, had been cutting quite a figure across Los Angeles and making lots of friends, enemies, acquaintances, and horrified bystanders who start coming forward.
Not to mention a horrified family member at the scene of the murders that was willing to help the prosecution, Linda Kasabian, willing to be led to burglary and "creepy-crawls" by the Family, but not to murder.
A case is made and a prosecutor set, and from there we enter first person narration by way of prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi. He gives a bit of his background and philosophy, and then launches into the trial, often in great minutia, explaining court proceedings and procedure, giving his opinions (and grievances) about everything from the press to the defense attorneys to the LAPD (oof, will we get to them). Bugliosi's personal dealings with the Manson Family, including members both current and former. Bugliosi's many theories about the Family and Manson in particular are explored, with varying degrees of evidence.
I read the latest edition, which includes a 1994 afterward from Bugliosi on both the twenty-fifth anniversary of the murders and the twentieth anniversary of the original publication of the book. He muses what changed (and what didn't) since, and why the story of Manson is so enduring. The edition I read also has 2001 notes from Bugliosi in the text giving further explanation to at least one point in the 1974 edition.
In retrospect, it truly is mind-boggling that I haven't read this until now. I'm not averse to true crime literature classics, as I've said. I've even enjoyed them! Although I found Whoever Fights Monsters not only insufferable but breathtakingly inaccurate, I enjoyed Mindhunter and Ann Rule's The Stranger Beside Me. I'm familiar with groundbreaking books and looking back at them with the ground... well, broken! While it was remarkable in 1974 that the prosecutor of a infamous, highly publicized case wrote a book about it, it's more notable in 2022 when someone connected with such a case doesn't have a book deal.
And while the interest in true crime was certainly there in 1974 (particularly this true crime), the sheer level of fandom and hobbyists were nowhere near as organized as they would be twenty-five years later, let alone now. This book paved the way for so many, many, many others, and actually helped fan interest in Manson and the Family.
So it's somewhat strange to read, particularly since true crime authors would generally understand what readers were after not long after this book was published, and it wasn't courtroom minutia.
No, people want a story (preferably with horrifying details), and they want to know why what happened happened and why the killer or killers did what they did.
To be fair, Bugliosi and his co-writer do include a bit of the latter: there's plenty of story to the book and Bugliosi does theorize (particularly a quarter century later) on why Manson did what he did and why his followers followed (and did not). But I realized as all the separate factions kept coming together, I was waiting for what's now pretty much a standard of true crime books, the story straightforwardly when the mystery is all solved. I assume because the authors assumed everyone already knew the runthrough of events and that's why a reader would pick up the book, and the authors felt retelling the story would be repetetive, but it would still help to have a neat timeline of events, especially in a case as scattered as this. In fairness, Bugliosi himself is a main character in the case. He's not an armchair detective, nor even a journalist working the case, he's a major player and as such, of course his side of the story is worth hearing. But I'm willing to bet that most people that pick up the book aren't waiting to hear what Bugliosi thought of Manson's grandstanding defense attorney and even less what was common courtroom procedure in California at the time (although it's a nice historical marker at how prevalent crime media is now that several points Bugliosi felt the need to explain to the reader in 1974 now appear in children's programs; AKA for one is helpfully explained to the reader).
But Bugliosi's point of view has plenty of first-hand accounts of Manson and his Family, not just in court, but suggesting him for Vice President to Manson's President of the United States (Manson himself), nonchalantly threatening his life (Sandra Good), and all sorts of other bizarre misadventures that make a fascinating read (hearing repeatedly of Manson's "magical" powers by his devoted brainwashed followers, Bugliosi is surprised to find his watch stopped, which had never happened before, and looked up to realize Manson was looking at him with a slight smile).
So it's not really fair to judge a book of this type by the many, many others that came after. While Bugliosi and his co-writer weren't the first, they were certainly one of the first, and it's not just a true-crime book, it's also arguably a memoir, given Bugliosi's role in the cases. Speaking of memoir, how does Bugliosi come out? How is his memoir voice?
Honestly, it could be a lot worse, particularly given the ultimate result. Bugliosi is relatively relatable here, although he's not immune to some (more or less justified?) grandstanding. The switch from third person to first person narration is a touch clumsy, but seemingly heartfelt all the same:
By now the reader knows a great deal more about the Tate-LaBianca murders than I did on the day I was assigned that case. [...] And, in a way, I'm a newcomer, an intruder. The sudden switch from an unseen background narrator to a very personal account is bound to be a surprise. The best way to soften it, I suspect, would be to introduce myself; then, when we've got that out of the way, we'll resume the narrative together. This digression, though unfortunately necessary, will be as brief as possible. (pg 166)
"The primary duty of a lawyer engaged in public prosecution is not to convict, but to see that justice is done..."
Those words are from the old Canon of Ethics of the American Bar Association. I'd thought of them often during the five years I'd been a deputy DA. In a very real sense they had become part of my personal credo. If, in a given case, a conviction is justice, so be it. But if it is not, I want no part of it.
For far too many years the stereotyped image of the prosecutor has been either that of a right-wing, law-and-order type intent on winning convictions at any cost, or a stumbling, bumbling Hamilton Burger, forever trying innocent people, who, fortunately, are saved at the last possible minute by the foxy maneuverings of a Perry Mason.
I've never felt the defense attorney has a monopoly on concern for innocence, fairness, and justice. In a great many I sought and obtained convictions, because I believed the evidence warranted them. In a great many others, in which I felt the evidence was insufficient, I stood up in court and asked for a dismissal of the charges, or requested a reduction in either the charges or the sentence.
The latter cases rarely make headlines. Only infrequently does the public learn of them. Thus the stereotype remains. Far more important, however, is the realization that fairness and justice have prevailed. (pg 166 and 167)
And as for that grandstanding... here's the thing. Bugliosi did an incredibly difficult job and by all accounts, did it well. So it'd be hard not to bask, at least a little. But seemingly impressing Charles Manson is a questionable accomplishment:
Toward the end of recess, I told him, "I've enjoyed talking to you, Charlie, but it would be much more interesting if we did it with you on the stand. I have lots and lots of things I'm curious about."
"For instance?"
"For instance," I replied, "where in the world-- Terminal Island, Haight-Asbury, Spahn Ranch-- did you get the crazy idea that other people don't like to live?"
He didn't answer. Then he began to smile. He'd been challenged. And knew it. Whether he'd decide to accept the challenge remained to be seen. (pgs 407 and 408)
Despite the problems presented by Judge Alexander, on October 12, 1971, the jury found Watson guilty of seven counts of first degree murder and one count of conspiracy to commit murder. That I had effectively destroyed the testimony of the defense psychiatrists on cross-examination was borne out by the fact that on October 19 it took the jury only two and a half hours to decide that Watson was sane. (pg 604)
To be fair, it does sound like he effectively destroyed it.
But this is a book written nearly a half century ago (by two people on the wrong side of the generational divide) about events over a half century ago, and there's a lot that hasn't aged well. It's not corrected in the twenty-year afterward, either, and Bugliosi's 2001 notes are about technicalities (although it's good he clarified). The treatment of women is... not great (we'll get to that), several factors about mental health and psychology are quite "of their time" and if true crime writers (and media creators as a whole) still struggle with treating victims with respect in 2022, they sure didn't in 1974 in a highly publicized case with famous victims.
But while it's easy to spot a million ways this book would or could be done differently now, at its core, this book was from the side of someone who was a part of it in a major way and his instincts and reactions at the time. While later books might perfect the art, that doesn't mean the books that paved the way aren't necessary reads.
Notable:
The LAPD, to put it criminally mildly, does not come off well in this book. And the authors are really trying to be fair, clearly. Bugliosi himself appears to be holding back a lot of frustration. But there's a very good chance if it wasn't for Susan Atkins repeatedly bragging about the murders, it would've been considerably longer before they were solved, if they were solved at all. So many incidents, including the recovery of the clothing the suspects threw out of the get-away car (which was recovered by a local news station) is not only shockingly unprofessional, it's downright mind-boggling that this was behavior from a major city in America.
Twelve hours had passed since the discovery of the bodies. John Doe 85 remained unidentified.
Police lieutenant Robert Madlock, who had been in charge of the investigation during the several hours before it was assigned to homicide, would later state: “At the time we first found the [victim’s] car at the scene, we were going fourteen different directions at once. So many things had to be done, I guess we just didn’t have time to follow up on the car registration.” (pg 48)
In the interim, LAPD discovered the identity of the youth through a print an license check. Shortly after the Parents returned home, an El Monte policeman appeared at the door and handed Wilfred Parent a card with a number on it and told him to call it. He left without saying anything else.
Parent dialed the number.
“County Coroner’s Office,” a man answered.
Confused, Parent identified himself and explained about the policeman and the card.
The call was transferred to a deputy coroner, who told him, “Your son has apparently been involved in a shooting.”
“Is he dead?” Parent asked, stunned. His wife, hearing the question, became hysterical.
“We have a body down here,” the deputy coroner replied, “and we believe it’s your son.” He then went on to describe physical characteristics. They matched.
Parent hung up the phone and began sobbing. Later, understandably bitter, he’d remark, “All I can say is that it was a hell of a way to tell somebody that their boy was dead.” (pgs 49 and 50)
If one believed the subsequent talk, half of Hollywood was invited to 10050 Cielo Drive for a party that night, and, at the last minute, changed their minds. According to Winifred Chapman, Sandy Tennant, Debbie Tate, and others close to Sharon, there was no party that night, nor was one ever planned. But LAPD probably spent a hundred man-hours attempting to locate people who allegedly attended the non-event. (pgs 82 and 83)
Side note, Candace Bergen remarked on this fact in her own memoir (everyone claiming they narrowly avoiding being a Manson victim), while noting that as (prime Manson target) Terry Melchor's girlfriend at the time, she would have absolutely been one of the victims.
