Helter Skelter

Bugliosi introduces himself with a “conventional biographical sketch” as he was at the beginning of his involvement with the Manson case: “Age thirty-five, Deputy District Attorney, Los Angeles, California. Born Hibbing, Minnesota. Attended the University of Miami on a tennis scholarship” (165). Besides having gone to UCLA for law school, Bugliosi had also acted as a consultant and script editor for television shows like “The D.A.” He depicts himself as a person who takes his profession seriously, or who is, at least, a person who is frustrated nearly to the breaking point by members of the legal community who do not. He sees trial argumentation as narrative. The case for “Helter Skelter” was a risky and creative move on Bugliosi’s part, one he felt was necessary to implicate Manson in murders at which he was not always physically present. In the book, Bugliosi walks his audience through that narrative with a level of control unavailable to lawyers arguing before a court in session.

Born “no name Maddox” on November 12, 1934, in Cincinnati, Ohio, Manson would go on to spend half of his life in reformatories and prisons. The crimes he was known to commit before 1969 were largely property based, and his last prison sentence was for theft, forgery, and violating the Mann act.