Word: manson
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...people of the State of California against . . . whom? Against what unknowable madness? The trial of Charles Manson and three of his tribe was under way, but the law seemed to lack the strictures to codify the case; there was a disquieting essential truth in the outcast's declaration that "I'm the other end of your society...
...people of the State of California must dispose, legally, of the murder of Actress Sharon Tate and six other people on two successive nights last August-murders in which the killers and the killed were unknown to each other. Last week Manson-pale but composed, in blue prison denim, his dark hair a flowing frame for his pinched face-walked into the Los Angeles courtroom where the concerns of the state must be met. On his forehead was his symbol of apartness: an X, in his own dried blood, cut there because "I have X-ed myself from your world...
Secret Smile. It was only the beginning of otherworldliness. Before the day ended, Prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi -Manson's opposite in a carefully tailored gray suit and vest, possessor of an enviable record of successful prosecutions-had attributed to the vagueness of a Beatles' song part of Manson's motive in directing the murders. In an outline of his case, delivered to the jury of seven men and five women in an understated manner that belied its content, Bugliosi elaborated on the Beatles' theme...
There was Manson's passion for violent death, his anti-establishment hatred -and Helter Skelter, the Beatles' song whose lyrics appear to suggest sex, if anything, to the normal eye; helter-skelter is simply a British term for a carnival slide. A representative sample...
...Manson, Bugliosi said, the meaning of helter-skelter was clear: a violent black uprising against whites. Manson would escape it by leading his drugs-and-sex caravan of followers into the California desert, but first he would precipitate helter-skelter by making other whites think it had arrived. That is why the words were written in blood when Mr. and Mrs. Leno LaBianca, a middle-aged couple, were murdered in their home in the Los Feliz area the night after the Tate killings...