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Essay Subject: (Vincent Bugliosi). Analyzes account of Manson Family from criminal justice perspective. Perpetrators, crimes, investigatory problems.... More...

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Paper Abstract: (Vincent Bugliosi). Analyzes account of Manson Family from criminal justice perspective. Perpetrators, crimes, investigatory problems. Paper Introduction: This study will examine Vincent Bugliosi's Helter Skelter from the perspective of criminal justice. The study will include consideration of the primary characters in the Manson Family murders, the specific crimes committed, and, primarily, the problems of investigation encountered and, in fact, created by the investigators of those crimes. The crimes covered in the book are seven murders committed on two nights in 1969 in Los Angeles by a band of young people headed by Charles Manson, a charismatic long-term criminal, although Manson himself did not participate in the actual slayings on August 9th and 10th of that year. In fact, this fact--that Manson commanded the young men and women to kill but did not himself participate in the actual killings--was a major problem for prosecutor and District Attorney Vincent Bugliosi: Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. This study will examine Vincent Bugliosi's Helter Skelter from theperspective of criminal justice. TheSheriff's officers argued that there could have been more than oneindividual involved in the Hinman murder. As Bugliosi writes, "In anyhomicide, it is standard practice to withhold certain information whichpresumably only the police and the killer(s) know . In both cases a messagehad been left. The reporter called the police and the gun was discovered where ithad been filed away three and a half months earlier (266). The two Sheriff's officers pressed the issue: "Whiteley againemphasized the similarities. A news crew from a local television station took it uponthemselves to follow the flight path of the killers and to look for theclothing. Onthe wall in the living room, not far from Hinman's body, were the wordsPOLITICAL PIGGY, printed in the victim's own blood" (46). Bugliosi in this instance is somewhat lenient in his assessment ofthe police failure: "It was one of those off happenstances, for which noone was at fault, the repercussions of which no one could foresee, but itappears possible that had (someone in the police department made theconnection), the killers might have been apprehended days, rather thanmonths, after the murders, and Donald 'Shorty' Shea, and possibly others,might still be alive" (336). One of the major failures of the Los Angeles Police Department,writes Bugliosi, was the deaf ear its officers turned to a major finding ofthe Los Angeles Sheriff's Office with respect to clues found at the Tateand LaBianca murder scenes as well as at the scene of another murder whichturned out to be associated with the Manson Family. Yet within twenty-four hours thepolice would decide there was no connection between the two sets ofmurders" (58). One of the most significant failures in the investigation involvedthe discovery of the revolver used in the Tate killings. Like the gun, the clothing had been thrown-off the road down anembankment. There is, for example, no other reason aside from investigativeincompetence which could account for the failure of the police toimmediately identify the linkages between the Tate and LaBianca murders. The crimes covered in the book are seven murders committed on twonights in 1969 in Los Angeles by a band of young people headed by CharlesManson, a charismatic long-term criminal, although Manson himself did notparticipate in the actual slayings on August 9th and 1 th of that year. There was also rampant incompetence on especially the part of the LosAngeles Police Department which transcends any claim that rivalry was theprimary cause for LAPD failures. As Bugliosi writes, there was a pattern of similarities between thetwo cases: "Los Angeles, California; consecutive nights; multiple murders;victims affluent Caucasians; multiple stab wounds; incredible savagery;absence of a conventional motive; no evidence of ransacking of robbery;ropes around the neck of two Tate victims, cords around the necks of bothLaBiancas. Bugliosi is indeed generally more gentle with his criticism of theLos Angeles Police Department than he might have been had he lost the case. The victims, on August 9, were Sharon Tate, Abigail Folger, VoytekFrykowski, Jay Sebring, and Steve Parent. Again, communications between policeagencies failed. 