Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders

Helter Skelter took me into a deeper look into the murders and the motive behind Manson. I learned quite an abundance about him and the family. One thing I didn’t know before this was that Manson tried to start a race war with the murders. I knew he was a racist but I didn’t know about that part of the motive behind the murders.

Now on the book itself, I was kept interested until halfway through part six. That is when I started to lose interest. Twenty-six hours is quite a long time and while listening to this while working when I wasn’t with customers, I really found it quite hard to follow along once the trial was finished and they were going for the death penalty. Which ended up being a waste of time because the State of California did away with the death penalty. Now they are all doing life except Susan Atkins who died in 2009 and Charlie Manson who died in 2017. The epilogue made this feel like it was longer than it was. I just wanted it to end by then. I wasn’t fully invested at that point let alone half.

I can see why some people would want to know about the Manson Family and about the murders, but I don’t quite understand the full gravitational pull Manson had on people. Quite frankly the man gives me the willies along with the girls. It is quite sad that none felt remorse (Whether now if they are remorseful I don’t know.) for what they had done and how easily they turned on one another once found that other members, who were trying to get out, were going to testify.

I may read a few more books but I don’t know if I will ever get into the hype of learning all there is to know about the Manson Family or about Charlie. While I do like reading about cults and cult leaders after this Manson is not as exciting as he sounded. Instead of just charisma alone to control his members he actually used drugs to help his control. Not normally the kind of cult leaders I like to learn about.