Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today, we're doing
something a little bit different. Normally, we
take a big topic, we pull from a whole stack
of sources, and we try to, you know, build a
kind of mosaic. A broad overview. Exactly. But
today, we're zooming in. We're putting a single
towering object under the microscope. We're looking
at a book that you could argue pretty much invented
the modern true crime genre as we know it. Absolutely.
It's the heavyweight champion of the category.
I mean, if you look at the history of nonfiction
crime writing, there's a clear line. There's
everything that came before this book, and then
there's everything that came after. We are talking,
of course, about Helter Skelter, the 1974 account
of the Manson family murders and the trial that
followed, written by Vincent Bugliosi and Kurt
Gentry. And I want to start with just the sheer
scale of this thing, because the numbers, the
numbers alone tell you this isn't just a book.
It's a cultural phenomenon. It really is. Our
source material notes that by 2015, and that's
almost a decade ago now, Helter Skelter had sold
over 7 million copies. 7 million. That makes
it, by a long shot, the best -selling true crime
book in history. And that is a truly staggering
number, especially when you think about the competition.
You know, people always bring up Truman Capote's
In Cold Blood. Of course. And it's a masterpiece,
no question, a foundational text. But Helter
Skelter, it... It operates on a totally different
level of public engagement. It's not just literary.
It's procedural. It's granular. It grabbed the
public imagination in a way that maybe even Capote
didn't. Why do you think that is? Well, part
of it is the sheer horror of the crimes themselves.
But I think the bigger reason, the one we really
need to focus on, is who was telling the story.
Right. And that is the absolute core distinction
we have to make right at the top. This isn't
an outsider looking in. This isn't some journalist
who flew into town two years after the fact to
interview the neighbors. No. The primary author,
Vincent Bugliosi, he was the prosecutor. And
that perspective, that single fact, defines every
single page of this book. You have to understand,
when you read about a crime, you're usually getting
a narrative that's been reconstructed from police
reports, old interviews, court transcripts. You're
getting a historical account. Exactly. But here,
you're getting something else. You are inside
the head of the man whose job it was to build
the legal cage around Charles Manson. Bugliosi
served as the prosecutor in the 1970 trial. So
the book is in effect his case files his strategy
sessions his frustrations all translated into
this driving narrative prose Which gives the
writing a very specific kind of intensity, doesn't
it? It's not just here's what happened. It's
here is how we proved what happened. And here
is why it was so damn hard to do. Yes. It frames
the entire narrative as a battle. It's Bugliosi
versus the defense attorneys, Bugliosi versus
the media, Bugliosi versus the clock. And maybe
most interestingly, Bugliosi versus the sheer
mind bending insanity of the motive. We'll definitely
get to that. Because he wasn't just trying to
prove who held the knife. He was trying to prove
a philosophy. A worldview. And that's a much,
much harder job. Let's talk about the timeline
for a second, because the gap between the events
and the book's publication is actually pretty
significant. The Tate -LaBianca murders happened
in August of 1969. Right. The trial, the main
trial, basically consumed all of 1970. But the
publisher, W .W. Norton and Company, they don't
actually release the book until 1974. And that
four year gap is absolutely crucial to the quality
of the final product. I mean, think about it.
If this had been some quick and dirty paperback
rushed out the week after the verdict. It would
have been forgotten in a year. Absolutely. It
would be a historical footnote. Yeah. That time,
those four years, allow Bugliosi and his co -author,
Kurt Gentry, to organize a literal mountain of
evidence. You have to remember, this was at the
time the longest and most expensive criminal
trial in American history. The sheer volume of
the court transcripts was, well, it was biblical.
So to distill all of that, all those dead ends
and sidebar motions, down into a readable narrative
with actual pacing and suspense, that took some
serious architectural skill. Immense skill. And
you mentioned Kurt Gentry. He often gets a bit
overlooked in the shadow of Bugliosi's, let's
say, dominant personality. But Gentry was a very
seasoned writer. He knew how to build a book.
So it was a true partnership? It seems to be.
You often see this in nonfiction. You have the
expert, the person with the story, in this case
the lawyer, and then you have the writer, the
person who knows how to shape it. Gentry likely
handled a lot of the structure, the pacing, the
tone, but the voice, the voice is unmistakably
Ucleoses. How would you describe that voice?
It's precise. It's confident, maybe a little
arrogant. It's incredibly detailed, almost obsessively
so. And it's very legalistic, but somehow at
the same time still gripping. He makes you feel
like you're on the prosecution team with him.
