Helter Skelter

by Vincent Bugliosi

It was so quiet, one of the killers would later say, you could almost hear the sound of ice rattling in cocktail shakers in the homes way down the canyon.

Cause of death: Multiple stab wounds of the chest and back, penetrating the heart, lungs, and liver, causing massive hemorrhage. Victim was stabbed sixteen times, five of which wounds were in and of themselves fatal.

It was an odd group, their leader, a guy named Charlie, apparently having convinced them that he was Jesus Christ.

It listed eleven suspects, the last of whom was one MANSON, CHARLES.

As Virginia understood it, there was this group, these chosen people, that Charlie had brought together, and they were elected, this new society, to go out, all over the country and all over the world, to pick out people at random and execute them, to release them from this earth. “You have to have a real love in your heart to do this for people,” Susan explained.

“The primary duty of a lawyer engaged in public prosecution is not to convict, but to see that justice is done…”

The morning Charles Manson was to be freed, he begged the authorities to let him remain in prison. Prison had become his home, he told them. He didn’t think he could adjust to the world outside.

Midway through the arraignment I looked at my watch. It had stopped. Odd. It was the first time I could remember that happening. Then I noticed that Manson was staring at me, a slight grin on his face. It was, I told myself, simply a coincidence.

The irony was that Manson never considered himself a hippie, equating their pacifism with weakness.

in my opening statement: “What about Charles Manson’s followers, the other defendants in this case, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Leslie Van Houten? “The evidence will show that they, along with Tex Watson, were the actual killers of the seven Tate-LaBianca victims. “The evidence will also show that they were very willing participants in these mass murders, that by their overkill tactics—for instance, Rosemary LaBianca was stabbed forty-one times, Voytek Frykowski was stabbed fifty-one times, shot twice, and struck violently over the head thirteen times with the butt of a revolver—these defendants displayed that even apart from Charles Manson, murder ran through their own blood.”

“The palest ink is better than the best memory,”