Books

Manson and his dropouts

By Walter Berkov

To persuade the jury to

vote for conviction of members of the Manson "family" in the Tate-LaBianca murder trial, prose cutor Vincent Bugliosi had to recreate the monstrous

scenes, marshal the evidence pointing toward guilt and supply a convincing

motive.

He and writer Curt Gentry do the same for the. reader in Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders (Norton; $10), a powerful, detailed, inti mate account of one of the most bizarre crimes in history. In addition, they disclose evidence, speculation and sidelights that never reached the jury.

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The family, Bugliosi indicates, may have been responsible for 35 or more murders, including that of a defense lawyer who bucked Charles Manson's will. He discloses that insti-: tutional records suggest that Manson, a scorner of blacks, is the illegitimate son of a colored cook, but this is unsubstantiated and Manson, in a conversation ⠀ with Bugliosi, denied it.

police and the sheriff's office, the failure immediate-

ly to connect the Tate and LaBianca murders despite their similarities, the clumdling of evidence, the failsy destruction or mishan-. ure to pursue leads. The Tate stabbing-shootings, .22-caliber gun used in the for instance, was found and turned in shortly afterward

We learn, among other things. that Jay Sebring, one of the five victims in the murders at Sharon Tate's home, was a sexual sadist. And that police found in the attic of Miss Tate's home a videotape of herself and her husband, Roman Polanski, making love (it was discreetly returned to the attic). And that Judge Charles H. Older reportedly took to wearing a gun under his robe after Manson leapt at him during the trial.

but more than three months passed before police learned they had the gun in their possession. It had been turned in to a regional police unit that had not received the flier describing the gun.

But the major interest of the book centers on the

personalities of Manson and his followers. It seems clear that this was what one psychiatrist described as a “folie a famille, a kind of shared madness."

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As Bugliosi points out, those who joined Manson'swandering cultists werealready dropouts from society who nursed myriad grudges against it. Manson, the pimp, forger, auto thief, con man, homosexual, rapist, failed musician and guru who had spent 17 of his 32 years in prison, served as a catalyst.

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One of the girls in the family described him as a "changeling" and he himself boasted to a friend that he had a "thousand faces.' This is apparent even in pictures of him no two look alike.

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Manson suggested that he was Christ reborn and in the Beatles' White Album heard voices telling him that "helter skelter" was coming, a racial war in which the blacks wouldtriumph. Manson would lead his followers to a "bottomless pit" in Death Valley and when the blacks proved too inept to run things, the Manson family

Bugliosi makes no secret of his exasperation with Investigators of the case. He cites rivalry and lack of liaison between the Tate and LaBianca investigative teams, lack of cooperation would emerge and take between the Los Angeles over.