gift time:
CHARLIE is LOVE! and just to prove it he got you some presents! Thoughtful, huh?
This is all by way of saying I finished Helter Skelter today. There’s something about true crime books that I like, and it’s certainly not the quality of the prose. Maybe it’s the honesty of it. As Bugliosi, head prosecutor and author of HS points out, if he had written a movie or novel with this plot, no one would have held onto their suspension of disbelief. Aggressive violent hippies? Organized hippies? I thought those guys were about getting wasted and talking about ‘peace.’ But the Family, especially the Manson girls who carried on while “JC” was behind bars, we’re as crazy as they were methodical. 
That’s (from left to right) some dude, Gypsy (armed robber), Linda Kasabian? (star witness against Charlie), some other dude (possibly Tex), some chick, Cathy (Cappy) Gillies, Squeaky (President Ford’s would be assassin), Sandra (whose interview creeps the shit out of me) and Ouisch, who gave former friend Barbara Hoyt an LSD laden burger in Hawaii to prevent her from testifying (it didn’t work.)
These guys and girls, bat-shit crazy though they may be, had high hopes. They planned to hijack a 747 in order to ransom Charlie and the girls free. They tried to kill many of the witnesses in the case, and suceeded in killing or scaring off some of them and even killed one of the defense attorneys during a trial recess. Then they killed the people who knew about that, and who knew about the possible other 20 murders they had not been caught committing. Cathy (the pretty blonde in the center) admitted at the murder trial that she would have no trouble “killing for her brother” in the family. When asked if she had killed for her brother, she smiled, stared at the jury, and said “not yet.” This is riveting stuff. And the reality of it is enough to make you spit. These were real people acting like blood-thirsty zealots, mindless zombies and evil nazis all at once, and most of them were pretty young white california teenagers!
Bugliosi has some good theories about why this case and these murders have endured to become both historical moments of fascination and sick cult classics. Why are single murderers like Gacy and Dahmer not idolized the way Manson is? is it Manson’s magnetic personality? Maybe. Maybe it was the industriousness, the devotion, and the zeal of his nutso brainwashed followers. Something is interesting about it though.
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