Another thing that sets the book apart is its
scope. I think in the popular consciousness,
this story often gets flattened down to just
Charles Manson. But the book, it's really an
ensemble piece, for lack of a better word. It
has to be. The Manson family wasn't a monolith.
It was a complex, twisted social structure with
its own hierarchy and rules. The book goes deep
into the specific cases against Susan Atkins.
Patricia Krenwinkel, Leslie Van Houten and the
others. It's this tangled web of defendants.
And Bugliosi's central challenge was linking
them all together. Yes. He had to build a case
that could connect the actions of, say, a Patricia
Krenwinkel inside the LaBianca house with a knife
in her hand directly to the commands of a man,
Charles Manson, who wasn't even in the room.
Which brings us to the legal concept of conspiracy.
That's really the engine of the book, isn't it?
It is the whole thing. Legally speaking, it's
often much, much harder to convict the person
who ordered the murder than the person who actually
committed the act, especially when the person
giving the orders speaks in riddles and obscure
song lyrics. Well, let's get right into those
riddles, because we can't possibly discuss the
book without dissecting that title. Helter Skelter.
It's a phrase that has become so synonymous with
murder and chaos, but in 1968, it was just a
song. A pretty noisy, chaotic song on the Beatles'
White Album, but yeah, just a song. And to really
understand the book, you have to understand how
Bugliosi systematically deconstructs Manson's
interpretation of that entire album. This is
the motive section of the trial. It is, and it's
arguably the most famous and certainly the most
bizarre motive in the history of American crime.
The source material we have highlights that Manson
was, and I'm quoting here, particularly fascinated
by the White Album. but fascinated, that feels
like a massive understatement for what Bugliosi
describes in the book. Oh, it's the understatement
of the century. Manson didn't just like the album.
He treated the White Album as a divine prophecy,
a coded transmission sent directly to him. From
the Beatles. He believed the Beatles were the
four angels mentioned in the Book of Revelation.
He thought they were speaking to him personally
across the Atlantic, sending him specific hidden
instructions to prepare for an imminent apocalyptic
race war. And this apocalyptic race war was what
he named Helter Skelter. Correct. In Manson's
theology, if you can even call it that, he believed
that black Americans would soon rise up in a
violent revolt and overthrow the entire white
establishment. He thought this war would basically
destroy civilization as we know it. So where
did he and the family fit in? His plan was for
him and his followers, the family, to hide out
in the desert. He was searching for something
he called the Bottomless Pit, literally a hole
in the ground near Death Valley. where they would
wait for the war to end. And then what? Then,
when the dust settled, Manson believed that the
victors of this war, who he presumed would be
black people, would realize they didn't know
how to run the world. And in their confusion,
they would turn to him, Charles Manson, to come
out of his hole and lead them. It sounds like
pure, unadulterated delusion. And this is the
monumental challenge Bugliosi faces in the book
and in the courtroom. How do you present this
theory to a jury of 12 regular people in Los
Angeles in 1970 without them just laughing you
out of the room? That is the absolute brilliance
of the prosecution strategy that he lays out
in the book. Bugliosi realized he couldn't just
stand up and say Manson is crazy. Yeah. Because
if the jury thinks he's just crazy, they might
find him insane and not guilty. Right. He had
to show that Manson was consistently crazy, that
there was a logic to his madness. He had to prove
that the Tate -LaBianca murders were a deliberate
act designed to start this war. To be the catalyst.
Precisely. The prosecution's argument was that
the family murdered prominent white people. Sharon
Tate, and then tried to frame black militants
for the crimes. That's why they wrote words like
pig and death to pigs in the victim's blood.
It was meant to look like the work of groups
like the Black Panthers and ignite white fear
and retaliation. So the murder wasn't the end
goal. It was just the trigger. It was the match
to light the fuse of Helter Skelter. Yeah. And
the book details what a struggle it was for Bugliosi
to even get this motive admitted as evidence.
It was incredibly risky. The defense argued it
was prejudicial and absurd. If the jury thought
the motive was just too unbelievable, they might
have acquitted Manson on the conspiracy charges.
But Bugliosi insisted. He insisted. He argued.
that you couldn't understand the why of these
crimes without understanding the Helter Skelter
scenario. It was the key that unlocked everything.
