Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties

by Tom O'Neill

I wasn’t a seasoned crime reporter. Most of what I knew about the criminal justice system I’d gleaned from the news, police procedurals, and legal thrillers. So I went to Kimberly Kupferer, the chairman of the criminal law section for the California State Bar, and asked her to walk me through the standard operating procedure in murder investigations. Kupferer contradicted Guenther on every point. She said it was standard practice to go to a murder suspect’s last residence—whether “it’s a ranch, motel room, or rat hole”—to search for evidence, especially in a robbery-homicide, like the Hinman case was. The fact that the detectives didn’t go was “highly unusual,” in her estimation.