Full disclosure: I went into this book with a slight bias. My mother and my grandmother saw Vincent Bugliosi give a lecture about the Manson trial at the University my mother was attending, so I had a second-hand opinion on the man himself; my grandmother thought him wonderful, my mother thought him a fascist. The majority of the talk was comprised of two facts: his wonderfulness, and how the “Manson girls”, as he called them, were all laughing it up in Country Club prisons, playing tennis and wasting the American Taxpayers’ money. Having read this book, it doesn’t surprise me that was the impression he was giving.
This book alleges to be about the Manson murders, the investigation, and then subsequent trial and convictions of the people involved. With also a heavy dose of the backstory of Manson and his followers, to try and explain why and how they wound up how they did. Seeing as a large part of them were bored, wealthy teenage and twenty-something women who wanted a chance to rebel against and shock Mommy and Daddy and a bunch of teenage and twenty-something men who wanted to rebel against “the Establishment” and be “a part of something”, I was thankful for the who’s who at the front to keep them all straight. I waded through a lot of pages of drug-addicted, ill-bathed, women mooning over some deranged, ill-bathed lunatic, part of a “free love” commune with him and the male disciples, who seemed to be there mostly so that Charlie could have some physical muscle. The true danger though was Charlie’s way with words and the female groupies’ need to please him. However, what the book mostly turned out to be was Vincent Bugliosi discussing how he pretty much was the sole reason that either the investigation or the trial ever succeeded. How incompetent most of the police involved were, how they almost let the case slip through their fingers due to laziness and stupidity; believe me, reading this book you know this is a man who likes to listen to himself talk. You also get the joy of several black and white renditions of crime scene photos, plus more pictures of “Charlie” and his girls then anyone would ever want. I will say that it was interesting to discover how much of a flaming racist Charlie Manson was. never mind a religious nut; however MENSA candidate is not something that would be put on his resume. When I realized the entire plan came down to “start race war, take followers to mythical Biblical city in hole in ground, when war is over come out and rule over surviving Blacks who will be thankful there is a strong White man to lead them”, that was the moment it hit me that true evil can sometimes go hand in hand with true stupidity. It was cemented reading about Manson deciding to be his own legal counsel; there is a reason for the saying “A man who represents himself has a fool for a client”. I did wonder why neither Bugliosi or Gentry included a postscript detailing why Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme not going to prison turned out to be so horrible an idea. I wasn’t surprised though over the glossing over of how politically-motivated a lot of the judge’s decisions were.
All in all, it was an informative, if slightly dry read about a definitive part of American History, that I would recommend if you are curious about true crime or why Manson is listed as an example of “the cult of personality”. Do I regret reading it? No. Would I read it again? Probably not. Did it make me slightly leery about going to sleep? Oh, heck yeah.
