Rating: 
Summary: An incredible story... will affect you deeply
Review: Before I read this book I didn't really have that much knowledge about the manson murders, being that I wasn't even born when they occured. This book did an excellent job of presenting everything that happened in a completely logical and coherent order to someone who hasn't had any other information, or to someone who is looking for a COMPLETELY thorough and accurate account. Mr. Bugliosi (the prosecutor) is excellent in the fact that he is confident enough to attach his own opinions to the evidence, and he builds up such a powerful credibility that we feel privileged to hear what he has to say. This book brought me to a state of utter shock, it really illustrates the wicked animal-like quality of these people, and the hardest thing to contentd with is that they can be considered human beings. It is IMPOSSIBLE to leave this book without forming a passionate opinion about the case, and it is also the type of book that you absolutely cannot put down once you start reading it. If you're the type of person who thinks that it is better "not to Know" than please do not read this book, because it will definetely illustrate things that most people cannot even conceive of existing in their wildest dreams, let alone cold blooded reality. What plagues me most when I think of this horrifying account is that if there was ever a crime that deserved the death sentence this would be it, and instead these vicious murderers got to live the comfortable lives they should have never had a chance to discover, and being that their sentences were converted they even have the chance to receive parole. To live amongst the citizens they once promised to kill indiscriminantly. Charles Manson AND his "Family" have committed the most horrible crimes since Jack the Ripper, and this book is a gripping and fascinating account of as much of it as can be told.
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Summary: Murder in Command
Review: I loved the book "Helter Skelter." Vincent Bugliosi did an excellent job writing this book. It was great because Vincent Bugliosi knew it all. He was the prosecuting attorney, knew all the facts, and is on top of at all an excellent writer. Manson was a crazy cult leader who commanded his followers or "family" to kill for him. The amount of murders still to this day is unknown. The largest spree of murders happened in August of 1969. Sharon Tate and four of her companions were savagely murdered for prize and pleasure. The following night a millionaire couple was again savagely murdered. The Helter Skelter was suppose to begin, but the hard work of detectives and the drive of a leaving family member led the murders to Charles Manson. This book is great for anyone intrested in the criminal mind, and reasons they did it.
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Summary: BEST TRUE CRIME BOOK E.V.E.R
Review: I'm a chronic true crime reader and have read just about any true crime i can get my hands on. And this book has has got to top the cake.. I have family who despise Charles Manson but have read the book a few times, admitting that they like it. Whether for a person who wants a good read or a true crime fanatic like myself. I've read it about 10 times and just CANNOT put it down. Vincent Bulgliosi engages the reader from page one, making you feel like you're viewing everything..making you feel like you're there and you have to try and solve the crime yourself. Gives a tonne of information about the trial, detailed conversations and confessions, character building. The book is divided into chapters. It starts with the finding of the murders by the Tate housemaid, then the search for the killers, then the investigation and then the trial. I cannot rave enough. Vince sure as hell convinced me the motive was Helter Skelter and he justifies everything he believes with examples. It's humourous, shocking, sad, and very provocative. i recommend it for anyone who likes true crime, charles manson books or anyone up for an interesting page turner of a read.
Rating: 
Summary: Helter Skelter: The DA's own fabrication
Review: This story is not the true story of the murders, but the concoction of VB. The whole Helter Skelter theory was in his mind and in his mind only-he saw ahead to the book deal and movie. Of all the seat's in the court room, over 98% were taken by media. He played into their hands by making up this totally outrageous story (prompted by a liar Sadie and turn coat,get me outta my legal mess Danny DeCarlo). This is fiction. And by the way, Charlie wasn't even present at any of the murder scenes, nor did he order any murders, so why is he in prison? Because he received an unfair trial at the hands of VB. This book is NOT recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: Very convincing.
Review: One of the best stories ever told. Mr. Bugliosi has a vivid imagination, and the characters he paints are very realistic. I would put this right up there with Dean Koontz and Stephen King, except it is a little more real. The story he tells is something we can truly imagine actually happening in today's society. A very unique storyteller.
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Summary: Helter Skelter
Review: The book that this here is that i red was very good. i havent never red a better book ever and i meen that. he seems like a very nice man. i rilly dont think that he mint to kill anyone he was just a little crzy. some times my grandma goes crzy if we dont give her her medicine. she can be a very scary person if she gets mad i think you should right a book about her becuz she would be a very good person to right about and it would make a very good book. i would bye it. one time my dog caught this guy that was tryin to get into our house and my grandma found him and she beat him up. Im not suppost to tell any won about that but i thot that maybe if some writer sees it that he will want to write about her and it would b very nice. I love my grandma. i bet that charlie loves his grandma too but its too bad that he cant see her no more becuz he got locked up. i bet hes rilly sorry. so is he rilly related to his family? becuz they said that he just met them. I didnt think that that was true about that but then i went to a reunion last week and i met a cousin that i never new i had and his name was jimbob. I never met him before and he was my family so i guess that i can understand that he had never met his family either.
