Bugliosi and his team prosecuted the hell out of Manson and his followers. There SHOULD have been death penalties across the board.
Reading Helter Skelter was proof enough for me. I know Bugliosi is a bit of a liberal turd, but I respect his intellect and ability when it comes to law, and I like his writing style.
I always like to tell this story: When I got out of A-School in Memphis, I went to Cecil Field in Jacksonville, FL. I got there late at night, and they assigned me a room. When I opened the door to go in, my new roommate was lying on his rack reading “Helter Skelter”. He did not even look up or say hello. And while he was reading, he had a sharpening stone on his thigh, and was rhythmically sliding the knife back and forth across it!” Whenever I think of “Helter Skelter”, that image arises in my mind.
I was out of the country when the murders occurred, and didn’t get back until the Fall of 1971, so I wasn’t as much in touch with that story as many Americans might have been.
Interestingly, my sister lived for several years at a hippie commune up in northern Vermont on a river near the Canadian border (no electricity or running water on the land they were squatting on) and one of the people who lived there for a while was Linda Kasabian. If it were me living there, I suppose it wouldn’t have bothered me quite as much as if it had been Squeaky Fromme. I don’t know if I could have slept at night with someone like that around.