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Speaker 6: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 6: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 6: written about them. Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK every
Speaker 6: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 6: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 6: journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Speaker 5: Good Evening over two Grim Knights in Los Angeles, the
Speaker 5: young followers of Charles Manson murdered seven people, including the
Speaker 5: actress Sharon Tate, then eight months pregnant. With no mercy
Speaker 5: and seemingly no motive, the Manson family followed their leaders
Speaker 5: every order. Their crimes lit a frank flame of paranoia
Speaker 5: cross the nation, Spelling the end of the sixties. Manson
Speaker 5: became one of history's most infamous criminals, his name forever
Speaker 5: attached to an era when Charlatan's mixed with prodigies, free
Speaker 5: love was as possible as brainwashing, and utopia or dystopia
Speaker 5: was just an acid trip away. Twenty years ago, when
Speaker 5: journalist Tom O'Neill was reporting a magazine piece about the murders.
Speaker 5: He worried there was nothing new to say. Then he
Speaker 5: unearthed shocking evidence of a cover up behind the official story,
Speaker 5: including police carelessness, legal misconduct, and potential surveillance by intelligence agents.
Speaker 5: When a tense interview with Vincent Bulogosi, prosecutor of the
Speaker 5: Manson family and author of Helter Skelter, turned a friendly
Speaker 5: source into a nemesis, O'Neill knew he was on to something,
Speaker 5: but every discovery brought more questions. O'Neill's quest for the
Speaker 5: truth led him from reclusive celebrities to seasoned spies, from
Speaker 5: San Francisco's Summer of Love to the shadowy sights of
Speaker 5: the CIA's mind control experiments, on a trail rife with
Speaker 5: shady cover ups and suspicious coincidences. The product of two
Speaker 5: decades of reporting, hundreds of new interviews, and dozens have
Speaker 5: never before seen documents from the LAPD, the FBI, and
Speaker 5: the CIA, chaos mounts an argument that could be, according
Speaker 5: to Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney Stephen k strong enough
Speaker 5: to overturn the verdicts on the Manson murders. This is
Speaker 5: a book that overturns our understanding of a pivotal time
Speaker 5: in American history. The book they were featuring this evening
Speaker 5: is Chaos Charles manson the CIA and the Secret History
Speaker 5: of the Sixties, with my special guest, journalist and author
Speaker 5: Tom O'Neill. Welcome to the program, and thank you very
Speaker 5: much for a Greenness interview. Tom O'Neill.
Speaker 7: Thanks, thanks Dan, thanks for having me.
Speaker 5: Thank you very much. This is, as I mentioned, one incredible,
Speaker 5: incredible investigation you've undertaken and the result is one fascinating
Speaker 5: and incredible book. Let's get right into this. Let's get
Speaker 5: right into this. In March twenty first, nineteen ninety nine,
Speaker 5: tell Us you were a freelance journalist at that time.
Speaker 5: Tell Us who called you and what they offered as
Speaker 5: an assignment.
Speaker 7: To you at that time. That was my old editor
Speaker 7: from another magazine. She had moved to Premiere, which was
Speaker 7: a film magazine, and she asked me to do a
Speaker 7: thirtieth anniversary piece on the Mansi murders. And I wasn't
Speaker 7: interested in doing it because never been interested in the case.
Speaker 7: I just assumed that, you know, there was nothing new
Speaker 7: to write about it, so I was pretty reluctant. But
Speaker 7: she persuaded me to do it. She knew I needed it,
Speaker 7: and I thought I was accepting a three month assignment.
Speaker 7: I didn't know it was going to take quite as
Speaker 7: long as it did. And I'm pretty sure had I
Speaker 7: known then what I knew now, I probably probably would
Speaker 7: have said no, I still don't know what that was
Speaker 7: worth twenty years of my life. M hmm.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, say turned into an obsession. Obviously it took over
Speaker 5: your life. That's understandable.
Speaker 7: Well, tell us it wasn't so much to an obsession,
Speaker 7: but it was more of a I wanted to find
Speaker 7: the answers once I figured out things happened differently and
Speaker 7: that people had covered stuff up and hidden things. I
Speaker 7: guess you could say it became an obsession to get
Speaker 7: the truth.
Speaker 5: Sure, m you you write that one of the first
Speaker 5: things you did was to read Helter Skelter from Vincent Bulagosi.
Speaker 5: Tell us tell us about that? Why that was important?
Speaker 7: Well, I mean, if I was writing about that case,
Speaker 7: that was considered and probably to this day is still
Speaker 7: considered the dependentive book on the case, and I was
Speaker 7: reading it for the first time, and it's the page turner.
Speaker 7: I have to give it that. But now I think
Speaker 7: pretty differently about the book and look at it a
Speaker 7: whole lot differently. But at the time I read it,
Speaker 7: you know, without knowing anything really about the case, I
Speaker 7: just kind of fell hook one and sinker into the
Speaker 7: narrative he presented and believed everything he told me, and
Speaker 7: it was a pretty compelling lead.
Speaker 5: What was your first step after in this investigation? You guys,
Speaker 5: we write you had ninety days, three months to be
Speaker 5: able to do this five thousand words, so that's what
Speaker 5: you said off to do. So what was other than
Speaker 5: reading the Helter Skelter, the official book as far as
Speaker 5: you knew, at least you needed to read that. What
Speaker 5: did you do next after reading all that?
