R.I.P. Vincent Bugliosi

Most famous for successfully prosecuting Charles Manson and his murderous “family,” Los Angeles prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi has died at the age of 80.

“It was so quiet, one of the killers would later say, you could almost hear the sound of ice rattling in cocktail shakers in the homes way down the canyon.”

That’s the eerie first sentence of Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders, the book Bugliosi wrote about the Manson murder and the trial, a book I’ve read about five times. He wrote other books, one furiously raging book about O.J. Simpson being acquitted: Outrage: The Five Reasons Why O. J. Simpson Got Away with Murder, as well as other true-crime books, plus a book on the Kennedy assassination, and books hugely critical of both President George W. Bush and the Supreme Court.

But, as Bugliosi well knew, it was for the Manson trial that he would always be remembered. When one reads Helter Skelter, one is struck by the impossibility of the task set before Bugliosi and his office. How to put together the pieces? Who did what? And why? All of the Manson people worked under multiple pseudonyms. How to understand what exactly had happened, and the hold Manson had over his followers? Manson didn’t kill anyone in the Tate house, and he didn’t kill anyone in the LaBianca house either. And yet Bugliosi, in his brilliance as a prosecutor, managed to hold him responsible for those crimes through the utilization of the joint-responsibility rule, while also holding responsible the rest of them, who did the deeds, who claim to have been brainwashed. Leslie van Houten’s continuous claims of brainwashing ring rather hollow with the example of Linda Kasabian before us, the hippie-girl involved in the “family” but who became Bugliosi’s main witness for the prosecution. (She took the stand, by the way, in a dress bought for her by Joan Didion.) Leslie, how come Linda Kasabian could resist? She sat in the car on the night of the murders because she said, “I’m not a killer.” She couldn’t do it. But you, Leslie, you could. In one of her recent parole hearings, murderer Patricia Krenwinkel was asked “Who was hurt the most by your actions?” Krenwinkel, obviously thinking this was the most enlightened answer, showing that she “took responsibility” for herself, said, “Myself.”

Wrong answer, lady. After so many years in prison, you still don’t get it. It’s still all about you, isn’t it?

I’ll give you the right answer. The people most hurt by your actions were

1. Abigail Folger, whom you stabbed so repeatedly and so ferociously that the cops who discovered her on the lawn of the Cielo Drive house the following morning thought she was wearing a red nightgown.

2. Mrs. LaBianca, whom you held down and stabbed over and over again, before calling for help from your murderous psychopath pal Tex Watson.

Lots of people have unhappy childhoods. Lots of people feel like they’re ugly and that no one loves them. Lots of people have also ingested massive amounts of hallucinogenics. But not everybody grows up be a murderer like you did.

When I heard that Krenwinkel’s answer to the parole board’s question was “Myself,” I thought: “Well. She may be an old lady now but I’m glad she’s still behind bars. She still doesn’t get it.” The parole board felt the same way.

Vincent Bugliosi was fearless and articulate. Sometimes he went off the deep end because his anger was so intense (his O.J. book vibrates with anger: it’s a great read), but his sense of outrage about the lack of common sense in the world was a bracing tonic. He didn’t care that he seemed square or old-fashioned to the hippies who thought Manson was a hero, an Everyman. He preferred being square to the alternative.

I will miss knowing he is out there. I have been following his work for decades.

R.I.P.