In the summer of 1969, in Los Angeles, a series of brutal, seemingly random murders captured headlines across America. A famous actress (and her unborn child), an heiress to a coffee fortune, a supermarket owner and his wife were among the seven victims. A thin trail of circumstances eventually tied the Tate-LeBianca murders to Charles Manson, a would-be pop singer of small talent living in the desert with his "family" of devoted young women and men. What was his hold over them? And what was the motivation behind such savagery? In the public imagination, over time, the case assumed the proportions of myth. The murders marked the end of the sixties and became an immediate symbol of the dark underside of that era. Vincent Bugliosi was the prosecuting attorney in the Manson trial, and this book is his enthralling of how he built his case from what a defense attorney dismissed as only "two fingerprints and Vince Bugliosi." The meticulous detective work with which the story begins, the prosecutor's view of a complex murder trial, the reconstruction of the philosophy Manson inculcated in his fervent followers... these elements make for a true crime classic. ?Helter Skelter ?is not merely a spellbinding murder case and courtroom drama but also, in the words of ?The New Republic?, a "social document of rare importance."
Vincent Bugliosi
Vincent T. Bugliosi nació en Hibbing, Minnesota, en 1934, de padres de origen italiano. En 1964 se graduó en Derecho por la Universidad de California en Los Ángeles. Ese mismo año, entró en la Oficina del Fiscal del Distrito de Los Ángeles, donde intervino durante ocho años en más de mil casos, entre ellos algunos célebres. Como él mismo afirmó en 1974, «he llevado ciento cuatro juicios por delitos graves, y solo he perdido uno». En noviembre de 1969, se pone al frente de la investigación de los casos Tate y LaBianca. Fruto de la experiencia, escribiría, junto con el escritor Curt Gentry, "Helter Skelter", que con los años se convertiría en el libro de true crime más vendido de todos los tiempos. Tanto este volumen como el que le siguió, "Till Death Us Do Part", fueron galardonados con el Premio Edgar Allan Poe al mejor «Best Fact Crime Book» del año. Es también el autor de libros sobre O.J. Simpson ("Outrage: The Five Reasons Why O.J. Simpson Got Away with Murder", de 1996), Bill Clinton ("No Island of Sanity: Paula Jones v. Bill Clinton - The Supreme Court on Trial", de 1998), George W. Bush ("The Betrayal of America: How the Supreme Court Undermined the Constitution and Chose Our President", de 2001, y "The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder", de 2008), o sobre el asesinato de J.F. Kennedy ("Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy", de 2007), entre otros. Bugliosi falleció en 2015 víctima de un cáncer.
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