Speaker 7: Well, like any story, I made up a list of
Speaker 7: potential interview subjects and I sent a list to the
Speaker 7: magazines and say have researchers there, And I said, can
Speaker 7: you get me phone numbers for I think I'd probably
Speaker 7: give about twenty people who were actors and rock musicians,
Speaker 7: and maybe a couple of writers, people that were at
Speaker 7: us from the world of Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski
Speaker 7: and the other victims. And then separately, on my own,
Speaker 7: I started trying to find people who were you know,
Speaker 7: non celebrities, but who had become important witnesses in the trial.
Speaker 7: And at this point I still didn't suspect that anything
Speaker 7: untoward had happened in the trial. And I also got
Speaker 7: a phone number for Vince BULIOSI had an interview set
Speaker 7: up with him, and he was one of the first
Speaker 7: people I interviewed. I went to his home in Pasadena
Speaker 7: and spent about six hours in one day just talking
Speaker 7: with him, going out to lunch, getting a tour of
Speaker 7: some of the locations associated with the crimes, and you know,
Speaker 7: walking away pretty impressed because he had given me so
Speaker 7: much time. But as I write in the book, by
Speaker 7: the end of the interview, I realized, even though he
Speaker 7: was so generous with his time and with his stories,
Speaker 7: I realized he wasn't giving me anything at all new.
Speaker 7: He's just saying the same thing that he'd send another
Speaker 7: interviewers in the book. So I did what we call
Speaker 7: the hill Mary path. At the end of the interview,
Speaker 7: I asked him if there was anything he could tell
Speaker 7: me that he'd never shared before, something unknown about the
Speaker 7: case that might give me a fresh angle on it.
Speaker 7: And I said, if it's something that you'd rather not
Speaker 7: be associated with you could tell me off the record,
Speaker 7: and I'll say, I got to put an anonymous source,
Speaker 7: and he thought a little bit, and then he said,
Speaker 7: turn it off. Turn it off with putting to my
Speaker 7: capable And he told me something which is pretty startling
Speaker 7: and had definitely never been reported before. And you'll find
Speaker 7: out in the book what that was or your readers
Speaker 7: or a listeners well, and why it was important and
Speaker 7: also why it eventually did become on the record after
Speaker 7: my relationship with Boliosi changed.
Speaker 5: You say that you even in that first interview, you
Speaker 5: knew you were onto something from his behavior and the
Speaker 5: way he spoke about this case. When you had reviewed
Speaker 5: his book itself, what was the next step in terms
Speaker 5: of you attempting to get records? What records officially you
Speaker 5: write about police reports? What other records were you interested in?
Speaker 7: Well, it wasn't so much from just reading a book.
Speaker 7: I mean, there were some things that I was hoping
Speaker 7: to answer, plot points that he even out in the
Speaker 7: book that seemed still to this day unexplainable about the case.
Speaker 7: It was only after I started interviewing people besides and
Speaker 7: and people who had never talked about the case before,
Speaker 7: who had been key prosecution witnesses, where they started telling
Speaker 7: me different stories that was kind of contradictory of the
Speaker 7: official narrative, and at that point some of it was
Speaker 7: so dramatically different than what he presented, not just in
Speaker 7: his book, but even more importantly, you know, a trial
Speaker 7: to a jury, what people's lives hung in the balance,
Speaker 7: since there were deafence is associated with these convictions. Once
Speaker 7: I started hearing that from more than one witness, I
Speaker 7: had to check what they were saying because it was
Speaker 7: thirty years later, and some of them told me that
Speaker 7: they had told the police to the same information, but
Speaker 7: they had never been asked about it a trial or
Speaker 7: ever seen it in the public form of belieos, these
Speaker 7: books or artic and they were wondering why. So at
Speaker 7: that point I had to coroborate what they said, so
Speaker 7: I started making it real on an effort to get
Speaker 7: police finals from the LAPD shriff's files, from the Los
Speaker 7: Angeles Sheriff's company our division, and also the District Attorney's files,
Speaker 7: then to his own notes, and that was not easy.
Speaker 7: It was time consuming, took a lot of work to
Speaker 7: get access, and I guess almost all the access I
Speaker 7: got was through backdoors, you know, not to official people
Speaker 7: who were in charge of the files, but through people
Speaker 7: who kind of let me in and said, don't tell
Speaker 7: me when I showed you this stuff. So once I
Speaker 7: started getting that and seeing that what these people had
Speaker 7: told me was true, then I knew it was something
Speaker 7: that was bigger than the magazine article and would take
Speaker 7: much more time than the three months could have been
Speaker 7: given to me. And it took a year to I
Speaker 7: kept reporting up for the magazine for a year, and
Speaker 7: then the editor and sheef got fired, I think partly
Speaker 7: because he paid me to report nothing about this for
Speaker 7: a year, and the new editor and chief wanted me
Speaker 7: to publish right away and I wouldn't, so at that
Speaker 7: point I got a book agent. That was in two thousand,
Speaker 7: two thousand and one, even maybe early two thousand and one,
Speaker 7: where I got a book agent, he reached an understanding
Speaker 7: or I deal with the magazine where I would give
Speaker 7: them some stuff later in exchange for being able to
Speaker 7: walk away with my story and continue on it. But
Speaker 7: again I still didn't think it was going to take
Speaker 7: me as long as it took me. I thought i'd
Speaker 7: have a book out in a couple of years, but
Speaker 7: it takes a long long time to keep even the
Speaker 7: information I have in the book. There's a lot of
Speaker 7: stuff you don't see in the book because it wasn't
Speaker 7: enough space. But the documents and reports were the most
Speaker 7: important thing that I was chasing.
Speaker 5: You looked at the witnesses of her at trial, and
Speaker 5: you tried to contact as many people as you possibly could.
