Chaos

A journalist spends twenty years researching the Manson family murders and other crimes surrounding those, throwing the official trial story and the book Helter Skelter into doubt.

I finished the book feeling bad for O'Neill who, while succeeding in showing that Bugliosi was probably full of it, never finds any confirmed answers to his questions.

Reallllly interesting. Did I get any actual answers to any of my questions? No. Do I have even more questions than I did to start? Yes. I feel reinvigorated around a story which has gotten so tired and gone over it isn't even funny. Lots of new information in this book. That said: I'm not entirely sure that the author isn't just a conspiracy theorist chasing something a bit farther than needed.

Reading this book made me feel like a legit conspiracy theorist



It is by nature kind of a frustrating book to read because so much of it is investigating dead leads or pieces of evidence that were ultimately destroyed? It gives you a real sense of how the 20 years of research involved made Tom O'Neill feel like he was losing it...

Reading this definitely convinced me that the CIA in the 60s was WACK (as it probably is now...) but O'Neill doesn't have enough information to make any clear conclusions. Which, I respect him for not exaggerating or drawing any false conclusions but it's also kind of unsatisfying to read a book whose conclusion is kind of just ¯_(ツ)_/¯

I guess I'd really only recommend this if you're really into like the grunt work of true crime investigations and/or Charles Manson?

This book is interesting, I'll give it that. But it is very difficult to follow and inconclusive. I think this book would have worked better in two parts: as a tear down of Helter Skelter and as an investigation into CIA operations and how that connects to Manson. It kind of is written that way but it all blends together too much and could have used more in depth reporting into both areas.

I understand why O'Neill couldn't go too hard at Bugliosi and I understand why he couldn't frame his own theory about what all happened in the Manson investigation. But I think the book suffers for this and O'Neill purposefully ignores writing a compelling narrative in order to get all the facts he's found on paper. Which is fine but again it makes for a much less interesting read. If you find all of this information that points to a cover up, I wanna know why it needs to be covered up. 

Manson is a part of the 60s I never paid much attention to. I knew his name and sinister acts, but not in detail. This book was mind blowing - not only because of how I managed to evade so much of this information when reading other accounts of events from this decade, but also how deep it all went (and still goes). The web seems to intertwine with other happenings around that time, too, and paints a much bigger picture. I hope there will be a follow up book in years to come.