As unrepentant as the women were, Bugliosi had his work cut out for him when it came to securing the death penalty. His reasoning relied on a seeming contradiction. He’d argued during the first phase of the trial that the women were “brainwashed zombies,” totally in Manson’s thrall. Now he had to prove the opposite: that they were as complicit as Manson was. Although they were “automatons,” Bugliosi said, “slavishly obedient to Manson’s every command,” the women still had, “deep down inside themselves,” such “bloodlust” that they deserved the death penalty.
