The story of Manson and Melcher starts with Dennis Wilson. By the summer of 1968, Wilson, then twenty-three, had reached an impasse. He’d become world famous as the drummer for the Beach Boys, helmed by his brother Brian; now the band was in decline, edged out by more subversive acts. He and his wife, Carole, had recently divorced for the second time. She wrote in court filings that he had a violent temper, inflicting “severe bodily injury” on her during his “rampages.”