Gutierrez accused her of involvement in all fourteen [murders]. "I'm prepared to give you complete immunity, which means that if you are straight with me, right down the line, I'll be straight with you, and I'll guarantee you that you will walk out of that jail a free woman ready to start over again and never go back up there to Independence to do any time. I wouldn't say that unless I meant it, right?"
Actually, Sergeant Gutierrez did not have the authority to guarantee this. The granting of immunity is a complicated procedure, involving the approval not only of the Police Department but also of the District Attorney's Office, with the final decision being made by the Court. Gutierrez offered it to her as casually as if it were a stick of gum. (pgs 208 and 209)
Later Dianne Lake would become one of the prosecution's most important witnesses. But credit for this goes to the Inyo County authorities, in particular Gibbens and Gardiner, who, instead of threats, tried patient, sympathetic understanding. It made all the difference. (pg 209)
Around the time of the murders, a kid not far from the Tate home finds a distinct gun and brings it to his father. Horrified, the father turns it in to the LAPD. When news of the Atkins confession breaks, the father contacts the police about the gun, convinced it was the murder weapon.
That evening on arriving home, Weiss read the Atkins story. It convinced him. About 6 P.M. he again called LAPD Homicide. The officer he'd talked to at noon was out, so he had to repeat the story a third time. This officer told him, "We don't keep guns that long. We throw them in the ocean after awhile. Weiss said, "I can't believe you'd throw away what could be the single most important piece of evidence in the Tate case."
"Listen, mister," the officer replied, "we can't check out every citizen report on every gun we find. Thousands of guns are found every year." The discussion became an argument and they hung up on each other. (pg 268)
THROW THEM INTO THE OCEAN!?!
Though the press did report that there was bloody writing at the LaBianca residence, LAPD had succeeded in keeping one fact secret: that two of the words were HEALTER [sic] SKELTER.
Had this been publicized, undoubtedly [Manson associates] Jakobson, Watkins, Poston, and numerous others would have connected the LaBianca murders-- and probably the Tate murders also, because of their proximity in time-- with Manson's insane plan. And it seems a safe assumption that a least one would have communicated his suspicions to the police.
It was one of those odd happenstances, for which no one was at fault, the repercussions of which no one could foresee, but it appears possible that had this happened, the killers might have been apprehended days, rather than months, after the murders, and Donald "Shorty" Shea, and possibly others, might still be alive. (pgs 332 and 333)
No one was at fault, except the LAPD that is.
As far back as November 1969, I'd asked the LAPD to infiltrate the Family. I not only wanted to know what they were planning as far as defense strategy was concerned; I told the officers, "It would be tragic if there was another murder which we could have prevented."
I made this request at least ten times, LAPD finally contending that if they did plant an undercover agent in the Family, he would have to commit crimes, for example, smoke marijuana. For there to be a crime, I noted, there had to be criminal intent; if he was doing it as part of his job, to catch a criminal, it wouldn't be a crime. When they balked at this, I said he didn't even have to be a police officer. If they had paid informers in narcotics, bookmaking, even prostitution cases, surely they could manage to come up with one in one of the biggest murder cases of our time. No dice.
Finally I turned to the DA's Bureau of Investigation, and they found a young man willing to accept the assignment. I admired his determination, but he was clean-cut, with short hair, and looked as straight as they come. As desperate as we were for information, I couldn't send him into that den of killers; once they stopped laughing, they'd chop him to pieces. Eventually I had to abandon the idea. We remained in the dark as to what the Family was planning next. (pg 374)
Both an amusing indicator about how words' meanings can change over time ("looked as straight as they come") and also kinda funny that marijuana is legal in California now. I mean, not quite as "funny" as the police being afraid to prevent murder by having an agent (gasp!) have to smoke marijuana, but yeah.
On cross-examination Fitzgerald brought out that [the personal housekeeper to the Tate Polanskis] hadn't mentioned washing the door in Sharon's bedroom until months after the murders, and then she had told this not to the LAPD but to me.
This was to be the start of a pattern. Having questioned each of the witnesses not once but a number of times, I had uncovered a great deal of information not previously related to the police. In many instances I had been the only one who had interviewed the witness. Though Fitzgerald initially planted the idea, Kanarek would nurture it until, in his mind at least, it budded into a full-bloomed conspiracy, with Bugliosi framing the whole case. (pgs 417 and 418)
Although Channel 7 newscaster Al Wiman had actually been the first to spot the clothing the TV crew found, we called cameraman King Baggot to the stand instead. Had we used Wiman as a witness, he wouldn't have been able to cover any portion of the trial for his station.
[...]
After Baggot identified the various items of apparel, we called Joe Granado of SID. Joe was to testify to the blood samples he'd taken.
Joe wasn't on the stand very long. He'd forgotten his notes and had to go get them. Fortunately, we had another witness ready, Helen Tabbe, the deputy at Sybil Brand who had obtained the sample of Susan Atkins' hair.
Although I liked Joe as a person, as a witness he left much to be desired. He appeared very disorganized; couldn't pronounce many of the technical items of his trade; often gave vague, inconclusive answers. Granado's failure to take samples from many of the spots, as well as his failure to run subtypes on many of the samples he had taken, didn't exactly add to his impressiveness. I was particularly concerned about his having taken so few samples from the two pools of blood outside of the front door ("I took a random sampling; then I assumed the rest of it was the same") and his failure to test the blood on the bushes next to the porch ("At the time, I guess, I assumed all the blood was of a similar origin"). My concern here was that those samples he had taken matched in type and subtype the blood of Sharon Tate and Jay Sebring, although there was no evidence that either had run out the front door. While I could argue to the jury that the killers, or Frykowski himself, had tracked out the blood, I could foresee the defense using this to cast doubt on Linda's story so I asked Joe: "You don't know if the random sampling is representative of the blood type of the whole area here?"
A. "That is correct. I would have to scoop everything up."
Granado also testified to finding the Buck knife in the chair and the clock radio in Parent's car. Unfortunately, someone at LAPD had apparently been playing the radio, as the dial no longer read 12:15 A.M., and I had to bring out that this occurred after Granado observed the time setting.
Shortly after the trial Joe Granado left LAPD to join the FBI. (pgs 447 and 448)
I really enjoy Bugliosi's both restraint and completely justifiable venom here.
As much as possible, I tried to avoid embarrassing the LAPD. It wasn't always possible. (pg 457)
Classes in shade with Professor Bugliosi.
After court I questioned [witness for the prosecution, former Family associate] Juan [Flynn] about the Shoshane interview [in which Flynn mentioned that he told officers in Shoshane about Manson handling a knife and bragging about murder]. He thought one of the officers was from the California Highway Patrol, but he wasn't sure. That evening I called the DA's Office in Independence and learned that the man who had interviewed Juan was a CHP officer named Dave Steuber. Late that night I finally located him in Fresno, California. yes, he'd interviewed Flynn, as well as Crockett, Poston, and Watkins, on December 19, 1969. He'd taped the whole conversation, which had lasted over nine hours. Yes, he still had the original tapes.
I checked my calendar. I guess Flynn would be on the stand another day or two. Could Steuber be in L.A. in three days with the tapes and prepared to testify? Sure, Steuber said.
Steuber then told me something I found absolutely incredible. he already made a copy of the tapes and given it to LAPD. On December 29, 1969. Later I learned the identity of the LAPD detective to whom the tapes had been given. The officer (since deceased) recalled receiving the tapes but admitted he hadn't played them. He thought he had given them to someone, but couldn't remember to whom. All he knew was that he no longer had them.
Perhaps it was because the interview was so long, nine hours. Or perhaps, it being the holiday season, in the confusion they were mislaid. Neither explanation, however, erases the unpleasant fact that as early as December 1969 the Los Angeles Police Department had a taped interview containing a statement in which Manson implied that he was responsible for the Tate-LaBianca murders, and as far as can be determined, no one even bothered to book it into evidence, much less play it.(pg 481)
This last one is particularly telling. Bugliosi really wasn't trying to embarrass or shame the LAPD. But when the LAPD was working so hard to embarrass and shame themselves and actively making his job harder, in reviewing the case where he vents frustration about other aspects including the media, defense, and defendants, he can't very well skip another main antagonist.
_________________________________________________________________________________
I know what you're going to say. I'm taking my 2022 feminist angry bitter woke wokism politically correct pc culture cancel buzzword buzzword something buzzword agenda and trying to force this book through that lens and disparage the work of a gifted attorney and accomplished writer (two accomplished writers, given Bugliosi's later work) by reaching and nitpicking. I swear I'm not.
All I am doing is presenting to you the slight culture cringe I got when reading this book in 2022. And while both authors of this book unfortunately are in step with the sexism of their era, they're also in step with the sexism of the present, given that the attractiveness of women and femmes is still something upon which people feel the need to unnecessarily comment, including in true crime reporting places.
People the same age are separated into "men and girls", in fact, women of all ages are given the diminutive "girls" and sometimes even "gal". Nearly no female appearance goes unremarked upon, particularly when it comes to breast-size (yes, really). And hey, if any of us looked at writing from decades in our past, don't we learn and do better? Apparently not Bugliosi, because in his twenty year afterward, he makes many of the same sexist missteps.
This isn't limited to the two co-authors, after all. This is depicting the United States establishment as a whole in the late '60s and early '70s.
Leno, the president of a chain of Los Angeles supermarkets, was forty-four, Italian, and, at 220 pounds, somewhat overweight. Rosemary, a trim, attractive brunette of thirty-eight (pg 50)
This passage could also fall under my section about how you shouldn't treat victims. What on earth does it matter if Leno LaBianca was somewhat overweight and why is that something to remark upon? It's not a descriptor that tells us anything about him, really. For that matter, why is Rosemary LaBianaca's body something to remark upon, either? Good thing this victim was "trim and attractive"!
To their credit, the authors do give a bit of history to the couple that are arguably always given the backseat to the more famous victims. Did you know that Rosemary LaBianca was actually a skilled entrepreneur who opened her own Los Angeles dress shop and had millions in savings at the time of her death? Yet she's still always portrayed as secondary to her husband who owned a chain of supermarkets ("a supermarket owner and his wife").