'Naw,' he replied, 'weknow what's behind these murders. "Buckles, Whiteley would laterrecall, lost interest when he mentioned hippies. Errors of presumption also plagued the investigation from thebeginning. Theyfeared that they would not get full credit for breaking the case, and as aresult they tended to give short shrift to clues or suggestions provided bythe Sheriff's officers working on the case or related cases. A ten-year-old boy found the gun halfway down a slope in hisbackyard, where the killers had discarded it on their flight from the Tatemurders. ."However, the clothing found by the TV crew was indeed the clothing worn bythe killers the night of the murders at the Tate residence. One of the first major mistakes was committed by LAPD Officer JerryJoe DeRosa. Included in the Manson plan wereclues Manson believed the Beatles were sending him through the words andmusic of their "White Album," including especially it the song "HelterSkelter." Bugliosi had to convince the jury of the reality of this plan as amotive behind the killings in order to convict Manson himself. He was gruffly put off by theofficers he talked to, and as a result he notified a TV reporter who livednearby. Both printed. . A number of other crimes, including other murders committed bymembers of the Manson Family, are considered in the book, but the focus ison the seven murders outlined above. Helter Skelter. The amount ofinformation unofficially released so bothered LAPD brass that a tight lidwas clamped on further disclosures" (28-29). As Bugliosi writes, "It was just too easy--if the clothing was inplain view from the road, surely LAPD would have found it by now . The Los Angeles Police Departmentembarrassed itself. Nevertheless, Buckles took no significant notice of these obviousclues which could have linked the Tate murders not only to the Hinmanmurder but to the LaBianca murders the following night, and theinvestigation was seriously hampered and delayed as a result. In addition, there was a clear failure of communication between thebranches of police investigation at work on the various cases related tothe Manson Family. Although a number of attorneys participated in the case, particularlyin defense of the accused, Vincent Bugliosi emerged as the "star" attorneyin his brilliant prosecution of the family members tried for the murders. Both in a victim's blood. At the same time, it was impossible to make such a reporting of theManson Family murder case without making clear, however gently, that theLAPD behaved with astounding professional incompetence in a number ofimportant instances. Bugliosi writes that "LAPD sent out approximately three hundred ofthe flyers, to various law-enforcement agencies in California, other partsof the United States, and Canada. Bugliosi finds a number of reasons to explain bothBuckles' failure as well as the failure of the Los Angeles PoliceDepartment in a number of incidents which hampered the investigation andthe prosecution of the Manson Family members once apprehended and charged. . The first error committed by theinvestigators was the belief that caretaker William Garretson was thekiller of the five. At that very moment, the LAPD was sending out flyers to policedepartments around the country seeking any information on the gun, adistinctive .22 caliber Hi Standard Longhorn revolver with a missing right-hand grip and evidence of having been used to beat a human being to death. They went on to say that thesuspect had been living on a ranch with "a bunch of other hippies." Thehippies were headed by Charles Manson. Bugliosiwrites- "That a TV crew had found the clothing was an embarrassment toLAPD. He was later cleared of any involvement, aside fromhaving been visited the night of the murders by Steve Parent. As Bugliosi writes, "The curiousthing: as in the Tate homicides, a message had been left on the scene. Bugliosidiscovered that the LAPD had interviewed an associate of Manson's inNovember of 1969 regarding "Manson's far-out philosophy." One of theinterviewing LAPD detectives said, "Ah, Charlie's a madman; we're notinterested in all that" (335). The following day, in fact, alerted by a newspaper article whichmentioned the gun found by the boy, the boy's father called LAPD to findout about the whereabouts of the gun. They're part of a big dope transaction'"(47). In fact, it was not Bugliosi who was responsible for embarrassing theLos Angeles Police Department. After all, he certainly had to recognize that he was going to beworking with the LAPD in the future, and he did not want to alienate themmore than he had to in reporting the development of-the case honestly andaccurately. No connection was made in Watson's mind betweenthe Tate investigation--which had now focused on discovering that very gun--and the revolver he took from the boy and filed away. When LAPD Officer Watson came to pick up the gun, the boy saw theofficer touch the gun "with both hands, all over the gun" (91). If this is not done a week or two after collection, the componentsof the blood break down. On July 31, just over a week before the Tate murders, the twoSheriff's officers, responding to a report of a homicide, found the body ofa man who had been stabbed to death. There may have been no discernible prints on the gun in the firstplace, but, again, the professional incompetence of the investigatingofficers was astounding. As Bugliosi himself,testifies in reporting his inevitable courtexamination of the police officers exercising the worst examples of thisincompetence, "As much as possible, I tried to avoid embarrassing LAPD"(47 ). . It is instructive to compare the handling of what turned out tobe a major piece of evidence by both the ten-year-old boy and the policeofficer to whom he and his father turned the gun over: "Picking it up verycarefully by the tip of the barrel, so as not to eradicate prints, (theboy) took the gun back to his house and showed it to his father . However,for some reason never explained, he didn't run subtypes on twenty-one ofthem. Another LAPD failure involved the discovery of the clothing wornduring the Tate murders and discarded by the killers on their flight fromthe scene. The study will include consideration ofthe primary characters in the Manson Family murders, the specific crimescommitted, and, primarily, the problems of investigation encountered and,in fact, created by the investigators of those crimes. The rivalry extended to departments within the LAPD, with, asBugliosi notes, the LaBianca case detectives concluding that the Tatedetectives were mishandling the Tate case. In the first place, the individual arrested forthe Hinman murder was in custody at the time of the Tate murders. And the bloody printing. New York: Bantam, 1988.