A journalist' s twenty-year fascination with the Manson murders leads to "gobsmacking" (The
Ringer) new revelations about the FBI' s involvement in this "kaleidoscopic" (The New York
Times) 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.