It linked the lyrics of the Beatles, songs like
Piggies, Blackbird, Revolution 9, directly to
the details of the crime scenes. It is still
just surreal to think about a major American
courtroom trial where the prosecutor is on his
feet, dissecting Linda McCartney lyrics as if
they were a blueprint for mass murder. It really
was this. This bizarre collision of pop culture,
counterculture, and the criminal justice system.
You have the biggest, most beloved band in the
world being cited as the direct catalyst for
the most gruesome, terrifying crimes of the decade.
It's often said that this was the moment the
60s officially died. I think that's right. The
book captures that transition perfectly. It's
the moment the whole peace and love vibe of the
counterculture curled into something dark and
nightmarish. Okay, let's move on to the investigation
part of the book's subtitle. Because reading
through the source material and the book itself,
it's clear this was not a simple straight line
from crime to arrest. Oh, not even close. And
this is where the book also serves as a pretty
scathing critique of law enforcement at the time.
Bugliosi. Pulls no punches. He is very clear
about the incompetence and the lack of communication
in the initial investigation. How is that? Well,
you have to remember the Tate murders happened
in the Hollywood Hills, which was LAPD jurisdiction.
The LaBianca murders happened the very next night
in a different area, Los Feliz, which was under
the jurisdiction of the L .A. County Sheriff's
Department. And in 1969, those two massive agencies
weren't exactly sharing a central database. They
weren't even sharing a cup of coffee. The book
details these incredible lapses in communication.
They didn't connect the two crime scenes for
weeks. They had the actual killers in custody
on completely unrelated charges. Things like
auto theft, arson, the raid on Spahn Ranch, and
they let them go. They had no idea these were
the people responsible for the crime of the century.
And the book details the sheer brutality of those
crimes, which is important for understanding
the public terror at the time. The Tate murders
at 1 -50 Cielo Drive. We're talking about the
actress Sharon Tate, who was eight and a half
months pregnant. And her friends, Jay Sebring,
a famous celebrity hairstylist, Abigail Folger,
the coffee heiress, her boyfriend, Wojciech Frykowski,
and a young man named Stephen Parent, who was
just in the wrong place at the wrong time. It
was a complete massacre. And the book walks you
through the crime scene analysis in a way that
was very new for a popular audience back then.
Very new. He discusses blood spatter patterns,
the positioning of the bodies, the forensic evidence,
the sheer frenzy and overkill of the attack.
It was meant to shock, but also to educate the
reader on the reality of the violence. And then
the very next night, the LaBianca murders. A
wealthy grocer, Lino LaBianca, and his wife,
Rosemary. Which in some ways was even more terrifying
to the general public. Yeah. Because Sharon Tate
was a movie star. You could, you know. rationalize
that away as part of some bizarre Hollywood thing.
Right. A drug deal gone wrong or something like
that. Exactly. But the LaBianca is. They were
just normal, successful people. The randomness
of their murder was intended by Manson to create
widespread panic. The similarity in the ritualistic
aspects, the writing in blood, the use of forks.
It was meant to show that this wasn't an isolated
incident. This could happen to anyone. Our source
material also specifically lists Donald Shorty
Shea in the section of Murders Known. This is
a part of the story that often gets overshadowed
by the Tate LaBianca narrative, but it's crucial
in the book. It is because it shows a different
side of the family's violence. Donald Shea was
a stuntman and a ranch hand at Spine Ranch, where
the family was living. They came to suspect him
of being a snitch of talking to the police. So
they killed him. They killed him and dismembered
him. His murder was particularly gruesome, and
his body wasn't found for years. Bugliosi includes
Shea and another murder victim, Gary Hinman,
to frame the family not just as these celebrity
thrill killers, but as a functioning, localized,
organized crime unit that brutally eliminated
its perceived threats. The book is, as the source
notes, 502 pages in the original hardcover. That
is a dense, dense read. It's dense because the
investigation was a puzzle with thousands of
pieces. And Bugliosi takes you through all of
them. He spends entire chapters detailing the
dead ends, the false leads, the theory that it
was a drug burn, the theory that it was a party
that got out of hand. So the reader gets to experience
the same frustration the detectives did. Absolutely.
Which makes the breakthrough, when it finally
comes, that much more dramatic. And the key thing
is, the breakthrough doesn't come from brilliant
Sherlock Holmes -style detective work. No. It
comes because one of the killers, Susan Atkins,
got arrested on a different charge and couldn't
stop bragging to her cellmate. That's the Virginia
Graham connection. Right. That's the whole case.