Speaker 5: What at what point did you look at some of
Speaker 5: the and talk to some people that were witnesses and
Speaker 5: find out that there was potential witnesses that it seemed
Speaker 5: the police had never interviewed.
Speaker 7: Oh, I just found that out, you know, again from
Speaker 7: talking to people and getting access to records and wondering
Speaker 7: why this person, you know, hadn't testified the trial, or
Speaker 7: why this person wasn't brought into the case, and then
Speaker 7: the official capacity and then I started figuring out that
Speaker 7: they were they would screw up the motive that was prosecuted,
Speaker 7: and that these people, you know, their information, their stories
Speaker 7: came out, it would conflicts with what they were presenting
Speaker 7: to the jury. And you know, when a prosecutor is
Speaker 7: trying to show a jury that someone's built of something,
Speaker 7: they only have to put on evidence that supports their argument,
Speaker 7: but well, they don't have to put on anything that
Speaker 7: contradicts that. They do have to share that with the defense.
Speaker 7: If it's something that came through police reports, BELIOSI didn't
Speaker 7: do that. He would held it from the defense, and
Speaker 7: that's a violation of what's called the Brady Law or
Speaker 7: anything that's as culpatoyer that could help the defense fight
Speaker 7: their case that the prosecutor has their obligator to share it.
Speaker 7: And when I took some of that information to the
Speaker 7: two living defense attorneys said the others had died, they
Speaker 7: both were shocked and said that had they had that
Speaker 7: information then they would have actually defended the Manson family
Speaker 7: entirely differently than they did. They never even put on
Speaker 7: a defense. Manson wouldn't allow his attorneys and his fell
Speaker 7: in Defenden's attorneys to put on a defense. But Rupert Scherld,
Speaker 7: who was Patricia Clamwinkle's attorney, and Irvin Kinert, who was
Speaker 7: Manson's attorney, both said this would have changed the entire
Speaker 7: trial if we had had this stuff, and he obviously,
Speaker 7: you know, broke the law by not sharing it with us.
Speaker 5: That's of a startling claim that you're making now that
Speaker 5: how did you get to the point where you found
Speaker 5: out this information and what information did you what information
Speaker 5: specifically did you find out that you believe that you
Speaker 5: believe that you proved that Bullegosi held back because of
Speaker 5: this official in.
Speaker 7: The particular information. Yeah, the official information I'm talking about
Speaker 7: right now is about Terry Milcher, who was a pivotal
Speaker 7: person for the prosecution case. Terry was the reason that
Speaker 7: Manson in the official version, shows the house to target
Speaker 7: its inhabitants who were allegedly strangers to him for death.
Speaker 7: Terry Meltzer was a record producer of Buffalo Springfield, Paul
Speaker 7: Overra Narraiders. He had to deal with Apple to work
Speaker 7: with the Beatles, and he was door staged on was
Speaker 7: you know one time in the fifties mediate early sixty
Speaker 7: the number one female movie store in the world. So
Speaker 7: Terry was kind of a golden child. Went through Dennis Wilson.
Speaker 7: He had met Manson and in the official version that
Speaker 7: Terry testified to a trial and Evince Pileosi presented to
Speaker 7: the jury and then wrote about in his book. But
Speaker 7: Terry had this kind of leeting interaction with Manson. He
Speaker 7: had met him three times at most, all long before
Speaker 7: the murders. The last time he met him was when
Speaker 7: he went to the Spawn Ranch in May of nineteen
Speaker 7: sixty nine to kind of informally audition the family for
Speaker 7: a possible recording contract, and in the official version, Terry
Speaker 7: wasn't impressed with them, but politely told Manson that he
Speaker 7: didn't think, you know, they should be working together, but
Speaker 7: he had a friend who might want to be doing
Speaker 7: a documentary about the group that would include recording them.
Speaker 7: And that was that everything ended well and nicely in
Speaker 7: May of sixty nine, and Melter never saw again. But
Speaker 7: what I found from uh in this person the well
Speaker 7: first and this attorneys files, and then in the sheriff's
Speaker 7: files were three or four different accounts by two of
Speaker 7: the main prosecution witnesses, and Thens relied on Denny DeCarlo,
Speaker 7: who was a biker who was an associate the family,
Speaker 7: and Paul Watkins, who was kind of a hardcore member.
Speaker 7: Both told the police that Ends told Miss Foliosi in
Speaker 7: the case of the Carlo, that Melcher had been to
Speaker 7: the ranch to meet with Manson after the murders and
Speaker 7: early September and to Spawn Ranch and then the second
Speaker 7: time out at the Barker and Myers Ranches in Death Valley,
Speaker 7: which is a six hour trip by cars, pretty rough
Speaker 7: when you get into the desert to try to get
Speaker 7: to where their hideout was. So that showed that Melcher
Speaker 7: had this post murders relationship with them. In my admitted
Speaker 7: the book. I don't know what that means, you know
Speaker 7: why that had to be covered up, but it does
Speaker 7: show that it was very different than what was presented.
