Was the Whole Truth Hidden in the Manson Murders?

CIA, MK-Ultra, and the San Francisco Connection

The one thing I’m sure of with the Manson murders is that most of what we’ve been told is not the whole story. Most of this narrative was produced by the prosecutor, Vincent Bugliosi, in his book Helter Skelter. This could have been for several reasons, some more sinister than others.

The first, and most straightforward, could be that he simply wanted to convict the killers. On a more sinister note, was he deliberately hiding facts to gain that conviction? It may also have been that he wanted to sell his book.

In his own book, Chaos, Tom O’Neill produces several statements from people who knew Bugliosi, suggesting he must have known some of the facts he omitted.

The primary duty of a lawyer engaged in public prosecution is not to convict, but to see that justice is done. - Code of Ethics

From a personal note, I remember reading Helter Skelter and struggling with the motive for the crime. Motiveless crimes are very rare. I also found it hard to imagine one man having so much power over others that they would kill for him. The idea of mass manipulation felt incomplete.

However, I want to make it clear as we explore the facts you might not know: I do not believe that any of the defendants should have been found innocent. But the truth behind why they killed might not be as clear as we all thought.

The Official Version

The murders happened over two consecutive nights in Los Angeles in August 1969.

The first attack was on the home of actress Sharon Tate, who at the time was eight months pregnant.

Tate was at home at 10050 Cielo Drive in Benedict Canyon whilst her husband, director Roman Polanski, was away working. The five victims: Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, Abigail Folger, Wojciech Frykowski, and 18-year-old Steven Parent, were attacked with various levels of viciousness. Steven Parent was shot outside the house, whilst the victims inside were brutally stabbed and beaten. Blood from one of the victims was then used to write the word ‘pig’ on the front door.

The next night, the LaBianca murders occurred. This family was said to have been targeted at random. Both Leno LaBianca and his wife Rosemary were initially tied up before Manson left. The couple were then stabbed to death. This time the killers left several messages in the victims’ blood, including ‘death to pigs’ and ‘Helter Skelter’.

During the trial, prosecutor Bugliosi established that Helter Skelter was a term Manson had used from a Beatles song to convince his followers of an apocalyptic race war.

All key members of the Manson Family involved were eventually captured, convicted of murder and conspiracy, and sentenced to death, though their sentences were later commuted to life in prison after the death penalty was briefly abolished in California.

Could Manson Have Been Arrested Sooner?

The Family was arrested almost three months after the murders, but evidence has come to light suggesting they could have been captured much earlier, or even imprisoned before the killings.

Most members of the Family had been arrested for various charges, such as driving without a licence and car theft. They were all released either without charge or on parole which was never followed through with.

Manson himself was on parole at the time of the murders. He had been arrested several times and should have been returned to prison on parole violation; however, he never was.

The blame was laid at his parole officer, Roger Smith’s feet for not reporting him. Initially, Smith stated that a communication breakdown meant he didn’t know. However, O’Neill found evidence that Smith had acted for Manson on several of these charges and knew about them.

Robert Winslow, who lost his re-election bid, was also said to have been too lenient on the Manson girls when they first ended up in trouble.

During the initial investigation, officers went to the Beach Boys’ house, a well-known haunt of Manson’s. Manson was implicated in the murders at this stage, yet it was months before arrests were made.

Furthermore, Reeve Whitson, who is thought to have been a CIA agent, had the Tate house under surveillance. He apparently could not offer evidence for the murders. Highly confidential records were also discovered that state Manson was under surveillance at the time, yet we are meant to believe nothing was seen that implicated him in the murders.

Investigating officers who have tried to bring these facts to the public have lost their jobs.

Powerful interests had aligned themselves against the truth. - Tom O’Neill

Crime Discrepancies and the Polanski Connection

It was not just the narrative surrounding the motive that seemed inaccurate; there were also several discrepancies at the crime scene.

When Roman Polanski found out about the murders, he returned home to play the grieving husband. The media coverage from this time seems staged, even to the casual observer. Various people who knew the couple have called into question their relationship.

Bugliosi himself stated that Roman Polanski forced Sharon Tate to have sex with two other men on tape. They hosted parties that were seen as dangerous and had an aura of jeopardy around them. Drugs and girls were aplenty - similar to parties that have been in the media recently.

All this evidence would fit with what we have since learned about Roman Polanski, given his later charges of sexual assault and fleeing America to escape prosecution.

There is evidence that Manson may have returned to the house after the murder to stage the victims. A pair of glasses was recovered from the Tate murders that did not belong to any of the victims or perpetrators. Manson stated in the 1986 book, Manson in His Own Words, that he went to the Cielo house and took elaborate measures to rearrange the crime scene, even dropping the glasses (wiping them clean of prints) to confuse the police.

Shahrokh Hatami, a friend of Tate’s, said he received a phone call informing him of the murder ninety minutes before the Polanskis’ maid turned up at the house and discovered the bodies. That phone call, he claimed, came from his friend, Reeve Whitson.

San Francisco and the MK-Ultra Shadow

Very little of this is spoken about in Helter Skelter. The other major incident which only warrants a line in the book is Manson’s stay in San Francisco.

Bugliosi would later say he never saw anything about it, but that must have been a lie because he was an avid reader of newspapers, subscribing to everyone, and would have had access to the information.

Manson had been assigned to a San Francisco Project, an experimental parole program funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). The institute later admitted that the CIA used it as a front for LSD research in the MK-Ultra program.

The clinic, known as Haight-Ashbury, said Manson was a frequent visitor. The experiments into the effect of amphetamines on violent behaviour were facilitated by Roger Smith. To ensure the ‘success’ of their research, O’Neill theorised that researchers could protect their subjects from criminal prosecutions.

Manson used a combination of LSD, mind games, and sexual practices to control the Family, but no one knew where he got this knowledge from. Yet, he was at a clinic that was reportedly carrying out these very experiments.

This is hard to prove, the reams of paperwork and record-keeping you would expect from these experiments vanished. Right after Manson was arrested, the facility was ‘robbed’, and they lost all their files.

Bugliosi was trying a case where he wanted people to believe Manson brainwashed the Family, yet he never called the experts on mind control from the clinic or used any of their reports. They were the equivalent of an expert witness, and he ignored them. Why?

Did Law Enforcement Know?

In Tom O’Neill’s book, there is a suggestion that some in law enforcement knew the Tate murders were planned but could not stop them from happening because it would jeopardise their intelligence-collecting efforts.

The LAPD said that they destroyed many of the investigative reports on the Manson case. However, if this is true, what did Bugliosi use to write Helter Skelter?

The truth behind the murders may never be completely known, especially as most of the perpetrators are dead. The whole case seems to have been covered in a veil of secrecy at the highest level. Was Manson an MK-Ultra candidate? Were the murders a CIA operation that went wrong, or were they an operation that went right? You decide.

All I know for certain is that the book Helter Skelter never made complete sense to me and left me with more questions than answers. Tom O’Neill’s, Chaos, answers many of those questions. It is a must-read for anyone fascinated by the case.

Until next Wednesday: Stay safe, stay curious, and beware the shadows of the past.