http://www.newsweek.com/id/209940
'Helter Skelter' author Vincent Bugliosi looks back.
Aug 1, 2009
The leaves were turning on the summer of love. Vietnam was droning
on. Racial unrest was rising. And then, it happened: a crime so
heinous, it sent shock waves through the country that are still
palpable today. The Manson "family" murders are more than grisly
crimes. They marked the close of an era. As Joan Didion wrote in her
memoir of the time, The White Album, the '60s "ended abruptly on
August 9, 1969," the evening Sharon Tate and four others were
brutally slaughtered in cold blood, a night before another round of
senseless killing claimed two more lives.
Vincent Bugliosi, the chief prosecutor in the case, secured
first-degree murder convictions against Manson and his codefendants;
the jury returned verdicts of death, which were subsequently reduced
to life imprisonment when California set aside the death penalty in
1972. Bugliosi went on to co-author a book about the case with Curt
Gentry titled Helter Skelter (after the Beatles song name printed in
blood at one of the murder scenes), which became, according to his
publisher, the bestselling true-crime book of all time. Bugliosi
spoke with NEWSWEEK's Tom Watson on the eve of the 40th anniversary
of the Manson murders about what it was like to prosecute the case,
and why Manson's chaotic charisma continues to attract global
attention to this day.
Watson: Set the scene for us. What was the mood of the country, and
of Los Angeles, on the eve of the Manson murders?
Bugliosi: I can't speak for the rest of the country, but I can tell
you that in L.A., it was a time of relative innocence. I've heard
many people say that prior to these murders, there were areas of the
city where folks literally did not lock their doors at night. That
ended with the Tate-LaBianca murders. The killings were so terribly
brutal and savage: 169 stab wounds, seven gunshot wounds. They
appeared to be random, with no discernible conventional motive. That
induced a lot of fear throughout the city of Los Angeles,
particularly in Bel Air and Beverly Hills, the heart of the movie
colony, where the Tate murders happened (the LaBianca murders
happened across town, near Griffith Park). Names were dropped from
guest lists. Parties were canceled. No one knew if the killers were
among them. Overnight, the sale of guns and guard dogs rose dramatically.
Why did the crimes penetrate so deeply in the American psyche? How
did the culture change in the immediate aftermath?
I was just involved prosecuting one murder case after another, so I'm
not someone who's a sociologist. But the killings tapped a feeling of
dread … if you're not safe in your own home, where are you safe? And
the very thought of young women dressed in black, armed with sharp
knives, entering the homes of complete strangers in the middle of the
night and mercilessly stabbing them to death … it's difficult to even
contemplate a thought like that.
The other thing that terrified the nation so much is when the
identity of the killers became known. And who were they? Young kids
from average American homes with fairly good backgrounds. There was a
feeling that this could be our own children. Tex Watson, Manson's
"chief lieutenant" at the murder scene, was from Farmersville, Texas,
hometown of World War II hero Audie Murphy. Watson was a football,
basketball, and track star. He had almost an A average in high
school. And when the people in Farmersville learned he was being
charged with these murders, the general consensus was this is
absolutely impossible, it must be a case of mistaken identity.
Patricia Krenwinkelanother one of the main killersher father was an
insurance executive; she sang in the church choir; got good grades in
school; at one time she even wanted to attend a Jesuit college in
Alabama. Leslie Van Houtenanother killershe was a homecoming
princess at Monrovia High School here in L.A.
How did Manson seduce these kids?
Manson is this 5-foot-2 guru with a long and checkered criminal
history. He gets out of Terminal Island federal penitentiary off Long
Beach, Calif., in 1967, goes up to the Haight-Ashbury district of San
Francisco. He's got his guitar, and his street rap, and he singsa
pretty good composer of music, by the way. Guns N' Roses and the
Beach Boys have recorded Manson songs. So he mesmerizes these young
kids and tells them things they can identify withabout the need for
the preservation of wildlife, that there's pollution of the
environment by big corporations, that the poor man's fighting the
rich man's war in Vietnam …. Their lifestyle was sex orgies and LSD
trips. He convinces them he's the second coming of Christ and the
devil all wrapped up into one person, and ultimately, as you know, he
gets them to kill for him. He tells them the purpose for these
murders is to start a war between blacks and whites, which he called
Helter Skelter, after the Beatles song.