If Susan Atkins hadn't had the incredible vanity
and arrogance to confess to her cellmate, the
Tate -LaBianca murders might very well be a famous
unsolved case to this day. The book really highlights
the fragility of justice. It so often hangs on
a single fragile thread of human ego. So the
trial happens, the verdicts come in, and the
book comes out in 74. It's a massive commercial
success, as we've said. But our source also notes
it won the 1975 Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime
Book. And that is a huge piece of validation.
The Edgar Awards are been. They're like the Oscars
for the mystery and crime writing world. For
a prosecutor's memoir to win that award meant
that the literary community was accepting it
as a well -crafted, serious narrative, not just
a sensational cash grab. It elevated the genre.
Completely. Before Helter Skelter, a lot of true
crime was seen as pulp. You know, lurid detective
magazines, cheap paperbacks. This book was reviewed
seriously in the New York Times. It was treated
as important social history. It really did pave
the way for the true crime obsession we see today,
didn't it? I mean, without Helter Skelter, do
we get a show like The Jinx? Do we get a podcast
like Serial? I really don't think we do. Not
in the same way. Bugliosi proved to a mass audience
that the details of the legal process, the jury
selection, the evidentiary motions, the sidebar
conferences with the judge, could be just as
dramatic and compelling as the murder itself.
He basically taught an entire generation of readers
how to be armchair prosecutors. And the longevity
of the text is also worth pointing out. It wasn't
just a 70s phenomenon that faded away. Our source
mentions a 25th anniversary edition was published
in 1994. Right. And that edition is really important
because it included a new lengthy afterword written
by Gugliosi. And this update is fascinating because
it allowed him to comment on everything that
had happened in the intervening two decades.
Like the parole hearings. Exactly. The parole
hearings for the various Manson family members
have become this grim, predictable ritual in
California. And Bugliosi remained deeply involved
in that fight right up until his death. He did.
The afterword reflects his absolute burning frustration
that these individuals who committed these unbelievably
heinous acts were technically eligible for parole.
He used the updated editions of the book to keep
the public case against them active. He wanted
to make sure they never, ever got out. It's also
interesting how we can see the evolution of the
audiobook format through this one title. The
source notes that Bugliosi actually narrated
the original Talking Books unabridged version
himself. Which is pretty rare, and it must have
added this incredible layer of gravitas and authority
to hear the story told in the prosecutor's own
voice. But then much later in 2011, Audible .com
commissioned a brand new unabridged recording
by Scott Brick. And Scott Brick is like... the
voice of modern audiobooks. He's a superstar
narrator. The fact that a company like Audible
would invest in a huge, new, high -production
re -recording nearly 40 years after the book
first came out, it just shows you that the demand
never went away. New generations are constantly
discovering this story and want to hear it. Okay,
let's pivot a bit to the cultural ripple effects.
Because if the book is the sun at the center
of this system, there are an awful lot of planets
orbiting it. The source lists the direct adaptations,
starting with that big 1976 TV movie. That film
was a monster ratings event. It was a huge deal.
It starred an actor named Steve Railsback as
Manson, and his performance was so terrifyingly
accurate, so convincing, that it reportedly hurt
his career for a while afterward. People couldn't
separate him from the character. And then they
did it again, another TV film in 2004. Right,
retelling the exact same story. Now, what's interesting
is that most of these movies, these direct adaptations,
they aren't based on independent research. They're
explicitly based on the book Helter Skelter.
Bugliosi's narrative became the official canonical
history of the events. But the influence goes
way beyond those direct adaptations. The source
points out something I found fascinating. The
2008 horror film, The Strangers. Yes. Yeah. This
is a critical connection to make. The Strangers
is this incredibly tense film about a random,
motiveless home invasion. And the director, Brian
Bertino, has said in interviews that Helter Skelter,
the book, was a primary influence. Why? Because
it taps into the specific modern fear that the
Manson murders unleashed on the American psyche.
The idea that you are not safe in your own home,
that locks and gates don't matter. The killers
and the strangers, when asked why they're doing
this, give the chilling answer, because you were
home. That is pure Manson logic. It shifted the
cultural fear from, you know, the jealous ex
-husband or the disgruntled employee to... Wandering
psycho. Exactly. Before Manson, murder in popular
culture was usually seen as intimate. Something
with a clear motive. After Manson, murder could
be random, chaotic, and philosophical. That's
a fundamental shift. And Bugliosi's book is the
document that chronicles exactly when and how
that switch was flipped. The list of Manson media
in our source material is, it's just exhaustive.