----------------------- 11 They did, in fact, with little trouble, discover the clothing. Infact, this fact--that Manson commanded the young men and women to kill butdid not himself participate in the actual killings--was a major problem forprosecutor and District Attorney Vincent Bugliosi: providing proof thatManson did indeed lead the band of killers and was therefore as culpable asthey in the crimes. Later, when an attempt was made to re-create themurders, these omissions would cause many problems" (18). This, again, was a situation created by rivalries amongthe various departments. Buckles and other detectives inthe LAPD resented that the Sheriff's Office was providing clues. In the first place, there was clearly an atmosphere of rivalrybetween the Sheriff's Office and the LAPD. That citizens, rather than the police, discovered thegun and the clothing used and worn in the Tate murders, and that the policecompletely ignored the gun until three and a half months after itsdiscovery are indeed facts which expose the incompetence of the Los AngelesPolice Department, with or without editorial comment on the part ofBugliosi. Linda Kasabianwas known to have been a participant in the family's activities leading upto the murders, but she was granted immunity and became the star witnesstestifying against her former family associates. How could Buckles have been so obstinate in refusing to consider thisimportant clue? Two homicide detectives in the Los Angeles Sheriff's Office, Whiteleyand Guenther, just over a day after the discoveryof the murder victims at the Tate residence, went to a detective handlingthe Tate murders with a crucial piece of information. Someone neglected to mail one to theValley Services Division of the Los Angeles Police Department in Van Nuys"(where the gun lay filed away) (92). And in both theletters PIG appeared. Like mode of death. The members of the Manson Family tried in the case were Mansonhimself, as the ringleader and mastermind of the crimes, Charles Watson,Susan Atkins, Leslie Van Houten, and Patricia Krenwinkel. . Faces at Parker center, however, would be far redder before the endof the following day" (264-265). Despite a number of striking similarities between thetwo crimes (including writing on the walls of the two homes in the victims'own blood), police investigators failed to discern the obvious connectionsbetween the two murder scenes. At the heart of Bugliosi's successful prosecution of Manson as themastermind and ringleader of the gang of killers was his outlandish-at-first-appearance claim that Manson had devised a scheme whereby he wouldbecome a leader of society after he had started a race war between blacksand whites, the killings of the victims at the Tate and LaBianca residenceshaving been the first stage of that plan. As a result, the LaBiancadetectives took it upon themselves, behind the backs of the Tatedetectives, to try to solve both cases at once. Any one of these things would be highly unusual, butall--the odds against its being a coincidence must be astronomical" (47). The next night, August 1 , 1969, Leno and Rosemary LaBianca weremurdered brutally. Another example of error of presumption was the early official reportthat the weapon inflicting stab wounds on the victims "was probably abayonet." Bugliosi writes that "This not only eliminated a number of otherpossibilities, it also presumed that only one knife was used" (23). One of the killers had apparently left a bloody fingerprint onthe mechanism which opened the gate to the Tate residence: "OfficerDeRosa, who was charged with securing and protecting the scene untilinvestigating officers arrived, now pressed the button himself,successfully opening the gate but also creating a superimposure thatobliterated any print that may have been there" (14). One of the clues in the murder cases kept from the presswas the writing of the words HEALTER SKELTER (sic) at the LaBiancaresidences The information was also kept from the detectives interviewingthe man providing them with the details of Manson's "Helter Skelter"philosophy. The police investigators also erred seriously by releasing to thepress important details--some correct and some incorrect, although thepolice believed all of them to be true. Buckles, the LAPD detective taking the report from the two officersof the Sheriff's Department, paid little if any attention to theinformation he was given. Works CitedBugliosi, Vincent. Bugliosi was hampered in his prosecution of the crimes by a number ofgrossly incompetent acts on the part of the police investigators. For example, LAPD Officer Joe Granado, a forensic chemist,"took a total of forty-five blood samples [from the Tate scene]. . (who)called LAPD" (91). If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.