A journalist's twenty-year
fascination with the Manson murders leads to shocking new revelations
about the FBI's involvement in this riveting reassessment of an infamous
case in American history.
Over
two grim nights in Los Angeles, the young followers of Charles Manson
murdered seven people, including the actress Sharon Tate, then eight
months pregnant. With no mercy and seemingly no motive, the Manson
Family followed their leader's every order -- their crimes lit a flame
of paranoia across the nation, spelling the end of the sixties. Manson
became one of history's most infamous criminals, his name forever
attached to an era when charlatans mixed with prodigies, free love was
as possible as brainwashing, and utopia -- or dystopia -- was just an
acid trip away.
Twenty years ago, when
journalist Tom O'Neill was reporting a magazine piece about the murders,
he worried there was nothing new to say. Then he unearthed shocking
evidence of a cover-up behind the "official" story, including police
carelessness, legal misconduct, and potential surveillance by
intelligence agents. When a tense interview with Vincent Bugliosi --
prosecutor of the Manson Family and author of Helter Skelter -- turned a friendly source into a nemesis, O'Neill knew he was onto something. But every discovery brought more questions:
- Who were Manson's real friends in Hollywood, and how far would they go to hide their ties?
- Why didn't law enforcement, including Manson's own parole officer, act on their many chances to stop him?
- And how did Manson -- an illiterate ex-con -- turn a group of peaceful hippies into remorseless killers?
O'Neill's
quest for the truth led him from reclusive celebrities to seasoned
spies, from San Francisco's summer of love to the shadowy sites of the
CIA's mind-control experiments, on a trail rife with shady cover-ups and
suspicious coincidences. The product of two decades of reporting,
hundreds of new interviews, and dozens of never-before-seen documents
from the LAPD, the FBI, and the CIA, Chaos mounts an argument
that could be, according to Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney Steven
Kay, strong enough to overturn the verdicts on the Manson murders. This
is a book that overturns our understanding of a pivotal time in American
history.
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