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Helter Skelter: The Beatles Song That Became a Blueprint for Murder
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Charles Manson took a Beatles song about a fairground slide and rebuilt it into a justification for killing — then sent his followers to Cielo Drive. This is the story of the Tate-LaBianca murders, the Helter Skelter prophecy, and the night the sixties ended.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Before you know the full story, "Helter Skelter" sounds like a rock song. A loud, driving, slightly chaotic track from the Beatles' White Album.
The Beatles released the White Album in November nineteen sixty-eight. It was sprawling, experimental, a double album with twenty-nine tracks pulling in every direction.
Manson's version of Helter Skelter was a prediction of an apocalyptic race war in America. He believed Black Americans would rise up against white society, that violence would sweep the country, and that in the chaos that followed, the Manson Family would emerge to lead.
On the night of August eighth going into August ninth, nineteen sixty-nine, Manson sent four of his followers to ten thousand and fifty Cielo Drive in the hills above Los Angeles. The house was rented by film director Roman Polanski and his wife, actress Sharon Tate.
Understanding who carried out these murders matters, because it challenges every instinct about what a killer looks like. Tex Watson was twenty-three years old, from a small town in Texas.
The investigation took months. The case broke partly because of Susan Atkins talking in prison, partly because of investigative work that eventually connected the Family to the crimes.
Bugliosi's account of the case, published in nineteen seventy-four under the title Helter Skelter, became one of the best-selling true crime books ever written. It set the terms through which the public understood the murders for decades.
Charles Manson spent the rest of his life in California's prison system. He was denied parole repeatedly.
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