Helter Skelter The True Story of the Manson Murders

He starts thinking about the book Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi. It was a book that he read back in 1976, like very early on in his career.

In the epilogue, there is a paragraph about Jane Doe 59. In it, Bugliosi floats his theory that Jane Doe 59's murder might have been linked to the Manson family because of when she died.

Remember, the prosecutor in that case, Vincent Bugliosi, he wrote the official book, Helter Skelter, and it was a best-selling book at that time.

Everyone believed that he was giving them a detailed, never-before-seen account of the who, the what, the when, the where, the why, the how. And therefore nobody else had to look. This guy knew everything. Except he lied, right, about mostly everything.

Helter Skelter then says in the book that the police took the tape, viewed it, and it was just Sharon and Roman making love.

Helter Skelter is the bestselling true crime book of all time and it's wonderfully written.

I definitely remember the book Helter Skelter being a huge, huge thing and I remember a time before like media was so robust when the idea of Charles Manson was just so terrifying to me.

I got an invincible Boogliosi who wrote a book called helter-skelter like a 600 page book basically this the definitive true crime book on the Manson family and the Manson family murders

And so most of the most of what we said in part one and most of what everybody knows about the Manson family murders are come through this lens that was established by Vincent Boogliosi

I will say this just from my perspective as I read Helter Skelter way too young. The LaBianca murders are very prominent in my mind.

And I understand what they mean that there is like, that's the gross part about the true crime is the fame element. And there anytime they can, anytime like the media or any of us, if you pull a good story through, that's the thing that that goes first and foremost.

But I remember when I read Helter Skelter, it really does strike you how horrifyingly random and tragic it is that they just lived along the way.

I will say this just from my perspective as I read Helter Skelter way too young. The LaBianca murders are very prominent in my mind.

And I understand what they mean that there is like, that's the gross part about the true crime is the fame element. And there anytime they can, anytime like the media or any of us, if you pull a good story through, that's the thing that that goes first and foremost.

But I remember when I read Helter Skelter, it really does strike you how horrifyingly random and tragic it is that they just lived along the way.

Helter Skelter. Helter Skelter was his book about the case.

He had written a book called Helter Skelter and the book was about Charlie Manson.

if you remember Vincent Bugliosi's book, Helter Skelter, he described the circumstantial case as a series of strands or cables or strands of wires on a cable that become increasingly big and strong

There's debate as to the extent to which he was actually trying to program them and the extent to which they were all just taking acid.

I read that book, Helter Skelter, when I was in college, and it scared me to death.

I had to do it for a class.

It's a really fabulous true crime book if you're familiar if you're interested at all in that story

It's a really fabulous true crime book if you're familiar, if you're interested at all in that story.

Okay, well around the same age, I read Howlter Skelter for the first time.

It says, look, here's why these murders occurred. Manson was convinced the U.S. would be ground zero for a civilization ending race war and Manson and his followers would hide away underground. And then after all the S hit the F, he and his followers would emerge from the social wreckage and they would reign over the smoking ruins of whatever was left.

O'Neill says though, he takes a little step further and he says the LAPD Los Angeles police department destroyed records from murder investigations involving Manson.

O'Neill interviews so many people for this. Sometimes the interviews are contentious and there are still people who have just refused to talk to him at all. Uh, but in one, in one conversation, he's talking to a guy named Alan Shefflin, a forensic psychologist.

And he asked Shefflin, he says, well, is it maybe possible that the Manson murders were part of an MK ultra experiment gone wrong?

Shefflin says, no, an MK ultra experiment gone, right? What's it makes so much sense. They want the hippies to be evil because the hippies are commies and the commies are bad.

I think Vincent Buligosi, who was the lead prosecutor mentions him in Helter Skelter, but this idea, this reference to Operation Chaos in specific is very interesting because Operation Chaos was a real thing.