Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders

Chopped stars off my rating after reading [b:Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties 43015073 Chaos Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties Tom O'Neill https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1543561687l/43015073.SY75.jpg 66837472]. Bugliosi was not only a stalker and a woman beater, but he committed so many deliberate legal errors in the Manson trails that the defendants deserve new trials, and he should have been disbarred. What I read in [a:Tom O'Neill 623923 Tom O'Neill https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png]'s book about his suppressed evidence and created motives, findings verified by attorney Stephen Kay, horrified me. No matter what the Manson defendants did–and what they did was horrible–they deserved fair trials. And they didn't receive them by half, thanks to Bugliosi. There are proven lies in Helter Skelter.Verily, I am shooketh. And disgusted.

Any true crime buff will tell you that you must read this book, but no one ever says why, at least in my experience. It's on every list as a true crime classic, and it definitely deserves that spot. Bugliosi goes into extreme detail of the Manson murders, the investigation, the formation and dynamics of the Manson family (which I find to be a fascinating study of human behavior), and the trials. There is basically no answerable question left unanswered. Bugliosi even provides an in-depth “Cast of Characters” and timeline at the start of the book, so you may refer to it at any time to help remember who anyone is or where you are in time, even if it's been a while since you last put down the book. The length can be daunting and is the biggest criticism I have, if you can call it that.

The definitive account of the Tate-LaBianca murders is Helter Skelter, written by Vincent Bugliosi with Curt Gentry. It's hard to imagine a more knowledgeable source: Bugliosi was the prosecutor who successfully convicted Manson and his girls (some of them, anyways) for the murders and sentenced to death, later commuted by the California Supreme Court to life in prison. While most of us are familiar with the broad outlines of the case (particularly the parts that concerned Sharon Tate, the extremely pregnant wife of Roman Polanski), Bugliosi fills in all the details: the people at the Polanski/Tate residence besides Sharon who were murdered, and the LaBiancas, and the grisly details, and a general idea of why. He can't give us exactly why, because only Manson knows and he never told before he died.

The book takes us through the process from start to finish: the discovery of the bodies, the investigations, the eventual linkage of the two sets of murders, how the Manson Family's involvement was discovered, how the motive was unearthed, the charges, the trial, the sentencing, and the aftermath. If you're looking for a narrative perspective from the perspectives of the killers, that's not what you'll find here. It never really gets in the heads of Manson or his girls, and it couldn't, because they never really opened up to the prosecution team. There are still questions by the end of it, but they aren't questions that can be answered from the outside.

Helter Skelter is a big book, over 600 pages, but it reads fairly quickly. The writing is nimble, and though it doesn't scrimp from talking about some details of blood type analysis or fingerprinting as it applies to the case, it doesn't get bogged down in technicality. The biggest single flaw of the book is Bugliosi's self-aggrandizement. He clearly did a phenomenal amount of work and won a case that could have easily gone the other way if Manson hadn't been a difficult client for his lawyer to work with, but he definitely spends more time than is really necessary bemoaning the investigative deficits of the police and making sure the reader knows how much of the case was 100% a result of his own handiwork. By the end I'd started literally rolling my eyes whenever Bugliosi gave himself a big pat on the back. At the end of the day, it's an incredibly detailed account of the crime for anyone who's interested in reading one, though if your interest is in true crime generally rather than this crime specifically it might not be the best investment of reading time.