Speaker 7: And Melcher was the linkage to the house. Melcher had
Speaker 7: lived in the house Shore and was killed in prior
Speaker 7: to her and left in January of sixty nine, and
Speaker 7: then Sharon and Roman moved in. And without Terry's involvement
Speaker 7: in the case and testimony, Manson probably never would have
Speaker 7: been convicted because he had given the official narrative didn't
Speaker 7: go to the house that night with the killers. He
Speaker 7: sent them there and with orders to kill everybody who
Speaker 7: lived in the former home of Carrie. So without Terry
Speaker 7: testifying that that, they probably wouldn't have gotten their conviction
Speaker 7: of Bensenberg conspiracy. So Stephen Kay, who was Vince's co
Speaker 7: prosecutor in the case, said, when I showed him these
Speaker 7: same documents, he said, I don't know what to think
Speaker 7: about this entire case anymore. Because the Vince lied about this,
Speaker 7: well what else would did he lie about? So those
Speaker 7: are the questions that come up early in the book
Speaker 7: that kind of sent me longer while goose Chase trying
Speaker 7: to get the answers to those questions, and that leads
Speaker 7: to a lot of other stuff. And as listeners will
Speaker 7: see if they buy the book, a lot of interesting
Speaker 7: stuff came up in my investigation, some stuff pretty compelling,
Speaker 7: other stuff that ends, and I just present everything I
Speaker 7: have to the reader, and I want the reader to
Speaker 7: decide in the end what they think happened and why.
Speaker 7: But I think one thing everyone agrees on after reading
Speaker 7: the book is it happened these clients happened much differently
Speaker 7: than we were told and for different reasons.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, you talk about the official narrative, and your book
Speaker 5: just opposes that, basically just examines it and dispels that.
Speaker 5: What exactly was the narrative about involving Terry Melcher because
Speaker 5: it was Manson and his followers targeting Terry Melcher or
Speaker 5: was it something to do with the house. Why what
Speaker 5: was the official story that you had to deal with that?
Speaker 5: Bulagosi put forth involving Terry Terry Well.
Speaker 7: The official story that Buliosi told was that Manson moved,
Speaker 7: that Meltzer didn't live there anymore, but he had been
Speaker 7: up there looking for him in March and was told
Speaker 7: that he had moved down to Malibu. He didn't. He
Speaker 7: wasn't told where exactly in Malibu. But also Buliosi writes
Speaker 7: in the book and had a couple of witnesses testify,
Speaker 7: Manson told Terry Mountster's good friend Greg Jacobson, another key
Speaker 7: prosecution witness who knew who was much more of all
Speaker 7: with the Manson family than Terry was, Manson told him
Speaker 7: that he had stolen Terry's or either stolen or move
Speaker 7: There's a couple of different versions Terry's telescope from his
Speaker 7: Malibu house. He either moved it on the deck to
Speaker 7: another spot or stolen it. But that was to let
Speaker 7: Terry knew before the murders that Manson knew where he was,
Speaker 7: where he lived, which was the house anymore. So the
Speaker 7: official version they were sent there to and kill Fear
Speaker 7: and Terry by killing all the people in his form home.
Speaker 7: I don't believe that's why they went there. I think
Speaker 7: the answer size and what was the real relationship and
Speaker 7: what was really going on between Terry and some other
Speaker 7: people in Hollywood and Manson. Unfortunately, you'll see I can
Speaker 7: only present hypothetical possibilities because I could never find out.
Speaker 7: I got like two thirds of the story without the
Speaker 7: last third of the answer.
Speaker 5: You talk about Dennis Wilson and his involvement in this
Speaker 5: as well, and that the DeCarlo, one of these incredible
Speaker 5: witness says that he witnessed Melcher coming to Manson and
Speaker 5: the family after the murders and asking for his forgiveness,
Speaker 5: going down on his knees and asking for forgiveness. Why
Speaker 5: is this story credible to you? And what does it
Speaker 5: tell you about the reasons why that the officials would
Speaker 5: want this not to come out? What would be the
Speaker 5: possible motivation for this?
Speaker 7: Yeah, that was actually Paul Watkins who told the sheriff's
Speaker 7: deputy that. And I found the sheriff's deputy's report of
Speaker 7: that interview and I put exactly what the detective reported
Speaker 7: that Paul Watkins told him was that Melcher was at
Speaker 7: the Spawn Ranch the first week of September and he
Speaker 7: fell to his knees. He was high on acid and
Speaker 7: he was begging Charlie's forgiveness. The report doesn't say forgiveness
Speaker 7: for what, It's just, you know, the notes of the
Speaker 7: interview begging history giveness, and Charlie answered, all those pigs
Speaker 7: had to die. Those pigs had to die. So, you know,
Speaker 7: as a journalist, you see that and you're like, the
Speaker 7: first time I saw it, I thought it had to
Speaker 7: be wrong. It wasn't until I found out that the
Speaker 7: Carlo had told about seeing Melcher at the ranch that
Speaker 7: same week, actually those same days, and then also reported
Speaker 7: about seeing in that death valley that I went back
Speaker 7: to this report. So I couldn't interview Paul Watkins to
Speaker 7: find out, you know, exactly what he saw and heard,
Speaker 7: because he was already dead for a long time. Couldn't
Speaker 7: interview the deputy who took the report because it wasn't signed.