I mean, I'm just looking at the films. The Manson
Family from 97. La Freaky, Die Freaky from 2006.
Charlie Says from 2018. The Haunting of Sharon
Tate. A truly terrible movie, by the way. And
of course, the big one. Quentin Tarantino's Once
Upon a Time in Hollywood from 2019. Which is
such an interesting counterpoint to all the others.
Because it's a revisionist history. It's a fairy
tale that gives Sharon Tate the happy ending
she was brutally denied in real life. But the
thing is, you can't appreciate the power of that
revision unless you already know the original
horror story. Right. The whole tension of that
movie relies on the audience knowing what's supposed
to happen that night. Yes. We're dreading the
inevitable. Which makes the twist. when it comes
so cathartic and powerful. The film is in direct
conversation with the narratives cemented by
Helter Skelter. And it's not stopping. There's
even an upcoming project listed here, CAAOS,
The Manson Murders, which is slated for 2025.
It feels like we just can't, as a culture, let
this go. It's become the closest thing America
has to a foundational dark myth, like a Greek
tragedy. It has every element you could ask for.
Celebrity, beauty, sex, drugs, rock and roll.
cults, religion, and horrifying death. And it
all sits right at the fulcrum of a massively
changing society. The end of an era. You could
say the 60s officially ended on the night of
August 9th, 1969. And we are still replaying
that tape over and over, trying to see if it
could have ended differently. Let's talk a bit
more about the family themselves. The book spends
a lot of time delineating the different personalities.
It wasn't just Manson and a bunch of, you know,
mindless robots. No, and that's a common and
dangerous misconception. The book is very clear
about the agency of the followers, especially
the women. Susan Atkins, who they called Sadie,
was a hardened true believer. Her testimony before
the grand jury, which is in the book, is terrifyingly
remorseless. And Patricia Krenwickle, Katie?
She was a direct and brutal participant in the
violence at both houses. The book paints a portrait
of these as individuals who made choices, not
just as hypnotized zombies. And then, in the
middle of all that, you have Linda Kazabian.
The key figure. She is the linchpin of the entire
prosecution. She went with him on both nights.
She was the driver. But she never went inside
the houses and didn't participate in the killings.
And she's the one who eventually flipped. She
turned state's evidence. She became Bugliosi's
star witness. The book positions her as this.
This fragile, moral center in a universe with
a complete lack of morality. The entire trial,
and therefore the entire book, really hinges
on her testimony. Bugliosi had to make a deal
with her to convict the others. Which adds a
whole other layer of legal and moral drama, doesn't
it? Trusting a member of the cult to destroy
the cult. It's a classic prosecutor's dilemma.
And Bugliosi walks you through his decision -making
process, his doubts about whether the jury would
believe her. The source also lists names like
Lynette Sweekey from. She wasn't actually charged
with the Tate -LaBianca murders, but she looms
large in the story as this lingering, ongoing
threat. She's the proof of Manson's enduring
hold. She was the most vocal and visible of the
followers who weren't in jail. She camped out
on the street corner outside the courthouse every
single day of the trial, carving an X into her
forehead in solidarity with Manson. And she later
famously tried to assassinate President Gerald
Ford. Right. The book uses figures like her to
show that the ideology, the helter -skelter belief
system, didn't just die when Manson was arrested.
It was a virus that was still active and dangerous
out in the world. The locations mentioned in
the source material Spawn Ranch, Barker Ranch,
they almost become characters in themselves in
the book. Oh, they're incredibly atmospheric.
Spawn Ranch in particular. It was this old, dilapidated
movie set where B -list westerns used to be filmed.
So you have this surreal image of the family
living in the ruins of a fake Old West, playing
dress -up as outlaws, while they're literally
planning the end of the world. It adds this cinematic,
almost unbelievable layer to the reality of it.
That's way out in Death Valley. It's where they
were finally captured. It emphasizes the dropout
nature of the group. They were really trying
to exit civilization entirely and live on the
absolute fringes. We touched on the Beatles,
but we should also acknowledge Manson's own musical
ambitions because the book makes a big deal out
of it. Our source even lists as a discography
for him, an album called Lie, the love and terror
cult. Yes, and this is absolutely key to his
psychology. Charles Manson was, at his core,
a failed musician, a frustrated artist. That
is central to the story Bugliosi tells. He had
connections, right? He wasn't just some guy with
a guitar. He was. He hung out with Dennis Wilson
of the Beach Boys for a time. The source notes
that the Beach Boys actually recorded a song,
Never Learn Not to Love, which was a reworked
version of a Charles Manson song originally called
Cease to Exist. I mean, just stop and think about
that for a second. The Beach Boys, the ultimate
clean -cut all -American vision of California,
recorded a song written by Charles Manson. It
shows you how close he came to some form of legitimate
success. Bugiosi argues pretty persuasively in
the book that this rejection by the music industry
is what ultimately fueled his murderous rage.