Miss Howard, a buxom former call girl who over her thirty-some years had been known by more than a dozen and a half aliases (pg 117)
Is there really nothing else about her you can put other than "buxom"? Was she wiley? Was she jaded? Was she just doing this to survive or did she find a way to enjoy it? Was her demeanor quiet or loud? BUXOM TELLS US NONE OF THOSE THINGS, SIRS.
Ever know a Katie? Yeah, but he didn't know what her real name was. "I never knew anyone by their real name," DeCarlo said. Katie was an older broad, not a runaway. She was from around Venice. His description of her was vague, except that she had so much hair on her body that none of the guys wanted to make it with her. (pgs 156 and 157)
"Broad" was used by the interviewing detectives that questioned Manson Family acquaintance Danny DeCarlo, and recording that particularly disgusting bit about body hair is, uh, a choice. Why, seriously why include that? Were it different authors, I would think this is to show how even the Family acquaintances disparaged women, but these aren't different authors.
LAPD wanted to offer Susan Atkins immunity, in exchange for telling what she knew about the murders.
I was in total disagreement. "If what she told Ronnie Howard is true, Atkins personally stabbed to death Sharon Tate, Gary Hinman, and who knows how many others! We don't give that gal anything!" (pg 172)
Yikes.
They smiled almost continuously, no matter what was said. For them all the questions had been answered. There was no need to search any more, because they had found the truth. And their truth was "Charlie is love."
Tell me about this love, I asked them. Do you mean this in the male-female sense? Yes, that too, they answered, but that was only a part. More all-encompassing? Yes, but "Love is love; you can't define it." (pg 184)
Yeah, this is a cheap shot, complaining in 2022 about sexual love being described in 1969 as "male-female" but let it sink in just how gross that was on a number of levels.
Also, the juxtaposition of "love is love" (a modern popular slogan among the Queer/LGBTQ+ rights movement) meant (presumably) in a sort of evasive, quasi-hippie sense is jarring, to say the least.
According to her Inyo arrest sheet, she was five feet six, weighed 120 pounds, had brown hair and blue eyes. Her photograph revealed a not very attractive girl, with very long hair and a somewhat mannish face. (pg 213)
Okay, this isn't even a good descripter physically. "Attractive" is a subjective term. Was Patricia Krenwinkle's photograph showing she was closed off? Angry? Unwelcoming? Scared? ANYTHING other than your personal evaluation of her physical attractiveness?
Mary Brunner, then twenty-three, had a B.A. degree in history from the University of California. She was singularly unattractive, and Manson apparently was one of the first persons who thought her worth cultivating. (pg 225)
Ditto.
Look, Mary Brunner's story very much comes off that she didn't attract romantic/sexual attention because she didn't think she was worthy of attracting romantic/sexual attention, and thus became a perfect pawn for someone like Manson, who realized if he played up to that angle, she would pretty much be devoted to him. Manson did, and thus Brunner became the first Family member. Mary Brunner could've physically looked like Sharon Tate, but if she didn't feel she was attractive and dressed not to be noticed, it's pretty likely she wouldn't have attracted attention (or noticed if she did). How she actually looked (in this case, whether or not the authors found her attractive) has little to do with explaining how Manson groomed followers.
Though Manson had sent the killers to 10050 Cielo Drive, he had not gone along himself. Those who did go were Charles "Tex" Watson, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Linda Kasabian. One man, three girls, who would mercilessly shoot and stab five people to death. (pg 229)
One man, three girls! Tex Watson would've been almost twenty-four, Atkins almost twenty-one, Krenwinkel nearly twenty-two, and Kasabian twenty at the time. Apparently in the authors' world, you become an adult in your early mid-twenties, but not before. A man and three girls!
Bobby Beausoleil had always been somewhat independent. Less handsome than "pretty" (the girls had nicknamed him "Cupid"), Beausoleil had had some bit parts in several movies, written music, formed a rock group, and had his own harem, all before meeting Manson. (pg 295)
I included this because something about the "less handsome than 'pretty'" struck a weird masculinity thing. It's also kinda weird to notice, given that Manson's bizarre elvin facial features are (at least that I noticed) unremarked upon by the authors.
The newly materialistic Manson came up with some wild moneymaking schemes. For example, someone suggested that the girls in the Family could earn $300 to $500 a week apiece working as topless dancers. Manson liked the idea-- with ten broads pulling in $3,000 a week and upward he could buy jeeps, dune buggies, even machine guns- and he sent Bobby Beausoleil and Bill Vance to the Girard Agency on the Sunset Strip to negotiate the deal.
There was only one problem. With all his powers, Manson was unable to transform molehills into mountains. With the exception of Sadie and a few others, Charlie's girls simply did not have impressive busts. For some reason Manson seemed to only attract flat-chested girls. (pg 331)
...Gross. Even if you dismiss "broads" as the authors mimicking Manson's mindset, the "molehills into mountains" (and the quick aside about Susan Atkins's breast size) is totally unnecessary.
Small, with long light-brown hair, Linda bore a distinct resemblance to the actress Mia Farrow. As I got to know her, I found Linda a quiet girl, docile, easily led, yet she communicated an inner sureness, almost a fatalism, that made her seem much older than her twenty years. (pgs 338 and 339)
Older than her twenty years, but not old enough to not be called a "girl".
One former inmate who agreed to talk to me, thought she wasn't very happy about it, was Roseanne Walker. A pathetic, heavyset black girl who had been sent to Sybil Brand on five drug-related charges, Roseanne had been a sort of walking commissary, selling candy, cigarettes, and make-up to the other inmates. (pg 380)
If the inmate knew how you were going to describe her, she'd probably been even less happy about it.
The twelve jurors were: John Baer, an electrical tester; Alva Dawson, a retired deputy sheriff; Mrs. Shirley Evans, a school secretary; Mrs Evelyn Hines, a dictaphone-teletype operator; William McBride II, a chemical company employee; Mrs. Thelma McKenzie, a clerical supervisor; Miss Marie Mesmer, former drama critic for the now defunct Los Angeles Daily News; Mrs. Jean Roseland, an executive secretary; Anlee Sisto, an electronics technician; Herman Tubick, a mortician; Walter Vitzelio, a retired plant guard; and William Zamora, a highway engineer. (pg 409)
What a weird distinction to make in the gender breakdown of the jury. Why do all the women have honorifics (which indicate their marital status, incidentally) but the men just have first and last names? Is this some archaic rule that has thankfully long gone obsolete?
[I]n talking to [witnesses for the persecution] Barbara Hoyt, I learned that Sandy had been one of the Family members who had persuaded her to go to Hawaii [instead of testifying, where the Family tried to give her a lethal dose of LSD].
As I left court on the afternoon of the eighteenth, Sandy and two male followers approached me.
"Sandy, I'm very, very disappointed in you," I told her. "You were at Spahn when Barbara's murder was planned. There's no question in my mind that you knew what was going to happen. Yet, though Barbara was your friend, you said nothing, did nothing. Why?"
She didn't reply, but stared at me as if in a trance. For a moment I thought she hadn't heard me, that she was stoned on drugs, but then, very slowly and deliberately, she reached down and began playing with the sheath knife that she wore at her waist. That was her answer.
Disgusted, I turned and walked away. Looking back, however, I saw that Sandy and two boys were following me. I stopped, they stopped. When I started walking again, they followed, Sandy still fingering the knife.
Gradually they were closing the distance between us. Deciding it was better to face trouble than have my back to it, I turned and walked back to them.
"Listen, you God damn bitch, and listen good," I told her. "I don't know for sure whether you were or weren't involved in the actual attempt to murder Barbara, but if you were, I'm going to do everything in my power to see that you end up in jail!" I then looked at the two males and told them if they followed me one more time, I was going to deck them on the spot.
I turned and walked off. This time they didn't follow me.
My reaction was, I felt, exceptionally mild, considering the circumstances.
[grandstanding Manson attorney] Kanarek felt otherwise. When court reconvened on Monday, the twenty-first, he filed a motion asking that I be held in contempt for interfering with a defense witness. He also asked that I be arrested for violating Section 415 of the Penal Code, charging that I had made obscene remarks in the presence of a female. (pg 472)
Think of this as a turducken of gender concepts of the period. When his life is threatened by the Family, it's primarily by one of the members to whom Bugliosi was trying to break through, Sandra "Sandy" Good. From his vaguely creepy paternalistic tone he didn't take with male members/acquaintances of the Family ("very disappointed in you") to being quick with a "God damn bitch" when angered (honestly, I found that sort of a weird reaction? If someone threatens your life with help, you retaliate like they cut you off in traffic?) and something as fascinatingly outdated as Section 415 of the Penal Code.
I had just resumed my argument when Leslie created a disturbance. Sadie and Katie followed suit, and each of three was again ordered removed. This time Sadie was led in front of the lectern where I was standing. Suddenly, without warning, she kicked one of the female deputies in the leg, then grabbed some of my notes, tearing them in half. Grabbing them back, I involuntarily muttered, beneath my breath, "You little bitch!"
Though provoked, I regretted losing my cool.
The next day the Long Beach Independent bore the following front-page headline:MANSON PROSECUTOR
TAKES SWING AT SUSAN
According to reporter Mary Neiswender: "The chaos was capped by the chief prosecutor swearing at and attempting to slug one of the defendants... Bugliosi slapped the girl's hand, grabbed his notes and then swung at her shouting, "You little bitch!" (pg 521)
Again with "bitch". Really? These are bonified weirdos threatening your life who belong to a cult that you believe has committed double-digit murders, performing outlandish courtroom theatrics, and "bitch" is the first place you go?
Worth noting that no name-calling for Manson's own courtroom theatrics (and threats) or those of his attorneys.
One temperamental male juror slapped bailiff Ann Orr one night when, against his wishes, she changed channels on the communal TV. (pg 523)
Hopefully half a century later, that wouldn't be noted that way, unless of course the male juror happened to be a famous movie star with a public reputation for being a Good Guy.