Speaker 7: I went to Meltzer, and Meltzer denied that it happened,
Speaker 7: deny that everything I found about him having a post
Speaker 7: murders relationship with Manson happened. BULIOSI denied everything too, So
Speaker 7: all I could do was, you know, suppose what he
Speaker 7: might have been asking forgiveness for. But if you see
Speaker 7: in the book, I never answer what I think that
Speaker 7: question is what he was asking forgiveness for, because I
Speaker 7: don't know, and I'd rather just show what I have
Speaker 7: that contradicts the official version. And I suggest kind of pectually,
Speaker 7: what are some of the things that that, you know,
Speaker 7: Elcher might have been obligated to Manson boy that type
Speaker 7: of thing. He had a much more profound relationship with
Speaker 7: some of the younger girls in the Manson family. Not
Speaker 7: only did he'd ever admit it, you know, he denied
Speaker 7: on the stand and his mother didn't authorized autobiography About
Speaker 7: ten years after the mothers and she and her author
Speaker 7: asked Terry to write a chapter about the Manson episode,
Speaker 7: and in the book, Terry boldly says that he had
Speaker 7: heard all the rumors about him sleeping with the young
Speaker 7: women of the group, and he never did that. They
Speaker 7: were He called them ugly dogs, and he said he
Speaker 7: took Michelle Phillips, who he was dating at the time
Speaker 7: of the shortly after the family had been arrested. He
Speaker 7: said he took Michelle Phillips down to the Lapd headquarters
Speaker 7: just so they could see that he was going out
Speaker 7: with like the most beautiful woman and the one of
Speaker 7: the most beautiful women in the world, and he said
Speaker 7: to them, why would I sleep with these smelly journeys
Speaker 7: we've written women when I had someone like her? But
Speaker 7: I found out that, yeah, he was involved with Ruth
Speaker 7: at Moorehouse who was about fifteen, and some of the
Speaker 7: other one So, you know, hopefully someday those answers might
Speaker 7: be told. I know that Greg Jacobson knows the truth.
Speaker 7: I talked to him and quite a bit for the book,
Speaker 7: but he was very CAZy with me. But there are
Speaker 7: living people that know the answers to what was really
Speaker 7: going on, And unfortunately I can't present the defendent eventually
Speaker 7: what was really going on, just that it was going on,
Speaker 7: just that Melcher had this very different relationship and that
Speaker 7: it was hidden by the prosecution. That Melcher, you talk.
Speaker 5: About the idea of great Jacobson and some of these
Speaker 5: other people that you spoke to that gave you a
Speaker 5: different picture of what what had happened. What about your
Speaker 5: experience and encounter Terry Melcher, considering what you were trying
Speaker 5: to ask him, what was his response, what was his reaction,
Speaker 5: what was his behavior like when you spoke to him?
Speaker 7: You know, he'd only really talk to one journalist, I
Speaker 7: think his entire life. You know, he died in the
Speaker 7: early two thousands, and this is a rolling stone. He
Speaker 7: recorded a solo album I think in the mid seventies,
Speaker 7: so he had to do some press for it. And
Speaker 7: the only interview I ever found that he did for
Speaker 7: it was a rolling Stone, and he was only asked
Speaker 7: a little bit superficially about this. But he'd never really
Speaker 7: talked to a reporter before me. The only reason he
Speaker 7: talked to me was because he heard that I had
Speaker 7: a lot of this information. And in hindsight, I realized
Speaker 7: afterwards he thought he could basically persuade me not to
Speaker 7: use it by offering me, and it's in the book
Speaker 7: and it's on audio kay too, the option to write
Speaker 7: his memoir. So I had called him a couple of
Speaker 7: times on the phone, and I told him I really
Speaker 7: needed to sit down with him and show him these documents.
Speaker 7: And he told Rudy Altabelli, who with another prosecution witnessed
Speaker 7: very good friend to Terry's. He was the owner of
Speaker 7: the house where the murders happened. He lived in the
Speaker 7: back house. He wasn't there the night of the murderers,
Speaker 7: but he was a key prosecution witness himself, and he
Speaker 7: was one of the first sources who was telling me
Speaker 7: that Terry had lied all these years about his relationship
Speaker 7: with the Manson family, that they were up there all
Speaker 7: the time when Terry lived there, and he was kind
Speaker 7: of like Manson was his guru, I think, is how
Speaker 7: Rudy put it about Terry. And Terry had called Rudy
Speaker 7: and told Rudy that none of this stuff was ever
Speaker 7: supposed to come out, and then said promise he was
Speaker 7: going to take care of all that. So when I
Speaker 7: finally met with Terry, I think it was July third,
Speaker 7: two thousand, on the roof of his pun House apartment
Speaker 7: building in Cinea, Monica, you know, it was pretty wild.
Speaker 7: He first denied everything and then threatened to throw all
Speaker 7: of my documents, my pree case and the implication was
Speaker 7: met off the roof. He also said he was going
Speaker 7: to assume me. He started listing all these attorneys that
Speaker 7: work for him, and then he asked me, H basically said,
Speaker 7: why don't you just forget this stupid thing and write
Speaker 7: my memoirs with me? Because people have been asking me
Speaker 7: for years. You have no idea how much money I've
Speaker 7: been offered to tell the stories I have about my mother,
Speaker 7: and he never called her his mother. He said the
Speaker 7: stories I have about Doris, and Doris's relationship was with
Speaker 7: Elvis Presley and the rap Pack. I mean he was
Speaker 7: implying that he was going to tell me about his mother.
Speaker 7: Well he did. He said she wasn't the girl next
Speaker 7: door like everyone thought. She wasn't. She was still alive.
Speaker 7: I mean, she only died this past year. She outlived
Speaker 7: him by many years, and he was her only child,
Speaker 7: and he was going to set her down the road
Speaker 7: to get me to not write my book. So that
Speaker 7: didn't work. But unfortunately, just like this, I wanted both
Speaker 7: Terry and Wants to be alive so that they could
Speaker 7: answer the questions that they wouldn't answer to me too.
