The Mechanical Family

Part I of II

The coyote is the most aware creature there is … because he is completely paranoid.

—Charles Manson, circa 1969

The Manson trial was a parafictional play through which the US Government declared the power of its sorcery. In order to convict Charles Manson and his Family, the state’s prosecutor had to show that “brainwashing” was real, that the Manson girls were “brainwashed zombies” yet paradoxically were driven by bloodlust “deep down inside themselves,” and that Manson, a barely literate ex-con, had used a precise combination of drugs, hypnotism, and psychodrama to transform normal people into crazed “automatons.” In other words, the intelligence community was establishing in court that methods devised under MKULTRA were effective, and had been successfully proven in the field.

Vincent Bugliosi, the prosecutor in the Manson trial, presented the "Helter Skelter" motive in his book of the same name. According to Bugliosi, Manson believed that an apocalyptic race war between Blacks and Whites was imminent, a conflict he referred to as "Helter Skelter," named after a Beatles song. Manson planned to incite this war by committing gruesome murders that would be blamed on the Black Panther Party. Reportedly, he presaged that in the course of this war, blacks would prevail but then would be unable to govern themselves. At this point, Manson expected to emerge from hiding to take control. Bugliosi argued that Manson's orchestrated murders were intended to hasten the arrival of Helter Skelter, framing them as catalysts for the race war he predicted.

Admittedly, parts of this Helter Skelter scenario did feature in Manson’s eschatology, but framing it as motive for the Tate-Bianca murders was pure fantasy on the part of Bugliosi, who was himself a complete madman—

Suspecting in 1964 that his milkman Herbert Weisel had an affair with his wife and fathered his child, Vincent Jr., Bugliosi initiated a campaign of harassment and terror. This consisted of “bizarre,” threatening phone calls, ominous letters, and ordering District Attorney office investigators to shadow Weisel under the pretense that he was a witness in a murder case. Bugliosi’s persecution of his milkman, spanning over four years, escalated when he began targeting the man’s children. On one occasion, he kidnapped Weisel’s five year old daughter from school, took her on a shopping spree at a toy store, then dropped her curbside at the Weisel home with his unbidden gifts piled around. As the horrified mother encountered the scene, Bugliosi cheerily waved and drove off.

This scandal came out in 1972 when Bugliosi was running for district attorney of Los Angeles. The Weisel family then went public with their story, fearing the potential power this psychopath could wield over the city. Bugliosi countered by falsely accusing Weisel of theft, leading to a defamation lawsuit where it was revealed that Bugliosi used DA office resources to investigate Weisel under false pretenses. Facing the risk of exposure, Bugliosi settled out of court for $12,500, with the Weisels agreeing to a confidentiality deal and surrendering deposition tapes (Denny 1990).

Before the Manson “trial of the century,” the largest most and most expensive of the time, Bugliosi was a relatively obscure figure. Any objective observer can see he was selected for this career-making opportunity because he was compromised. The DA’s office was fully aware that he was a dark, cartoonish character, yet continued to shield him.