He wanted to be bigger than the Beatles. And
when he realized he couldn't join them, he decided
to burn down the society that produced them.
Let's talk about Bugliosi himself. Helter Skelter
made him a household name, but he did not rest
on those laurels. Our source lists a pretty significant
bibliography of his work that came after this
book. He became a very prolific and I think it's
fair to say a very combative author. He took
that prosecutorial mindset and applied it to
history. He treated history like it was a courtroom
and he was always making his case. We see and
the sea will tell from 1991. Another true crime
classic, a very different kind of case about
a double murder. on a remote Pacific island.
Again, incredibly detailed. But then he moves
into much bigger topics, reclaiming history from
2007. That book is his magnum opus on the JFK
assassination. Yeah. It is a monster. I mean,
it's over 1 ,600 pages long. And in it, he essentially
prosecutes Lee Harvey Oswald and defends the
Warren Commission report. He attacks the conspiracy
theorists with the exact same logical evidence
-based ferocity that he attacked the Manson defense
team with. And then the prosecution of George
W. Bush for murder from 2008. You see the pattern,
right? He frames everything as a legal indictment.
He was a man who seemed to believe in the power
of a well -argued case, backed by overwhelming
evidence, to solve any problem, whether it was
a bizarre cult murder or a controversial presidency.
He believed there was a truth with a capital
T, and he could prove it to you beyond a reasonable
doubt. He passed away in 2015, which our source
notes in the context of the book's sales figures
being updated at the time of his death. He really
left behind this legacy of rigorous, aggressive,
argumentative nonfiction. He definitely did not
write to make friends. He wrote to win the argument.
Before we start to wrap up, I want to bring up
one last very strange item from the external
links section of our source material. It's just
it's baffling. It's the Kim Jong Il connection,
isn't it? It is a news article titled Charles
Manson's letter to end Korean leader Kim Jong
Il. It's a detail that really underscores the
persistent, unwavering madness of the man. Years
and years later, from a prison cell in California,
Charles Manson was writing letters to the dictator
of North Korea. But why? What could he possibly
have to say? From what I can gather, it seems
Manson saw himself as a political prisoner, a
revolutionary, and a world leader in exile. He
saw Kim Jong -il, another international pariah,
as a peer, as someone who would understand him.
It's this final, absurd, pathetic footnote that
shows Manson's grand delusion never wavered.
He still thought he was a major player on the
world stage, even while he was rotting away in
a cell. fascinating and deeply disturbing. OK,
so to try and bring all this together, Helter
Skelter is so much more than just a true crime
book. It's a seven million copy bestseller that
serves as a kind of autopsy report for the 1960s.
It's the definitive procedural account of how
a legal team methodically dismantled a cult and
its messiah. It took a Beatles song and forever
transformed it into a symbol of ultimate terror.
And at the end of the day, it established the
template, the DNA, for almost every true crime
podcast, documentary, and book that has followed
in its wake. I want to leave our listener with
one final provocative thought. We've talked about
this long list of media, films and shows from
1971 all the way up to a new project scheduled
for 2025. We are coming up on 60 years since
these crimes were committed. Why are we as a
society still retelling this one specific story
over and over again? That's the big question,
isn't it? I think it might be because this story
represents the ultimate loss of innocence narrative
for modern America. It's the moment the door
was locked for good. The moment you stopped picking
up the hitchhiker on the side of the road. We
keep going back to it, I think, because we're
still trying to understand how the beautiful,
hopeful dream of the 60s turned into such a specific,
ugly and violent nightmare. And for better or
worse, Vincent Bugliosi's book is the only real
map we have of that descent. The map of the descent.
That is a chilling and perfect place to end it.
Thank you for helping me unpack this monster
of a book. My pleasure. It was a fascinating
deep dive. And thank you as always to our listeners.
If you want to explore any of the sources or
adaptations we talked about today, check out
the show notes. We will see you on the next deep
dive.