Speaker 7: You know, I was hoping to be mainstream. John Well,
Speaker 7: it's chasing these guys and saying, well, you know this,
Speaker 7: this writer, make all these things up or tell us
Speaker 7: the true version. And they would have been stuck in
Speaker 7: a pretty bad place because in the book you feel
Speaker 7: all the documents I have and the evidence I have,
Speaker 7: but that's neither here nor now there now because Sinton
Speaker 7: Terry both passed away before the book came out, what.
Speaker 5: Was the official motive for this? And you did, of
Speaker 5: course in this investigation as well, the connection, I mean
Speaker 5: Dennis Wilson, the Beach Boys, and this prestigious producer Terry Melcher.
Speaker 5: But how serious was Manson about his music career and
Speaker 5: how disappointed was he in the process. You also talk
Speaker 5: about again the second time I read this where Dennis
Speaker 5: Wilson co writes a song with Manson then puts it
Speaker 5: on an album and doesn't credit him for it, takes
Speaker 5: all credits.
Speaker 7: Away from him for that. Yeah, you know, Bullios. He
Speaker 7: kept that out of Helter Skelter until he did an
Speaker 7: anniversary edition of the book where he wrote a new introduction,
Speaker 7: new epilogue, and he mentions it in the book that
Speaker 7: came out twenty five years later. I mean, talk about
Speaker 7: motives or murder this guy if he really was like
Speaker 7: Wulios he said he was. He only wanted to be
Speaker 7: a rock star. You find out that not only has
Speaker 7: have the Beach Boys whipped him off and use a
Speaker 7: song he's written without his permission or knowledge or paying him,
Speaker 7: but they've also changed the title and some of the words,
Speaker 7: which could really piss Manson off. I mean, why didn't
Speaker 7: that come up a trial, and why wasn't that even
Speaker 7: in the book. You know, that's one of the things
Speaker 7: that shocked me. And again it's cherry picking the facts
Speaker 7: to support the helter skelter motive, which has melt has
Speaker 7: excuse me, Dennis Wilson having nothing to do with this.
Speaker 7: You're also see in my book that Wilson had a
Speaker 7: much more, a longer and extensive involvement with the family.
Speaker 7: Then then then testify our presented to the jury and
Speaker 7: then repeated in this book. And again, Dennis is dead.
Speaker 7: And you know Dennis had said been quoted by several
Speaker 7: journalists before he died. They're saying someday he wanted to
Speaker 7: tell the truth about the Manson murders and why they happened.
Speaker 7: But you've gone too.
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Speaker 5: Murder during checkout. Now, Tom, we were talking about this
Speaker 5: official narrative the Bulagosi was wedded to, and only, as
Speaker 5: you say, twenty five years later mentioned that there was
Speaker 5: even the participation or the involvement of someone else that
Speaker 5: might have again altered that narrative that he had been
Speaker 5: with for twenty five year years when you talked to
Speaker 5: when you talked to Great Jacobson, what was some of
Speaker 5: the information that he imparted to you that others didn't
Speaker 5: seem to have.
Speaker 7: Well, that he would just make a little off hand
Speaker 7: comment about something that sounds kind of irrelevant when he
Speaker 7: said it, and then I see it in my interview
Speaker 7: notes and then listened to it on tape after for instance,
Speaker 7: that the telescope story, which is so important to tell
Speaker 7: because that shows that Manson really did know where Milcha
Speaker 7: lives at the time of the tape murders. I asked
Speaker 7: him about that and he goes, oh, yeah, I don't
Speaker 7: think that ever really happened. That was you know, kind
Speaker 7: of a myth. I go, but no, Greg, you testified
Speaker 7: the trial under oath that it did happen, and he
Speaker 7: gave details. Now I remember, it wasn't that it was moved,
Speaker 7: it was that it was stolen. And he goes, ah, well,
Speaker 7: you know, Vince want of us the same certain things.
Speaker 7: So I mean there were a lot of little episodes
Speaker 7: like that in my interviews with Fence or excuse me,
Speaker 7: with Greg. But he was, you know, frustrating because you know,
Speaker 7: I couldn't. I would go back in the second interview
Speaker 7: and ask him about that and he would say, well,
Speaker 7: I don't understand a lot of really matters. And I said,
Speaker 7: what you're basically saying, I lied under oath at the
Speaker 7: prosecution start directions. That's huge, and he would just kind
Speaker 7: of laugh. And I think he was a con artist.
Speaker 7: He's so alive, and I would love other journals to
Speaker 7: follow up, journalists to follow up my reporting, and you
Speaker 7: know from mainstream media and ask him about this stuff.
Speaker 7: But uh, unfortunately that's not happening. As far as I know,
Speaker 7: nobody's really picking up the ball and running with the
Speaker 7: information I put out there.
Speaker 5: You talk in the book over the text watch and tapes.
Speaker 5: I had not heard of these, So tell us about
Speaker 5: the text Watson tapes and your battle to try to
Speaker 5: get to listen to these.
