Helter Skelter

by Vincent Bugliosi

W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

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.

was the housekeeper at 10050 Cielo, and she was upset because, thanks to L.A.’s terrible bus service, she was going to be late to work.

he mistakenly identified her as Mrs. Chapman, the Negro maid.

Contrary to popular opinion, a readable print is more rare than common.

In literature a murder scene is often likened to a picture puzzle. If one is patient and keeps trying, eventually all the pieces will fit into place. Veteran policemen know otherwise. A much better analogy would be two picture puzzles, or three, or more, no one of which is in itself complete. Even after a solution emerges—if one does—there will be leftover pieces, evidence that just doesn’t fit. And some pieces will always be missing.

The drug theories seemed to make the most sense. In the investigation that followed, as the police interviewed acquaintances of the victims, and the victims’ habits and life styles emerged

into clearer focus, the possibility that drugs were in some way linked to the motive became in some minds such a certainty that when given a clue which could have solved the case, they refused even to consider it.

Autopsy reports are abrupt documents. Cold, factual, they can indicate how the victims died, and give clues as to their last hours, but nowhere in them do their subjects emerge, even briefly, as people.

in 1962, Polanski became known as the playboy director. A friend would later recall him leafing through his address book, saying, “Who shall I gratify tonight?” Another friend observed that Polanski’s immense talent was matched only by his ego. Non-friends, who were numerous, had stronger things to say.

That Sunday a Los Angeles Times reporter who had known Sharon described her as “an astonishingly beautiful woman with a statuesque figure and a face of great delicacy.” But then he didn’t see her as Coroner Noguchi did.

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.

Cause of death: Exsanguination—victim literally bled to death.

She became depressed over how little such work actually accomplished, how big the problems stayed. “A lot of social workers go home at night, take a bath, and wash off their day,” she told an old San Francisco friend. “I can’t. The suffering gets under your skin.”

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

Yet within twenty-four hours the police would decide there was no connection between the two sets of murders.

A cloud of fright hung over southern California more dense than its smog. It would not dissipate for months.

One little presumption, but it would cause many, many problems later.

A small detail, which later would become extremely important.

(If one believed all the subsequent talk, half of Hollywood was invited to 10050 Cielo Drive for a party that night, and, at the last minute, changed their minds.

there was no party that night, nor was one ever planned. But LAPD probably spent a hundred man-hours attempting to locate people who allegedly attended the non-event.)

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

“You have to have a real love in your heart to do this for people.” SUSAN ATKINS, telling Virginia Graham why she stabbed Sharon Tate

The complications this simple misunderstanding would later cause would be immense.

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.

“I had a ball,” he later admitted. Manson’s girls had been taught that having babies and caring for men were their sole purpose in life.

“Donkey Dan,”* a nickname they had bestowed upon him because of certain physical endowments.

Charlie “had a thing” about interracial marriages, and blacks. (“Charlie had two enemies,” DeCarlo said, “the police and the niggers, in that order.”)

It was now past midnight on Tuesday, November 18, 1969. I was already asleep, unaware that in a few hours, as a result of a meeting between the DA and his staff that morning, I would be handed the job of prosecuting the Tate-LaBianca killers.

First time the book tells Vincent's story in the first person.

“No sense makes sense.” CHARLES MANSON

By now the reader knows a great deal more about the Tate-LaBianca murders than I did on the day I was assigned that case. In fact, since large portions of the foregoing story have not been made public before this, the reader is an insider in a sense highly unusual in a murder case. And, in a way, I’m a newcomer, an intruder.

The sudden switch from an unseen background narrator to a very personal account is bound to be a surprise. The best way to soften it, I suspect, would be to introduce myself;

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

Occasionally writers refer to “motiveless crimes.” I’ve never encountered such an animal, and I’m convinced that none such exists. It may be unconventional; it may be apparent only to the killer or killers; it may even be largely unconscious—but every crime is committed for a reason. The problem, especially in this case, was finding it.

Great passage. People always do things for a reason. It may be irrational but there is always a reason.

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.

Although very frightened, Barbara agreed to cooperate with us. That cooperation would nearly cost her life.

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.

Creepy moment. The author admits that Manson got under even his skin.

Domination. Unless we could prove this, beyond all reasonable doubt, we’d never obtain a conviction against Manson.

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

told me how much he had loved Sharon. “Not romantic, but”—he apologized for his broken English—“one human being loving qualities other human being has.” I told him I doubted if it could be better expressed.

There could be no question that Charles Manson saw Sharon Tate, and she him. Sharon had undoubtedly looked right into the eyes of the man who would order her death.

As with Jakobson, I queried Poston as to the sources of Manson’s philosophy. Scientology, the Bible, and the Beatles.

Manson used LSD “trips,” Paul said, to instill his philosophies, exploit weaknesses and fears, and extract promises and agreements from his followers.

There was a simpler explanation. In England, home of the Beatles, “helter skelter” is another name for a slide in an amusement park.

“Before Helter Skelter came along,” Watkins said with a sigh of wistful nostalgia, “all Charlie cared about was orgies.”

When a witness takes the stand and tells the truth, even though it is injurious to his own image, you know he can’t be impeached.

Linda said she couldn’t do it. “I’m not you, Charlie,” Linda told Manson. “I can’t kill anybody.”

The heart of our case against Manson was the “vicarious liability” rule of conspiracy—each conspirator is criminally responsible for all the crimes committed by his co-conspirators if said crimes were committed to further the object of the conspiracy.

Sandra Good suddenly appeared in the corridor and screamed, “You’ll kill us all; you’ll kill us all!” Linda, according to those who witnessed the encounter, seemed less shaken than sad.

The most reported quote was that of Manson, who had passed a statement to the press via one of the defense attorneys. Mimicking Nixon’s remarks, it was unusually short and to the point: “Here’s a man who is accused of murdering hundreds of thousands in Vietnam who is accusing me of being guilty of eight murders.”