Patricia Krenwinkel's attorney Paul Fitzgerald gives an interesting defense:
"If you were a mastermind criminal, if you had absolute power over the minds and bodies of bootlicking slaves, as they were referred to, would you send women out to do a man's job?...Women, ladies and gentlemen, are life-givers. They make love, they get pregnant, they deliver babies. They are life-givers, not takers away. Women are adverse to violence..." (pg 524)
Paul Fitzgerald had the same creepy sexist ideas about women fifty years ago that TERFs do today!
"One hot summer night of August the eighth, 1969, Charles Manson, the Mephistophelean guru who raped and bastardized the minds of all those who gave themselves so totally to him, sent out from the fires of hell at Spahn Ranch three heartless, bloodthirsty robots and-- unfortunately for him-- one human being, the little hippie girl Linda Kasabian." (pg 533)
"Little hippie girl"? Really? She's a married mother of two in her twenties who bravely publicly testified against skilled mass murderers hell-bent on revenge.
Patricia Krenwinkle had also taken LSD before meeting Manson. Very obese in her early teens, she began using diet pills at fourteen or fifteen, then tried reds, mescaline, and LSD, provided by her half sister Charlene, now deceased, who was a heroin addict. (pg 545)
You could've completely omitted "very obese" and just started with diet pills.
Keith called Brenda McCann, t/n Nancy Laura Pittman, nineteen. Though not unattractive, Brenda came across as a tough, vicious little girl, filled with hostility that was just waiting to erupt. (pg 548)
NOTE: "t/n" stands for "true name". Good thing she wasn't unattractive, just filled with hostility and tough and vicious!
Though Fitzgerald repeatedly called the three female defendants “children,” I reminded the jury that Leslie was twenty-one, Susan twenty-two, Katie twenty-three. “They are adults by any standard, and completely responsible for their acts.” (pg 588)
This is a telling statement. You know these are adults, and yet you call them "girls", not women.
And unfortunately, in the 1994 update, Bugliosi still hasn't learned a thing, apparently, despite these "girls" now being women in their then-forties.
Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Leslie Van Houten, like Watson, have each renounced Manson and expressed remorse for the killings. All are still at the California Institution for Women at Frontera. […]
Each of three Manson girls lives in a cottage-like housing unit (two inmates to a unit) at the attractive, well-manicured institution. All three girls have been reviewed for parole consideration, and denied, ten times thus far.
[…]
According to a prison spokesperson, “the institutional behavior [of the girls] is viewed as good.”
[…]
The most well-known of the girls, Susan “Sexy Sadie” Atkins, converted to Christianity even before Watson. (pgs 656 and 657)
If you're referring to them by the media hype name of the Manson "Girls", why not give Girls a capital G, the same way the Family has a capital "F"? Even John Waters subtly called out this sexism in his 2010 essay where he quotes Bugliosi.
In 1987, Susan remarried. Her husband, fifteen years her junior, attends law school in Southern California. She describes this marriage as “the first healthy and successful relationship I’ve ever had in my life.” (pg 658)
I will guarantee you that if a Manson man had married a woman fifteen years his junior, Bugliosi would not see to remark on that fact.
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I'm sorry, I'm familiar with slang of the time thanks to the Nostalgia Industrial Complex and the (so far) evergreen popularity of the 1960s/1970s. But when I hear "rap", earnest, non-musical discussion is not what comes to mind, what comes to mind is an enormously popular musical genre several decades old that was in its infancy at the time of this book's publication, but which has now even spread to Broadway. Thus, these passages are unintentionally hilarious:
According to Ronnie, one evening Susan came over, sat down on her bed, and started rapping about her experiences. (pg 138)
Usually a prosecutor and a defendant won't exchange two words during an entire trial. But Manson was no ordinary defendant. And he loved to rap. In this, the first of many strange, often highly revealing conversations we had, Manson asked me why I thought he was behind these murders. "Because both Linda and Sadie told me you were," I replied. "Now, Sadie doesn't like me, Charlie, and she thinks you're Jesus Christ. So why would she tell me this if it wasn't true?"
"Sadie's a stupid little bitch," Manson said. "You know, I only made love to her two or three times. After she had her baby and lost her shape, I couldn't have cared less about her. That's why she told that story, to get attention. I would never personally harm anyone." (pg 407)
Quoted not only for the rap but for Manson's disgustingness (more on that later) and the curious fact that in this book, you can say "made love" and you can say "do", and you can even say "screw", but you can't say "fuck" and mean it in a sexual sense, apparently. Because I'm pretty certain Manson didn't say "make love" (although if you showed me audio, I'd believe it).
It was a decidedly curious situation. Although Manson had vowed to kill me, he still asked to see me periodically-- to rap. (pg 496)
Come on, you laughed.
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I don't know how much of this is still a "thing" now, six years after his death, although he's clearly still popular in media. But for a time, too many people thought it was amusing to have "ironic" "FREE CHARLES MANSON" (and similar) merchandise. He's a Boomer Boogeyman, people defend. He was crazy and scared hippies! It's "transgressive"!
Something that's still overlooked for as much as Manson has been examined and depicted is the fact he was an unrepentant white supremacist whose supposed whole purpose for murder was to start a race war. In addition to being a murderer, he was also a rapist, including a child rapist.
Dianne's parents had "turned hippy" while she was still a child. By age thirteen she was a member of the Hog Farm commune, and had been introduced to group sex and LSD. When she joined Manson, just before her fourteenth birthday, it was with her parents' approval.
Apparently not finding Dianne submissive enough, Manson had, on various occasions: punched her in the mouth; kicked her across a room; hit her over the head with a chair leg; and whipped her with an electrical cord. Despite such treatment, she stayed. Which implies something tragic about the alternatives available to her. (pg 277)
What Bugliosi clearly didn't know then is about Battered Spouses Syndrome, as well as the fact Lake was literally a child in an abusive environment with a cult leader even adults struggled to leave. How exactly was she supposed to escape?
Women had only two purposes in life, Charlie would say: to serve men and to give birth to children. But he didn't permit the girls in the Family to raise their own children. If they did, Charlie claimed, they would give them their own hangups. Charlie believed that if he could eliminate the bonds created by parents, schools, churches, society, he could develop "a strong white race." Like Nietzsche, whom Manson claimed to have read, Charlie "believed in a master race." (pg 302)
Charlie would probably have a speaking engagement with CPAC in 2022.
As with [Manson associate Gregg] Jakobson, I queried [Manson associate Brooks] Poston as to the sources of Manson's philosophy. Scientology, the Bible, and the Beatles. These three were the only ones he knew.
A peculiar triumvirate. Yet by now I was beginning to suspect the existence of at least a fourth influence. The old magazines I'd found at Barker, Gregg's mention that Charlie claimed to have read Nietzsche and that he believed in a master race, plus the emergence of a startling number of disturbing parallels between Manson and the leader of the Third Reich, led me to ask Poston; "Did Manson ever say anything about Hitler?"
Poston's reply was short and incredibly chilling.
A. "He said that Hitler was a tuned-in guy who leveled the karma of the Jews." (pg 316)
More about Manson and Hitler later.
Exactly how did Manson "program" someone? I asked Brooks.
He had various techniques, Poston said. With a girl, it would usually start with sex. Charlie might convince a plain girl that she was beautiful. Or, if she had a father fixation, have her imagine that he was her father. (pg 316)
Again with the "plain" but you can discern what it really means: he went after people's weaknesses.
If a person indicated reluctance to engage in a certain act, Manson would force that person to commit it. Male-female, female-female, male-male, intercourse, cunnilingus, felatio, sodomy-- there could be no inhibitions of any kind. One thirteen-year-old girl's initiation into the Family consisted of her being sodomized by Manson while the others watched. Manson also "went down on" a young boy to show the others he had rid himself of all inhibitions. (pgs 317 and 378)
Larry Jones, t/n [note: "t/n" means "true name"] Lawrence Bailey, was a scrawny little ranch hand who was always trying to ingratiate himself with the Family. However, Jones had what Manson considered negroid features, and, according to Linda, Charlie was always putting him down, referring to him as "the drippings from a white man's dick." (pg 346)
At about four the next morning, he picked up a young girl, Stephanie Schram, outside a service station some distance south of Big Sur, probably at Gorda. An attractive seventeen-year-old [oh come on, seriously!?!], Stephanie was hitchhiking from San Francisco to San Diego, where she was living with her married sister. Manson and Stephanie camped in a nearby canyon that night-- Manson telling her his views on life, love, and death. Manson talked a lot about death, Stephanie would recall, and it frightened her. They took LSD and had sex. Manson was apparently unusually smitten with Stephanie. Usually he'd have sex with a new girl a few times, then move on to a new "young love." Not so with Stephanie. He later told Paul Watkins that Stephanie, who was of German extraction, was the result of two thousand years of perfect breeding. (pg 366)
I'd make another crack about Manson's fascination with white supremacy and sex with the underaged and his popularity with the current GOP, but it's honestly too depressing.
During one of the afternoon recesses Manson asked to see me. I'd turned down several earlier requests, with the comment that I'd talk to him when he took the stand, but this time I decided to see what he wanted.
I was glad I did, as it was one of the most informative conversations we had-- Manson telling me exactly how he felt about his three female co-defendants.
Manson wanted to clear up a couple of wrong impressions. One was [Krenwinkle defense attorney Paul] Fitzgerald's reference to him as a "right-wing hippie." Though I personally thought the description had some validity, Manson felt otherwise. He'd never thought of himself as a hippie, he said. "Hippies don't like the establishment so they back off and form their own establishment They're no better than the others."
He also didn't want me to think that Sadie, Katie, and Leslie were the best he could do. "I've screwed girls that would make these three look like boys," he said.