Speaker 7: Yeah. Well, that's an important aspect too, because I think
Speaker 7: a lot of the questions that I wasn't able to
Speaker 7: answer in the book are answered on those tapes, which
Speaker 7: is precisely the reason why the LAPD and the District
Speaker 7: Attorney's office, once I got the tase, you know, with
Speaker 7: my help and my information, have locked them up and
Speaker 7: said they're never going to release them. This is the
Speaker 7: first version of the murders told by a killer on
Speaker 7: audio tapes, and nobody's ever heard it except for Watson's
Speaker 7: attorney and now the District Attorney's office. And I found
Speaker 7: out about their existence in two thousand and eight and
Speaker 7: started trying to get them. It's a long, complicated story,
Speaker 7: but it's in the book, and it ended up when
Speaker 7: I shared the information with the District Attorney's office, they
Speaker 7: really wanted the tapes, and when they thought I wasn't
Speaker 7: getting anywhere, they stepped in and actually went to court
Speaker 7: for the tapes, and there was a year long court
Speaker 7: battle in Texas with the tapes were in the bankruptcy
Speaker 7: trustees care of attorneys the state because the attorney had
Speaker 7: died and his law firm had gone bankrupt, and she
Speaker 7: was the one who had them, and once Watson found
Speaker 7: out that she had agreed to share them, first she
Speaker 7: agreed to share them with me, and then she panicked
Speaker 7: because she thought that if there was information about other
Speaker 7: murders that had never been discovered before, and that's one
Speaker 7: of the things the attorneys that was on those tapes,
Speaker 7: that maybe she shouldn't give them to a journalist, she
Speaker 7: should give them the law enforcement. So she asked me
Speaker 7: for the DA's contact information, and since he had already
Speaker 7: been talking to me about this, his name was Patrick's Security,
Speaker 7: the deputy DA who had all the man's and parole hearings.
Speaker 7: I thought, well, I'll loop him in and let him
Speaker 7: be involved too. So once that happened, they were no
Speaker 7: longer going to let me have them, and once Secure
Speaker 7: in his office, went to court and fought on the
Speaker 7: from the local court, the civil court, to the state
Speaker 7: Supreme Court for these and the court finally decided in
Speaker 7: favor of law enforcement. They got those tapes and they
Speaker 7: promised me I was going to listen to them with
Speaker 7: them the first time they heard them. Not only did
Speaker 7: that happen, but they never let me hear them, and
Speaker 7: they haven't let anybody hear them. And I think that's
Speaker 7: because what on those tapes is the true account of
Speaker 7: how the murders happened, why they happened, possibly who else
Speaker 7: was killed, you know, the true relationship between Melcher Wilson,
Speaker 7: other people in Hollywood and the family. And it's fifty
Speaker 7: years later and there's still it's the only piece of
Speaker 7: evidence that's never been released to our knowledge that the
Speaker 7: LAPD has. You know, they might have other stuff, but
Speaker 7: that tape is I don't think it's ever going to
Speaker 7: get out.
Speaker 5: I know that you can't. You don't speculate in this book,
Speaker 5: but I have to ask you to speculate what exactly,
Speaker 5: Why was the main why Bullagosi was so reluctant to
Speaker 5: take all that information as a prosecutor. Why was his
Speaker 5: narrative that he put forth in Helter skelter in that
Speaker 5: trial so important to him. Why was that that theory,
Speaker 5: that narrative he put forward, Why was he so wedded
Speaker 5: to that.
Speaker 7: I don't really have to speculate about that. Because they
Speaker 7: got enough other enough people from the DA's office and
Speaker 7: from lapd On, the show's office. They all thought that
Speaker 7: Buliosi took what was a minor philosophy of the family
Speaker 7: about a coming they swar and in ballast it and
Speaker 7: made it much bigger than it was to make the
Speaker 7: trial more sensational. He was an inspiring writer. He had
Speaker 7: a contract for a book deal before the trial started.
Speaker 7: He had his co authors sitting in the front row
Speaker 7: of the trial every single day. That's not allowed anymore.
Speaker 7: I don't know why it was allowed. Then. You know,
Speaker 7: you'd be disbarred in the state of California if you
Speaker 7: had any kind of commercial project of a case that
Speaker 7: you were fighting for on tax petish dollars and also
Speaker 7: a definitely case. You know, he had a conflict of interest.
Speaker 7: The minute he signed that book contract and put his
Speaker 7: co author in the front row, the more assenciational that trial,
Speaker 7: the better book he'd had. He was playing to his
Speaker 7: future readers more than he was to the jury, So
Speaker 7: that's speculative.
Speaker 8: I say, I'm proved that that's why he chose that motive,
Speaker 8: but I can you know, pointed to the two interviews
Speaker 8: he did, one with the Penthouse and I think nineteen
Speaker 8: seventy five and one with Rolling Stone in twenty fifteen
Speaker 8: when he was specifically asked and these are only two
Speaker 8: times I ever saw them if he thought Manson believed
Speaker 8: in the helter skelter motive, And astonishingly he said on
Speaker 8: the record to those two journalists, no, he goes, I'm
Speaker 8: one hundred percent sure of the women and the killers believe,
Speaker 8: but I don't think Manson for a second believe in that. Unfortunately,
Speaker 8: the two journalists who did those interviews and were smart
Speaker 8: enough to ask that question didn't follow up with a
Speaker 8: natural question, which was, well, then if he sent those
Speaker 8: people up there to kill share well the people at
Speaker 8: try Meltzer's home, but not because he wanted to start
Speaker 8: a race for will why do you send them?
Speaker 7: What was the reason? And then the second night the
Speaker 7: Latviancas and none other supporters asked them. And my mistake
Speaker 7: as a journalist is I should have known about the
Speaker 7: Penthouse interview because I could have asked him myself. That
Speaker 7: predated my meetings with Buliosi. But I thought I had
Speaker 7: read every interview he ever gave, but I missed that
Speaker 7: one somehow didn't see until after Bliosi had cut off
Speaker 7: communications with me. And the Rolling Stone interview was in
Speaker 7: twenty fifteen. I think it was the last interview Buliosi
Speaker 7: gay before he died. And the Rolling Stone author, you know,
Speaker 7: I can't really criticize him too much. He wasn't a
Speaker 7: crime reporter. He was doing a story for Culture magazine,
Speaker 7: and I guess it just didn't occur to him to
Speaker 7: ask that follow up question.