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Summary: Horror for Hollywood
Review: Despite its length (600 + pages) and punctilious court room detail in the second half, Vincent Bugliosi's "Helter Skelter" is a fascinating account of the two nights of savagery which shocked the nation in 1969: starlet Sharon Tate and her three house guests (plus an unfortunate young man who, like Ronald Goldman, was in the wrong place at the wrong time) on August 9th, then the LaBiancas, a middle-aged upper-class couple on August 10th. With his co-author Curt Gentry, Mr Bugliosi opens the narrative with the discovery of the carnage at the Tate residence, goes through the invesigation (the LAPD does NOT look good here), and closes with the nine-month trial where Charles Manson and his "Family" members were brought to justice. The story is haunted by Hollywood history. Sharon Tate was the beautiful wife of acclaimed director Roman Polanski (they met while filming his "The Fearless Vampire Killers"); but her chances of ever becoming a major star, had she lived, is today debatable. Before she moved into the residence where she was murdered, the house had been occupied by Terry Melcher, the son of Doris Day and producer Martin Melcher. (He had been living there with Candice Bergen, herself the child of a popular entertainer.) Manson was introduced to Terry Melcher by Gregg Jacobson, a talent scout who was married to Lou Costello's daughter. One of the TV crewmen who discovered the bloody clothes discarded by the murderers was named King Baggott. It's an unusual name, and I assume he was the son or grandson of the silent film star. On a darker level, one of Manson's "indoctrinated", Bobby Beausoleil, appeared (according to Mr Bugliosi) in a Kenneth Anger film; and one of Manson's victims, a ranch hand named Donald "Shorty" Shea, had aspirations to be a movie actor. Hollywood Babylon,indeed.The "star"of the story, even with Mr Bugliosi's first-person narrative in the major part of the book, is Charles Manson. Extremely enigmatic, with a rhapsodic influence over individuals as well as groups, he is simple and extraordinarily complicated. One thinks of Rasputin, but Mr Bugliosi successfully compares him to Hitler: both were frustrated artists, both had nagging doubts regarding legitimacy and ethnicity in their family backgrounds, and both were vegetarians who loved animals (according to one of Manson's followers, he once petted a rattlesnake). Manson's mystique is undeniable. Mr Bugliosi relates how in court one day with Manson time literally stood still -- i.e., Mr Bugliosi's watch stopped. Manson was giving him a strange little smile. But in the final analysis one realizes that Manson, for all his mystical blend of the Bible and the Beatles, was simply a person who liked to kill people.As other reviewers have stated, while reading "Helter Skelter" you may as well resign yourself to nightmares, as well as checking and re-checking your windows and doors. (Sometimes the most casual detail will turn your blood to ice: after butchering the LaBiancas, the killers raided their refrigerator and had a snack.) But stop reading? No, not once you've started. A gripping revelation of Hollywood's "creepy-crawley" underside, "Helter Skelter" gives the Bad and the Beautiful a horrible new meaning.
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Summary: "Helter Skelter" is a unforgettable read!
Review: Chief Prosecutor Vince Bugliosi and Curt Gentry have done a remarkable job on this, the most famous true crime novel of all time. The first page states "The story you are about to read will scare the hell out of you...." And so it does in page after page of a very hard to put down book. I've read this four or five times since it was first published in 1974. Every time I've learned more. Whether or not you agree that the "Helter Skelter" philosophy was the only motive for the dreadful Sharon Tate Murders'you can see where Manson preached it to his young followers to make some kind of sense of what he asked them to do. *CBS television is now at work on a new re-made miniseries of this 29 year old famous crime novel. It has promised that this version will concentrate more on how Charlie became the person he is and how he was able to brain wash these problemed young adults with his madness!