For some reason it was important to Manson that I believe this, and he re-emphasized it, adding, "I'm a very selfish guy. I don't give a fuck for these girls. I'm only out for myself." (pg 527)
Manson also receives ten cents for every Manson t-shirt sold. In California, the profits of convicted criminals can only be seized if the money-making venture is directly related to the crime. The T-shirts and Manson’s song in the Guns N’ Roses album do not qualify for seizure. […]
However in 1971, the son of Wojiciech (Voytek) Frykowski, one of the five Tate victims, got a $500,000 judgment against Manson and his four co-defendents. As a result of a writ of execution on the judgment (with interest worth $1,200,000 in 1994), in late February of 1994, the son, who lives in Germany, received his first royalty check for $72,000 from the Manson song in the Guns N’ Roses album. (pg 649)
If you did buy Manson merch, particularly when he was alive, how about you make a donation in at least the same amount to a racial justice charity, a domestic violence organization, cult-deprogramming organizations, and/or groups that work with unhoused teens?
________________________________________
On being taken to Patton State Hospital in January, sixteen-year-old Dianne Lake had been labeled a "schizophrenic" by a staff psychologist. Thought I knew the defense would probably try to use this to discredit her testimony, I wasn't too worried, since psychologists are not doctors and are not qualified to make medical diagnosis. The staff psychiatrists, who were doctors, said her problems were emotional, not mental: behavioral disorders of adolescence plus possible drug dependence. They also felt she had made excellent progress and were not sure she would be able to testify at the trial. (pg 394)
I admit I scratched my head about this. I'm guessing he means a psychologist is not a psychiatrist, and at the time there was a legal distinction about the diagnosis.
________________________________________
This is, as I said, an ongoing problem with the sensitivity (or lack there of) shown to victims in true crime reporting. This wasn't as much a conversation when this book was written, as it was nowhere near the "industry" it is now. But some of this is pretty bad, particularly in light of the fact Sharon's Tate's family is mentioned frequently.
During the first few days a total of forty-three officers would visit the crime scene, looking for weapons and other evidence. In searching the loft above the living room, Sergeant Mike McGann found a film can containing a roll of video-tape. Sergeant Ed Henderson took it to the Police Academy, which had screening facilities. The film showed Sharon and Roman Polanski making love. With a certain delicacy, the tape was not booked into evidence but was returned to the loft where it had been found. (pg 47)
Why mention that? Why do we need to know that they made a "sex tape"? I will guarantee you that one of the officers probably at least looked into making a copy of it.
I was going to quibble with a line about "Sharon Tate seeking fame but only in death did she find star billing" until I realized they meant it literally: to cash in on the notoriety of the murders, films in which she costarred or merely appeared now billed her above the title.
According to close friends, though Sharon Tate looked the part of the starlet, she didn’t live up to at least one portion of that image. She was not promiscuous. (pg 53)
Even if she was, she wouldn't deserve to be tortured and murdered. I'm presuming the "part of the starlet" refers to the infamous casting couch.
There was a darker side to Jay Sebring’s nature that surfaced during numerous interviews conducted by the police. As noted in the official report: “He was considered a ladies’ man and took numerous women up to his residence in the Hollywood hills. He would tie the women up with a small sash cord and, if they agreed, would whip them, after which they would have sexual relations.
[…]
LAPD never seriously considered Sebring’s odd sexual habits a possible cause of the murders.(pg 58)
And yet here they are, mentioned anyway. The fact Sebring was into BDSM is certainly juicy salacious celebrity gossip, but why bring it up after death about his murder? There are a number of factors that would be ruled out as having nothing to do with his murder.
________________________________________
Hollywood is a bitchy town. In interviewing acquaintances of the victims, LAPD would encounter an incredible amount of venom. (pg 56)
I feel like that quote explains the previous.
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A search warrant! Judge McMurray looked at it with amusement. This was the first one he had seen in eighteen years, he told us. In Inyo, he explained, men are men. If you knock on a door and the people inside don't want to let you in, you assume they are hiding something, and bust the door in. A search warrant indeed! But he read and signed it. (pg 174)
Yikes.
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By August [of 1952] he had committed eight serious disciplinary offenses, three involving homosexual acts. His progress report, if it could be called that, stated, "Manson definitely has homosexual and assaultive tendencies." He was classified "safe only under supervision." (pg 194)
I know, I know.
1974 and it's quoting 1952.
But I sort of thought the rape part would be more important than the gender of the victim part, particularly in 1974.
________________________________________
Judge Keene had a suggestion. He would arrange for an experienced attorney to confer with him. Unlike other attorneys to whom Manson had talked, this attorney would have no interest in representing him. His function would be solely to discuss with him the legal issues, and the possible dangers, of defending himself. Manson accepted the offer and, after court, Keene arranged for Joseph Bell, a former president of the State Bar Association and former senior counsel to the Warren Commission, to meet with Manson.
Manson talked to Ball and found him "a very nice gentleman," he told Judge Keene on the twenty-fourth. "Mr. Ball probably understands maybe everything there is to know about law, but he doesn't understand the generation gap; he doesn't understand free love society; he doesn't understand people who are trying to get out from underneath all of this..."
Ball, in turn, found Manson "an able, intelligent young man, quiet-spoken and mild-mannered..." Although he had attempted to persuade him, without success, that he could benefit from the services of a skilled lawyer, Ball was obviously impressed with Manson. "We went over the different problems of law, and I found he had a ready understanding... Remarkable understanding. As a matter of fact, he has a very fine brain. I complimented him on it he fact. I think I told you that he had a high IQ. Must have, to be able to converse as he did." Manson "is not resentful against society," Ball said. "And he feels that if he goes to trial and he is able to permit jurors and the Court to hear him and see him, they will realize his is not the kind of man who would perpetrate horrible crimes." (pg 272)
That's right, there's a direct link between the Kennedy Assassination and the Manson Family. Seriously.
________________________________________
Yet Charles Manson --revolutionary martyr-- was a difficult image to maintain. [legendary Yippie Jerry] Rubin admitted to being angered by Manson's "incredible male chauvinism." A reporter for the Free Press was startled to find Manson both anti-Jewish and anti-black. And when one interviewer tried to suggest that Manson was as much a political prisoner as Huey Newton, Charlie, obviously perplexed, asked, "Who's he?" (pg 298)
I thought this was kind of fascinating. Genuine revolutionaries and their supporters at first glance thought Manson was one of them. He looked the part, and knew some of the right lines, and was being prosecuted, right? But Manson on closer inspection had far more in common with the very systems they were trying to fight and those who got close got a rude awakening.
________________________________________
Unlike ex-Beatles John Lennon and Paul McCartney, George Harrison refused the authors permission to quote from the lyrics of any of his songs, including "Piggies." (pg 324)
I don't know why I find this funny, but I do. Lennon himself spoke about Manson (basically that he played into pre-existing social problems and used them to his benefit and he was basically akin to the weirdos who bought the "Paul is dead" thing) and McCartney said pretty much the same, including that he avoiding playing the song "Helter Skelter", which is about an amusement park ride, for a time because of its association to Manson. The Beatles, as you might imagine, play an interesting role in this case. It's not so much that Manson was a fan. He thought if given a chance, he could be even better than the Beatles. A good portion (if not most) of the motivation for the killings was his anger at his failed attempt to break into the music business. He claimed that the White Album referenced pretty much what he himself was already saying (and it helped he had already given Susan Atkins the name "Sadie" when the song "Sexy Sadie" came out). He was tying himself and his "mission" to an already vastly popular album from a group of which he was clearly jealous.
As to why George Harrison refused his lyrics but Lennon-McCartney did not, who knows? Was it residual resentment about the break-up? Did he not share his fellow song-writers' beliefs that the killings had nothing to do with him (and felt guilty?) Was worried about he association anyway, like McCartney avoiding playing the song live? I couldn't find an answer.
________________________________________
While Stephanie was getting her clothes together, Manson talked to her sister, who was a Beatles fan. She had the White Album, and Manson told her the Beatles had laid out "the whole scene" in it. [...]
Manson said, "People are going to be slaughtered, they'll be lying on their lawns dead."
Just a little over twenty-four hours later, his prediction would be fulfilled, in all its gory detail, at 10050 Cielo Drive. With a little help from his friends. (pg 368)
Oh, come on. That wasn't even in the White Album.
________________________________________
I asked Linda, "Why, between the time you reclaimed Tanya and the date of your arrest in December, didn't you contact the police and tell them what you knew about the murders?"
She was afraid of Manson, Linda said, afraid he might find and kill both her and Tanya. Also, she was pregnant, and didn't want to go through this ordeal until after the baby was born.
[...]
And even bigger question remained. "How could you leave your daughter in that den of killers?"
I was concerned not only with the jury's reaction to this, but also with the use to which the defense could put it. That Linda had left Tanya with Manson and the others at Spahn Ranch could be circumstantial evidence that she did not really believe them to be killers, clearly contradicting the main thrust of her testimony. Therefore both the question and her answer became extremely important.
Linda replied that she felt Tanya would be safe there, just so long as she did not go to the police. "Something within me told me that Tanya would be all right," Linda said, "that nothing would happen to her, and that now was the time to leave. I knew I would come back and get her. I was just confident that she would be all right." (pgs 382 and 383)
I'm glad this got answered, because this has always bothered me about Linda Kasabian. You just watched traumatized as these people murdered in cold blood and were terrified they'd kill you, so why leave your child there? It's still not quite an answer, but she wasn't exactly in her right mind when she was thinking of it. I'd be fascinated to hear what Linda Kasabian's daughter thinks about it today.
________________________________________
I saw Linda just after she arrived. Though her attorney, Gary Fleishman, had purchased a new dress for her, it had been misplaced, and she was wearing the same maternity dress she'd worn when pregnant. The baggy tent made her look more hippie-like than the defendants. After I'd explained the problem to Judge Older, he heard other matters in chambers until the dress was located and brought over. Later a similar courtesy would be extended to the defense when Susan Atkins lost her bra. (pg 420)
Boobs again! But fascinatingly, a dress looking too hippie-like being a reason to hunt down new attire for a witness. I know it goes to her appearance to the jury, but still.