Fast-forward to the trial. What was the atmosphere at the courthouse,
and the most dramatic moments in prosecuting the case?
It was the longest murder trial we'd ever had in America up to that
point: nine months. And it was the most expensive up to that point,
at $1 million. Outside the courthouse, there was a group of Manson
family members conducting a 24-hour-a-day vigil for him. The media
was interviewing them every day. Manson came into court one day with
an X carved into his forehead, and the next day they all had X's on
their foreheads. One day during the trial, he got ahold of a sharp
pencil, and from a standing position, he leaps over the counsel's
table with this pencil and starts approaching the judge. The bailiffs
immediately tackled him and, as they were dragging him out of the
courtroom, he shouted to the judge: "In the name of Christian
justice, someone should chop off your head." The judge started
carrying a .38-caliber revolver under his robe in court after that.
Even President Nixon got into the act. He was in Denver at a
law-enforcement convention. He gives his opinion that he thought
Manson was guilty. Ronald Ziegler, his press secretary, tried
afterward to correct that, saying that the president meant to say
allegedly guilty. But it had gone out over the wires. The main
headline in the Los Angeles Times: MANSON GUILTY, NIXON DECLARES.
Manson got ahold of that paperno one knows howstands up in front of
the jury with a little silly grin on his face, and shows the jury the
headline. It was almost as if he was somehow proud the president had
taken notice.
Then near the end of the trial, a defense attorney vanishes from the
face of the earth. Ronald Hughes was the defense attorney for
codefendant Leslie Van Houten. The judge said, "Well, we're going to
have to be in recess." Every morning we were hoping that poor Hughes
would walk through the courtroom door, but he never did. So the judge
had to appoint a substitute lawyer to take his place. On the last day
of the trial, Hughes's body was found out in the forest, but the
Ventura County coroner's office was unable to determine the cause of
death because of the decomposition … I can't say positively one way
or the other, but my leaning is that Hughes was murdered by the Manson family.
Give us an example of how widespread the interest in the case has
been over the years.
Let me tell you a story. Years ago, I spoke at a book convention in
Richmond, Va. I arrived at the station at the same time as William
Manchester and Arthur Schlesinger, both Pulitzer Prize winners. The
whole cab ride, Manchester and Schlesinger are tossing me questions
about Charles Manson. That's all they wanted to talk about: tell me
about him. Tell me about his eyes. Did you ever talk to him? How did
he get control over these people?
Have you talked with Manson since the trial?
No. He wrote me four letters. I didn't respond to any of them; I
turned them over to the Department of Corrections... The latest one
could have been 20 years ago. [Bugliosi declined to discuss the
letters' contents.]
Leslie Van Houten comes up for parole soon. Have you ever gone to a
hearing for one of the family members?
No. If it came down to a point where they were seriously considering
releasing, let's say, Manson or Watson, I would intervenenot that I
have any clout at all. But I would write to the governor. But it's
not going to happen.
Place Manson in the pantheon of American criminal outlaws.
Most mass murderers have turned out to be of rather low
intellectdrifters, loners. Basically, they committed the murders for
one reason only: to satisfy their own homicidal tendencies. Manson
not only is very brightbut as misdirected as his violence was, his
murders were revolutionary, political, and therein lies his main
appeal to those on the fringes. The other thing that has separated
him is the fact that all these other mass murderers committed the
murders by themselves. Manson, on the other hand, was pulling strings
and getting people to go out and kill strangers at his command
without asking any questions. And that makes him more frightening to people.
And people are frightened of his impact still.
Let me just read to you a letter I received from the BBC in 1994.
This reporter wrote to me about many British and German rock bands
playing Manson songs and songs in support of him. "For some reason
the neo-Manson cult seems to center in Manchester, where there are
five stores selling 'Free Charles Manson' t-shirts, which are
fantastically popular on rave dance floors, and bootleg records of
his music...The majority of the supporters of these bands are under
25. The truly frightening part is that many, when asked, turned out
to be Manson buffs who have read all they can find about Manson, and
strongly approve of 'Helter Skelter.'" That was 15 years ago, but
Manson is still big.
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