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Summary: Non fiction as chilling and macabre as horror,
Review: This true crime novel covers one of the most sensational American trials of the 20th century, that of Charles Manson and his "family", who were responsible for a series of gruesome murders in California at the end of the 1960's. Cannot properly call this a mystery since the outcome of the case and the identity of the killers is well known, rather this account of the Manson family written by the prosecuting attorney gives insight into the bizarre motivations for the murders. "Helter Skelter" covers the investigation of the murders and a detailed accounting of the trial, with great photo insert sections. If this story had been conceived of and written as fiction it would not be believable, here the truth is indeed stranger than fiction. Charles Manson was the product of a severely dysfunctional childhood, and a life spent more inside prison or detention than out. This individual, like a cult leader of a commune, was able to attract young people to him and have them become so devoted to him they believe he's Jesus Christ returned and are willing to [destroy] any random individual for him on command. I'm old enough to remember the Tate/Labianca murders when they were front page news, read the first edition of "Helter Skelter" way back, and really enjoyed this newer version with the added 1994 afterward by Bugliosi telling us where all the story participants are today. I had no idea that some of Manson's ideas are still around, unbelievable what attracts some human beings.
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Summary: The Definitive story by the prosecuting attorney
Review: Bugliosi holds nothing back and gets as graphic as the case requires; this is not for delicate dispositions, it is a raw, brutal and monstrous example of what depravities evildoers are capable of when the right (or wrong) mix of degenerates come together.... Manson trolled the streets for the homeless, runaways and neglected disenfranchised youth and made them his own "family" to use a comforting term is a grotesque parody of what family means to all decent people. None of these people on their own would have come together and created this multi-personality Hydra Manson created; he has a special gift for gaining trust and making his worst depravities become reality by virtue of the control he wielded over these lost souls. This is evil, and the right ingredients were concocted to effect one of the worst serial killings of the twentieth century. The background was that Manson was brought up to the house on Cielo by Greg Jakobson who was involved with Manson on some dune buggy deals, and when he found out that Manson fancied himself a country singer he brought him to Cielo to meet Terry Melcher, Doris Day's son and a then record executive who listened to Charli's "music" and promised him, more facetiously than real, a recording contract. This was simply passing the time, and a fatuous, meaningless conversation that Manson took to heart, very seriously. When the contract never transpired, Manson felt betryaed by Melcher and wanted to get back at the pigs/establishment he saw as standing in the way of his success. Although he spent time trying to find Melcher, and when he contacted the Doris Day house in Beverly Hills, he was rebuffed. Melcher wisely ran up to Carmel to hide out with his mother. Manson, however, did know that there were people, Hollywood people, living there, and he made his plans from that information, to send a message. He sent his team, Susan Atkins, Tex Watkins, Leslie Van Houten et al., to kill the pigs...unfortunately, the people were the worse for wear, and Frykowski, a big tough Pole, was no match for the violence he woke up to; being stabbed multiple times he quickly lost blood and then they turned their attentions to Abigail Folger and Sharon Tate. Jay Sebring (black belt in karate) gallantly tried to protect Sharon, but he was no match for the numbers of the group and their sheer bloodlust. Up until tbat night, Manson was viewed with some wariness, as he was obviously rather disturbed, but the full extent of his madness was not discovered until that August night. I lived at the bottom of the hill where the house was, and arrived home around midnight and saw the car parked at the bottom of the steep road that led yup to the house...I thoguht it was kids making out. A Boy Scout leader a few miles away in Beverly Glen heard the screams, but the canyons have tricky acoustics and we heard nothing, right below the house. My brother had lived at the house when Melcher was there and made some offhand references to crazy Charlie, but he was nothing to be feared until that horrific night. The next morning I was awakend by many, amny cars going up the street, which was unusual, since it was a steep street, and we never got traffic; I looked out the window and counted twenty or more police cruisers and ambulances constantly traveling in a grim convoy up the street, and helicopters flying overhead...this went on all day, and after that, the circus started with tourists coming fom all over the United States to see the "murder house." I had met Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski at a small dinner party and never forgot how stunningly beautiful she was; absolutely breathtaking in person, and so sweet. The trial and the frightening lack of remorse was haunting, and we all armed ourselves with guns, not knowing if they would be back; when they were caught in a stolen car raid at the Spahn Ranch, everyone breathed easier....a friend of mine had a cabin in the Sierras and her mother drove up by herself one time and said she saw a schoolbus with hippies in it and they stared at her and as she told me alter "Gave her the chills." The combination of these lost souls came together and created a monster that tortured and murdered many people, inclduing Shorty Shea and the La Biancas. Th trial and the crime itself is recreated in meticulous detail and you must marvel at the tenacity and the will of Bugliosi to endure this several month long trial...and emerge victorious. The Supreme Court, in a questionable decision, rescinded the death penalty; but for that, they would more than likely have been executed by now. So they still come up for parole and they still get denied, and long may that continue, because there is no doubt whatsoever, despite claims of new found Christinaity, they would do harm to others when they could...this is a horrific glimpse into the minds and wills of people who are beyond any help or humanity; they are monsters.
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