________________________________________
The most effective cross-examination of Linda Kasabian was surprisingly that of Ronald Hughes. Though this was his first trial, and he frequently made procedural mistakes, Hughes was familiar with the hippie subculture, having been a part of it. He knew about drugs, mysticism, karma, auras, vibrations, and when he questioned Linda about these things, he made her look just a little odd, just a wee bit zingy. He had her admitting that she believed in ESP, that there were times at Spahn when she actually felt like a witch.
Q. "Do you feel that you are controlled by Mr. Manson's vibrations?"
A. "Possibly."
Q. "Did he put off a lot of vibes?"
A. "Sure, he's doing it right now."
HUGHES "May the record reflect, Your Honor, that Mr. Manson is merely sitting here."
KANAREK "He doesn't seem to be vibrating." (pg 437)
Hughes ended his cross-examination of Linda very effectively:
Q. "You have testified that you have had trips on marijuana, hash, THC, morning-glory seeds, psilocybin, LSD, mescaline, peyote, methedrine, and Romilar, is that right?"
A. "Yes."
Q. "And in the last year you have had the following major delusions; You have believed that Charles Manson is Jesus Christ, is that right?"
A. "Yes."
Q. "And you believed yourself to be a witch?"
A. "Yes."
HUGHES "Your Honor, I have no further questions at this time." (pg 438)
Yeah, I'm going to say a lot of this is very (and sometimes hilariously) of its time, thankfully. Also, interesting what has made it into our everyday language but what was once considered niche.
________________________________________
On her first visit to my office, about two months earlier, we'd talked about the Family credo: Sandy had maintained it was peace; I'd maintained it was murder, and had asked how she could stomach this.
"People are being murdered every day in Vietnam," she'd countered.
"Assuming for the sake of argument that the deaths in Vietnam are murders," I responded, "how does this justify murdering seven more people?" (pg 471)
Well, that aged terribly, Mr Bugliosi. About the deaths in Vietnam not being murder, I mean.
________________________________________
So let's remember again that this book was written in the mid 1970s. Less than thirty years, actually, since the end of World War II. Hitler being used as a comparison didn't quite have the same Godwin's Law principle of frivolousness, although I think Bugliosi's comparisons between Hitler and Manson are a bit of a stretch at best and a pretty shameless attempt to inflate his (Bugliosi's) own importance at worst.
Manson and the girls caused no disruptions during jury selection. In chambers during the individual voir dire, however, Manson would often stare at Judge Older for literally hours. I could only surmise that he had developed his incredible concentration while in prison. Older totally ignored him.
One day Manson tried it with me. I stared right back, holding his gaze until his hands started shaking. During the recess, I slid my chair over next to his and asked, "What are you trembling about, Charlie? Are you afraid of me?"
"Bugliosi," he said, "you think I'm bad and I'm not."
"I don't think you're bad, Charlie. For instance, I understand you love animals."
"Then you know I wouldn't hurt anyone," he said.
"Hitler loved animals too, Charlie. He had a dog named Blondie, and from what I've read, Adolf was very kind to Blondie." (pg 406 and 407)
And this issue is a bit more thorny, of Manson's possible father.
Manson had been sent to the institution [National Training School for Boys in Washington DC] in March 1951, when he was sixteen years old. In his admission summary, which was drawn up after he had been interviewed, there was a section on family background. The first two sentences read: "Father: unknown. He is alleged to have been a colored cook by the name of Scott, with whom the boy's mother had been promiscuous at the time of pregnancy."
Was Manson's father black? Reading through the rest of the records, I found two similar statements, though no additional details.
There were several possible explanations for the inclusion of this statement in Manson's records. The first was that it was totally erroneous; some bureaucratic snafu of which Manson himself may even have been unaware. Another possibility was that Manson had lied about this in his interviews, though I couldn't imagine any conceivable benefit he would derive, particularly in a reform school located in the South. It was also possible that it was true.
There was one further possibility, and in a sense it was even more important than whether the information was true or false. Did young Charles Manson believe it to be true? If so, this would go a long way toward explaining the genesis of his bizarre philosophy, in which the blacks finally triumph over the whites but eventually have to hand over the reins of power to Manson himself.
I knew only one thing for sure. Even had I received this information earlier, I wouldn't have used it. It was much too inflammatory. I did decide, however, to ask Manson himself about it, if I got the chance. (pgs 536 and 537)
Each of the Family witnesses denied that Manson hated blacks. But in the light of what I'd recently learned, several put it in a very curious way. When Fitzgerald asked Squeaky: "Did he love the black man or did he hate him?"
she had replied: "He loved them. He is his father-- the black man is Charlie's father." Gypsy had testified: "First of all, Charlie spent nearly all of his life in jail. So he got to know the black people very, very well. In fact, I mean, they were like his father, you know." Leslie had said something very similar adding: "If Charlie hated black people he would hate himself."
During a recess I asked Manson, "Charlie, was your father black?"
"What?" He seemed startled by the question, yet whether because it was such a crazy idea or because I'd found out something he didn't want known I couldn't tell. There was nothing evasive about his eventual response, however: he emphatically denied it.
He seemed to be telling the truth. Yet I wondered. I still do.(pg 565)
Stop trying to make a white supremacist somehow Black, sirs!
Both [Manson and Hitler] were racists; yet there is some evidence that both also believed they carried the blood of the very people they despised. Many historians believe that Hitler was secretly obsessed with the fear he had a Jewish ancestor. If Manson’s prison records are correct, he may have believed his father was black. (pgs 614 and 615 )
At some point parallels become more than coincidence. How much of this was conscious borrowing on Manson’s part, how much unconscious emulation, is unknown. I do believe that if Manson had had the opportunity, he would have become another Hitler. I can’t conceive of his stopping short of murdering huge masses of people. (pg 615)
I'm not saying that the two don't share similarities. I'm saying that it's a questionable conclusion to draw.
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As the parents [of the defendants] testified, one realized that they too were victims, just as were the relatives of the deceased. (pg 546)
Something that John Waters has that Bugliosi does not is time spent with both one of the killers who has long since realized what they've done, and their family, "happy to have her back from Manson, even if it's in prison." However, Bugliosi notes in 1974 what Waters did in 2010, that the families of the cult members had suffered a loss as well.
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Manson Family member Catherine Share:
"We are all facing the same sentence," she told the jury. "We are all in a gas chamber right here in L.A., a slow-acting one. The air is going away from us in every city. There is going to be no more air, and no more water, and the food is dying. They are poisoning you. The food you are eating is poisoning you. There is going to be no more earth, no more tree. Man, especially white man, is killing this earth." (pg 551)
Something about stopped clocks?
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”It is really laughable, ladies and gentlemen,” I began, “the way the three female defendants and the defense witnesses sought to take the hat [sic] off Charles Manson. [“] (pg 586)
There's a quite funny typo. I'm pretty sure that's taking the heat off from Manson. You can see how it slipped through, though.
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With the exception of the sentencing, the trial was over. It had been the longest murder trial in American history, lasting nine and half months; the most expensive, costing approximately $1 million; and, next to the Lindbergh kidnapping-murder case, the most highly publicized; while the jury had been sequestered 225 days, longer than any jury before it. The trial transcript alone ran to 209 volumes, 31, 716 pages, approximately eight million words, a mini-library (pg 594)
Out of curiosity, I wondered if this record had been surpassed in the more than fifty years since. While I couldn't find conclusively which trial currently holds the record for longest murder trail in American history, I did find that the OJ Simpson trial spanned eleven months.
For almost everyone, the ordeal was not only long but expensive. A number of the jurors, anticipating that they would be paid by their employers, now found themselves either unpaid or without jobs. Mrs. Roseland, for example, claimed that TWA did not honor a verbal agreement to keep her on salary until the end of the trial, and estimated she lost about $2,700 in back pay. TWA denied there was any such agreement. There were several such denials. (pg 594)
Hopefully, this is one of those things that would be less likely to happen today. I mean, probably not, but that's a comforting thought, right?
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Still another problem was Watson’s demeanor. In an obvious attempt to project a college-boy image, Watson dressed very conservatively in court-- short hair, shirt and tie, blue blazer, slacks. But he still looked strange. His eyes were glassy, and never seemed to focus. He reacted not at all to the damning testimony of such witnesses as Linda Kasabian, Paul Watkins, Brooks Poston, and Dianne Lake. And his mouth was always slightly gaping, giving him the appearance of being mentally retarded. (pgs 602 and 603)
My cross-examination so shook Tex that he often forgot he was supposed to be playing the idiot. By the time I finished, it was obvious to the jury that he was in complete command of his mental faculties and probably always had been. I also got him to admit that he had stabbed Sharon Tate too; that he didn’t think of the victims as people but as “just blobs”; that he had told Dr. Joel Fort that the people at the Tate residence “were running around like chickens with their heads cut off,” and that when he said this he had smiled; and I tore to shreds his story that he was simply an unthinking zombie programmed by Charles Manson, as well as cast considerable doubt on his claim that he now felt remorse for what he had done. (pg 603)
Oof, a time when that term was still used casually. Worth noting that Watson, like Leslie Van Houten and presumably other eventually-remorseful Family members, had to be considerably cult-deprogrammed in prison.
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In late July of 1971 my co-author learned from a Family member in the San Francisco Bay Area that the Family was planning to break out Manson sometime within the next month. (pg 605)
I'm guessing that's Bugliosi referring to Curt Gentry.
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Here's the thing. "Satanism" as it right now in organized membership, is largely a tongue-in-cheek atheist thing. Meaning that someone calling themselves a Satanist usually belongs to that.
Do I believe there are random weirdos doing harm that claim allegiance to Satan? Sure. Why not? Especially in a primarily Christian country like the United States. But a lot of this wasn't really known in either 1974 or even to an extent 1994, when the United States was fresh from the Satanic Panic.
In his psychiatric report on Susan Atkins, Dr. Joel Hochman wrote of a portion of her San Francisco period, apparently sometime in 1967 or 1968, before she too met Manson: “At this time she entered into what she now calls her Satanic period. She became involved with Anton LaVey, the Satanist.* She took part in a commercial production of a witch’s sabbath, and recalls the opening night when she took LSD. She was supposed to lie down in a coffin during the act, and lay down in it while hallucinating. She stated that she didn’t want to come out, and consequently the curtain was 15 minutes late. She stated that she felt alive and everything else in the ugly world was dead. Subsequently, she stayed on her ‘Satanic trip’ [for] approximately eight months…”
*LaVey, founder of the San Francisco-based First Church of Satan, is known, by those knowledgeable in such matters, more as a spectacular showman than as a demonic satanist. He has stated numerous times that he condemns violence and ritual sacrifice. (pgs 613 and 614)
I appreciate Bugliosi giving correct information about Anton LaVey, which kind of colors this whole thing as not quite the affiliation with Satanism that some would assume Manson would have (although attention-seeking was definitely his MO).
If Manson has continued to fascinate mainstream America, he has also done so with its fanatical elements. Today, almost every disaffected and morally twisted group in America, from Satanists to neo-Nazi skinheads, has embraced Manson and the poisons of his virulent philosophy.
[…]
Manson is indeed a hero to many on the jagged margins of our culture. In a 1994 interview, seventeen-year-old Natalie, a Satanist, says: “Charles Manson is an idol and role model.” The murders happened, she says, because “Manson wanted a new government and anarchy to clear out the garbage, the useless people.” Her twenty-year-old boyfriend, Robert, a fellow Satanist with whom she lives in San Francisco, adds about the Tate-LaBianca victims: “I feel that might is right, and whoever isn’t prepared to defend their own life shouldn’t cry when their life is taken.” (pgs 642 and 643)
Do I believe a seventeen-year-old with a twenty-year-old (!!!??) boyfriend she's living with (!!!!!) claiming to be a Satanist has ridiculous and disgusting views? Sure. Should Bugliosi specified about Satanism being a largely atheistic thing in 1994, post moral panic? Also yes.
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It's nearly impossible to get into ALL the updates to cases that were related to a highly publicized cult of killers which enjoy a media revival every few years in a book that's over forty-five years old, and the updates mentioned by Bugliosi that came in the 1994 edition (no updates were made about this with the 2001 note). But there are a few things to note.
Though it is known that a number of female Family members were involved in the “cleanup” operation that followed Shea’s murder, none has ever been tried as an accessory after the fact. Some are still on the streets today. (pgs 618 and 619)
Obviously, several of the Family members on the streets would find reform without a prison sentence. In 1977, Shea's body was recovered and the murderers who confessed and were convicted were Steve "Clem" Grogan and Bruce Davis, with the likely involvement of Tex Watson.
On November 16, 1969, the body of a young girl was found dumped over an embankment at Mulholland and Bowmont Drive near Laurel Canyon, in almost the same spot where [victim] Marina Habe's body was found. A brunette in her late teens, five feet nine, 115 pounds, she had been stabbed 157 times in the chest and throat. Ruby Pearl remembered seeing the girl with the Family at Spahn, and thought her name was "Sherry." [...]
The victim, who had been dead less than a day, became Jane Doe 59 in the police files. Her identity is still unknown. (pgs 618 and 619)
In 2016, the body of Jane Doe 59 was identified as that of 19-year-old Reet Jurvetson, and it's speculated that she did know the Family.
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Long before you could name famous Hollywood actors and performers as members of the Church of Scientology, long before there were documentaries about how cultlike former members found it, it was considered a bizarre sort of cult akin to (sensationalized) Satanism, at least by the authors. Did you know Manson had an interest in Scientology? Apparently he did.
On November 21, 1969, the bodies of James Sharp, fifteen, and Doreen Gaul, nineteen, were found in an alley in downtown Los Angeles. The two teen-agers had been killed elsewhere, with a long-bladed knife or bayonet, then dumped there. Each had been stabbed over fifty times.
Ramparts Division Lieutenant Earl Deemer investigated the Sharp-Gaul murders, as did Los Angeles Times reporter Cohen. Although the two men felt there was a good possibility that a Family member was involved in the slayings, the murders remain unsolved.
Both James Sharp and Doreen Gaul were Scientologists, the latter a Scientology “clear” who had been residing in a Church of Scientology house. According to unconfirmed reports, Doreen Gaul was a former girlfriend of Manson Family member Bruce Davis, himself an ex-Scientologist.
[…]
On December 1, 1969, Joel Dean Pugh, husband of Family member Sandy Good, was found with his throat slit in a London hotel room. As noted, local police ruled the death a suicide. On learning of Pugh’s demise, Inyo county DA Frank Fowles made official inquiries, specifically asking Interpol to check visas to determine if one Bruce Davis was in England at the time.
Scotland Yard replied as follows: “It has been established that Davis is recorded as embarking at London airport for the United States of America on 25th April 1969 while holding United States passport 612 2568. At this time he gave his address as Dormer Cottage, Felbridge, Surrey. This address is owned by the Scientology Movement and houses followers of this organization. (pgs 620 and 621)
To this day, all of these cases are apparently still unsolved.
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The Manson case was, and remains, unique. If, as Sandra Good claimed, the Family has to date committed thirty-five to forty murders, this may be near the U.S. record. Yet it is not the number of victims which makes the case intriguing and gives it its continuing fascination, but a number of other elements for which there is probably no collective parallel in the annals of American crime: the prominence of the victims; the months of speculation, conjecture, and pure fright before the killers were identified; the incredibly strange motive for the murders, to ignite a black-white Armageddon; the motivating nexus between the lyrics of the most famous rock group ever, the Beatles, and the crimes; and, behind it all, pulling the strings, a Mephistophelean guru who had the unique power to persuade others to murder for him, most of them young girls who went out and savagely murdered total strangers at his command, with relish and gusto, and with no evident signs of guilt or remorse-- all these things combine to make Manson perhaps the most frightening mass murderer and these murders perhaps the most bizarre in American history. (pg 626)
I feel like this is oddly going in the opposite direction of what Bugliosi seemed to mainly be going for in his 1994 afterward, to clear up some of the Manson mythos and misconceptions that had cemented in the twenty years since the book was written. It's almost a hype for Manson and given the fact Manson was still attracted delusional "fans" up until his death, it's also irresponsible. There were a lot of factors with this case in particular, but there are a lot of reasons it was overblown and many decades later is still buried under layers of misconception.
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Those who did join him were not, as noted, the typical boy or girl next door. Charles Manson was not a Pied Piper who suddenly appeared on the basketball court at Texas State, handed Charles Watson a tab of LSD, then led him into a life of crime. Watson had quit college with only a year to go, gone to California, immersed himself in the selling as well as the using of drugs, before he ever met Charles Manson. Not just Watson but nearly every other member of the Family had dropped out before meeting Manson. Nearly all had within them a deep-seated hostility toward society and everything it stood for which pre-existed their meeting Manson. (pg 626)
I get that the point of this is to debunk the scare-mongering “CHARLES MANSON COULD BE AFTER YOUR CHILD NEXT!” And that’s a good point to mention. But Manson sought out people who he felt were susceptible and groomed and programmed them. People have sold drugs (particularly in the 1960s) without going on to become mass murderers, coldly and methodically killing innocent people.
People can come from broken homes, come from troubled backgrounds, and hey, don’t at some point, particularly in our late teens and early twenties we’ve ALL had a “a deep-seated hostility toward society and everything it stood for”? And yet a cult leader didn’t find us and groom us, at least in most cases.
Paradoxically in trying to debunk the Manson mythos, Bugliosi oversimplifies one of the more nuanced and complex parts of the Manson story: how and why Manson brainwashed his followers.
Linda Kasabian had “dropped out” and came from a troubled background, yet as soon as there was killing involved, she was shocked and knew she wanted no part in it. Why was she and other Family members like her different? Manson sought out people susceptible and on the margins, but his programming didn’t always work, at least not completely.
In the John Waters essay, he describes both Tex Watson and particularly Leslie Van Houten as they were slowly deprogrammed. Van Houten described hearing things against Manson, things she didn’t want to believe and feeling her brain malfunction trying to understand. In this, the Manson Family aren’t unlike members of other cults that painfully return to reality. While Bugliosi compares Manson to other cults, he doesn’t mention this similarity, only the difference of Manson being unique in that he programmed his cult members to kill and unlike, say, Jim Jones, didn’t choose suicide at the end.
How the Manson Family came to be and why is a far more complicated and fascinating matter than Bugliosi (and in some places, his co-author) make it, more than just Manson “convincing unattractive girls they were beautiful.”
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With the frequent name changing and role playing, Manson created his own band of schizophrenics. Little Susan Atkins, who sand in the church choir and nursed her mother while she was dying of cancer, couldn’t be held responsible for what Sadie Mae Glutz had done. (pg 629)
I’m going to object to the use of the term “schizophrenics” in 1994.
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In his psychiatric report on Patricia Krenwinkle, Dr. Joel Hochman said that of the three girls Katie had the most tenuous hold on reality. It was his opinion that if she were ever separated from the others and the Manson mystique, it was quite possible she would lose even that, and lapse into complete psychosis.
With regard to Leslie Van Houten, who of the three girls was least committed to Manson, yet still murdered for him, I fear that she may grow harder and tougher; I have very little hope for her eventual rehabilitation.
Writing of Susan Atkins, Los Angeles Times reporter Dave Smith expressed something which I had long felt. “Watching her behavior-- bold and actressy in court, cute and mincing when making eye-play with someone, a little haunted when no one pays attention-- I get the feeling that one day she might start screaming and simply never stop.” (pg 634)
And in the 1994 afterward:
Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Leslie Van Houten, like Watson, have each renounced Manson and expressed remorse for the killings. (pg 656)
What a difference cult deprogramming makes.
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That Manson, Watson, Beausoleil, Davis, Grogan, Atkins, Van Houten, and Krenwinkle will be eligible for parole in 1978 does not mean that they will get it, only that this I the earliest date they will be eligible to apply. The average incarceration in California for first degree murder is ten and a half to eleven years. Because of the hideous nature and umber of their crimes, and the total absence of mitigating circumstances, my guess is that all will serve substantially longer periods; the girls fifteen to twenty years, the men-- with the exception of Manson himself-- a like number.*
*The reason I formed this opinion when this book was published in 1974 was that California had one of the very worst records in the country for keeping convicted murderers behind bars. The situation changed overnight in 1978 when, pursuant to an initiative from the people of the state, the California legislature enacted section 190 of the California Penal Code, increasing the minimum of time that had to be served for a first-degree murder conviction almost four-fold, from seven to twenty-five years. Though section 190 was not technically retroactive to the Tate-Labianca killers, it in effect was, since it dramatically changed the thinking and attitude of the state parole board with respect to the proper length of incarceration for convicted murders. My current (2001), uniformed estimate is that Van Houten, who was not involved in the Tate murders, will be released within the next ten years, and Atkins and Krenwinkle within the next twenty to twenty-five years. As for Watson and Manson, I believe they will spend the rest of their lives behind bars. (pg 636)
I cite this for two reasons. One, the insufferable “girls vs men” nonsense again (Steve “Clem” Grogan, incidentally, is several years younger than any of the “Girls”) but also this is the only note I saw that indicates there was a 2001 version of the book.
Also, Bugliosi's 2001 predictions can already be evaluated. Van Houten is still in prison over twenty years after Bugliosi's update, Krenwinkle passed twenty but might make it out before twenty-five (if ever a California governor is willing to take the risk of paroling a Manson Family killer). Atkins died in prison in 2009, and Manson did spend the rest of his life behind bars, dying in 2016.
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A view that’s enjoyed some currency is that the murders represent a watershed moment in the evolving social structure of our society. This view holds that the Manson case was the “end of innocence” (the ‘60s mantra of love, peace, and sharing) in our country, and sounded the death knell for hippies and all they symbolically represented. In Joan Didion’s memoir of the era, The White Album, she writes: “Many people I know in Los Angeles believe that the Sixties ended abruptly on August 9, 1969… and in a sense this is true.” Even now, in 1994, ABC’s Diane Sawyer endorses this notion when she says the Manson murders “brought an end to the decade of love,” and “something changed in the heart of America” with the murders.
Others feel, less extravagantly, that the murders were emblematic of the counterculture flower gone to seed. As Time magazine said in 1989 on the twentieth anniversary of the murders, the three female killers were “any family’s daughters, caught up in the wave of drugs, sex and revolutionary blather that had swept up a generation of young people.”
Or, some thought for a time after the murders, perhaps Manson and his disciples represented a ten- or twenty-year extrapolation of the direction in which the counterculture movement was going. And so forth.
All of these hypotheses seem to be devoid of supporting empirical evidence. For instance, although the Manson murders may have hastened its descent, the Age of Aquarius, of which Woodstock (one week after the Manson carnage) was at once its finest hour and last gasp, was already in decline. As the decade of dissent and raw excess approached its denouement, the movement’s mecca, Haight-Ashbury, was in ruins, and America had begun its retreat from the war in Vietnam-- the political raison d’etre fueling the movement. Moreover, Manson and the madness he wrought did not reflect the soul of the late ‘60s, when admittedly the anti-establishment movement had reached a feverish crescendo. That movement indeed wanted a new social order, but largely one brought about by peaceful means. Manson advocated violence, murder, to change the status quo. As pointed out in the body of this book, though Manson was a hero to some, according to surveys at the time a majority of young people whom the media labeled “hippies” disavowed Manson, stating that what he espoused, i.e. violence, was antithetical to their beliefs.*
*Although I view Manson as an aberration who could have occurred at any time, the late ‘60s obviously provided a much more fertile soil for someone like Manson to emerge. It was a period when the sex and drug revolution, campus unrest and civil rights demonstrations, race riots, and all the seething discontent over Vietnam seemed to collide with each other in a stormy turbulence. And Manson, in his rhetoric, borrowed heavily from these fermentations. (pgs 638 and 639)
I thought this was an interesting take more or less free of the nostalgia goggles the Manson murders would later acquire, about what they meant in context of the 1960s. Of course, to individual people, there’s no arguing that for them, things felt differently after Manson and that’s a valid take so long as it retains its singularity (for them) and doesn’t attempt to become a truism.
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One big difference from 1974 to 1994 is the coining and subsequent public awareness of the term “serial killer”, a term that was suddenly ubiquitous in 1994. While Manson (and his Family) are often described as “serial killers”, the actual terminology is a bit thornier and would probably exclude them (two/three or more killings with a significant waiting period between murders). Bugliosi however does not bother with the newer term, correct or not. Manson and his Family are mass murderers. Of course, they aren’t exactly comparable to serial killers like Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy, though, who not only worked alone but who fit the description of waiting period. And yet Bugliosi compares them anyway:
In searching for a more prosaic explanation for the seemingly timeless resonance of the case, observers have pointed to the fact that Manson and his minions may have murdered as many as thirty-five people and already had plans to murder celebrities like Frank Sinatra, Liz Taylor, Richard Burton, Steve McQueen, and Tom Jones. But apart from the planned celebrity killings, murders by other mass murderers numbering in the twenties and one in the thirties (John Wayne Gacy, thirty-three) have been confirmed. (pg 640)
Although all of these elements have undoubtedly contributed to the durability of the case, I believe the main reason for the continuing fascination with it at such a late date is that the Manson murder case I almost assuredly the most bizarre mass murder case in the recorded annals of crime. And for whatever reason, people are magnetically fascinated by things that are strange and bizarre. (pg 640)
With other prominent mass murderers-- from Charles Starkweather, David Berkowitz, Henry Lee Lucas, Charles Whitman, and Richard Speck to Ted Bundy; from Juan Corona, Dean Corll, Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo, John Wayne Gacy, and Richard Ramirez to Jeffry Dahmer-- without exception they committed the murders by themselves or participated with others in the act. (pg 641)
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On a lesser scale, why are there so many popular books and crime shows on television dealing with murder-- evil’s most ultimate act? (pg 641)
This appears to be a recurring theme of true crime authors not realizing why people are interested in true crime, which is frankly bizarre, particularly to people who have made a study of human nature like Vincent Bugliosi and Ann Burgess. People generally are fascinated by it because of fear confrontation. You take a horrific fear and you put it in a comfortable environment (a TV show, a book) and people can consume their fear. It’s not a terribly hard-to-grasp concept.
I’m assuming that Bugliosi refers to “evil’s ultimate act” as murder in a legal sense.
Not to get too philosophical here, but you can murder someone out of self defense or in fear of the lives of others, but you can’t do the same with sexual violence.
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In early January of 1994, the industrial hard rock group Nine Inch Nails recorded their most recent album, Downward Spiral, at the former Tate residence. Trent Reznor, lead singer and songwriter for the band, says that although he called the jerry-built studio constructed for the recording of the album “Le Pig,” and although there are songs on the album like “Piggy” and “March of the Pigs” with confrontational lyrics (the word “pig” was printed in blood by the killers on the front door of the Tate residence and the words “death to pigs” on the living room wall of the LaBianca residence), this was all a coincidence-- that the realtor through whom he leased the home failed to tell him it had been the scene of the Tate murders. The “Le Pig” studio was also used by a hard rock group called Marilyn Manson in which lead singer Mr. Manson recorded the vocals for its soon-to-be-released album Portrait of an American Family. (pg 667)
To be fair, Trent Reznor always had a “thing” about pigs that seems unrelated to Manson. Bugliosi couldn’t have known this at the time, but Reznor was approached by Sharon Tate’s sister around this time, questioning why he was living where her sister was murdered. Reznor admitted later that he had thought of the house as a piece of interesting American folklore, and it never hit him personally what had happened there. Horrified then, he sold the house, and it was later demolished and a new one rebuilt with a new address.
Reznor would also break ties with Marilyn Manson years later after the multiple allegations of abuse, and would do the same with Johnny Depp.
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In the twenty-five years that have elapsed since the atrocities which Charles Manson ordered and masterminded occurred, mass murder, as never before, has almost become a staple in our society. Disgruntled or demented killers flip out, go into a former place of employment, fast-food establishment, law firm, etc., and murder five to ten people or more. Such carnage no longer shocks a sensitized public when reported on the evening news. But fortunately, as of this date, the singularity of Manson’s evil and the particular brand of demonic murders he authored have not been inflicted upon our nation. We can only hope that the ensuing years will be the same. (pg 670)
Again, Bugliosi in trying to debunk Manson mythos adds to it. The way media was consumed was different in 1994 than it was in 1969. Media itself was different in 1994. Unfortunately mass shootings are absolutely something that had gotten worse and that has gotten worse since 1994, but that’s a different entity again than the Manson murders and conflating the two doesn’t serve anything.
There have been other hyped murder trials since Manson; the year Bugliosi published those words would see one of the most hyped of all time (that would be The People vs OJ Simpson).
The Manson murders were unique for a number of factors, the same way any indelible cultural event (good or bad) is unique, and trying to compare it to other very different atrocities has the opposite effect of what I think Bugliosi was attempting.
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Interestingly, the 1994 afterward contains Squeaky Fromme’s failed assassination attempt and updates on the advocacy of the Tate family for the other families of the victims of the murders, but contains no mention whatsoever of Roman Polanski’s own troubles with the law, troubles for which he is still out of this country.
I wondered at this omission, but I’m assuming Bugliosi didn’t want it to distract from the fact Polanski’s wife, their unborn baby, and their friends were murdered, and in this particular case, Polanski is a victim.
Not that in any way that justifies or excuses what Polanski ultimately did, but perhaps Bugliosi felt it added nothing to comment.
Final Grade: B
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