Speaker 5: Now, the title of this book is Chaos, And we
Speaker 5: haven't mentioned what we alluded to, and we're mentioned in
Speaker 5: the introduction about the CIA and their involvement. Tell us
Speaker 5: a little bit about that and why this book is
Speaker 5: called Chaos, and tell us about a couple of those programs.
Speaker 7: Well, the title in the book is kind of a
Speaker 7: play on words. I mean, chaos can be interpreted either
Speaker 7: as it was a chaotic period in American history when
Speaker 7: everything was kind of turned upside down. But there's also
Speaker 7: and you don't find this out in the book until
Speaker 7: the tenth or eleventh chapter that the CIA had a
Speaker 7: secret operation called Chaos that was kind of like the
Speaker 7: brother operation to the FBI's co Intel Pro operation, and
Speaker 7: both of those were active in Los Angeles and San Francisco,
Speaker 7: started in San Francisco in sixty seven. Co Intel pro
Speaker 7: had been something that Hoover originated in the forties, the
Speaker 7: fight that Clux Klan, and then it became dormant, you know,
Speaker 7: after the clan was kind of immobilized and wasn't that
Speaker 7: active in the sixties, but it was brought to life
Speaker 7: again to fight the Panthers by Hoover in sixty seven,
Speaker 7: and not just the Panthers but other left wing groups,
Speaker 7: which is also who Chaos is targeting. And both operations
Speaker 7: were infiltrating subversive groups, and subversive groups could have been
Speaker 7: anyone from any war protesters to speech groups, to communists
Speaker 7: you know American communist groups, to the Panthers, to militant groups.
Speaker 7: And what they would do is try to get them
Speaker 7: to commit crimes where they'd notified the local police departments,
Speaker 7: and then they would arrest them in the process of
Speaker 7: those crimes being committed and or shoot and kill them.
Speaker 7: They also tried to provoke them to kill each other.
Speaker 7: And the co Intel operations we know a lot about
Speaker 7: because a group of activists in the early seventies found
Speaker 7: out was were in Pennsylvania and you know, broke in,
Speaker 7: stole the files, shared them with journalists. There were actually
Speaker 7: congressional hearings and the FBI had no choice but to
Speaker 7: admit that they had this secret, illegal operation, and they
Speaker 7: even admitted that they were responsible I think eighteen panther
Speaker 7: or black militant deaths that were the result of the
Speaker 7: co intel pro actions, and they paid reparations. Geronimo Pratt,
Speaker 7: a famous black panther who was in prison for about
Speaker 7: twenty years for a murder, a double murder he couldn't
Speaker 7: have committed because the FBI knew he was in San
Speaker 7: Francisco when the murder happened, and the murder happened in
Speaker 7: Santa Monica. All that stuff came out chaos. On the
Speaker 7: other hand, nobody's ever found the file, so the CIA
Speaker 7: admitted they had it because that also came out during
Speaker 7: these congressional hearings in the mid seventies. But nobody has
Speaker 7: ever really known the full extent of what they did.
Speaker 7: And if you try to find a book about chaos.
Speaker 7: I don't think there isn't. I know there wasn't one,
Speaker 7: at least for the eighteen years that I was doing
Speaker 7: my heavy research on this. I haven't checked the last
Speaker 7: year or two, but if you can look it up
Speaker 7: in the newspaper articles. But I think my book has
Speaker 7: the most coverage of chaos of any book that's been published.
Speaker 7: Co Intel Pros. Has been a number of books about it,
Speaker 7: but it's kind of shocking because there are ultimate objectives
Speaker 7: were to basically stop what was considered then the biggest
Speaker 7: threat to the national security, which was this left wing
Speaker 7: revolution of black militants, anti war, hippies, all that kind
Speaker 7: of stuff, and Manson really really damaged kind of like
Speaker 7: a whole view of hippies and free love and drugs
Speaker 7: and rock and roll. All of a sudden they had
Speaker 7: an evil face for it, and all the parents thought, wait,
Speaker 7: that that happened to these young girls who went out
Speaker 7: and committed such horrific murders after using LSC for a
Speaker 7: year and living communally with a lot of kids were
Speaker 7: doing that could happen to our kids too, And it
Speaker 7: was really ineffective. Whether or not it was engineered by
Speaker 7: our own government. I don't come to a conclusion. I
Speaker 7: just present the evidence I have. Whether or not it
Speaker 7: was Matt probably did more damage to the hippie movement
Speaker 7: and the left wing movement than any other entity during
Speaker 7: that period.
Speaker 5: Absolutely. You talk about your last big break of this book,
Speaker 5: and you talk about an investigation that seemed to be
Speaker 5: as you right covered it up. Filipo Tenarelli at twenty
Speaker 5: three year old, and this story about suicide.
Speaker 7: What did you find? You know, he was an Italian
Speaker 7: immigrant who had come to the country from Italy in
Speaker 7: his late mid to late teens. I think he lived
Speaker 7: in Culver City and seemed to be a pretty well
Speaker 7: adjusted guy. All of a sudden disappeared and his car
Speaker 7: was found upside down at the bottom of a steep
Speaker 7: drop off in Death Valley, and it was blood inside
Speaker 7: and outside the car that were spent gunshells, and his
Speaker 7: body was found in a hotel. It was about one
Speaker 7: hundred and twenty miles north in a little town called
Speaker 7: Bishop which is on the perimeter of the Death Valley,
Speaker 7: and local law enforcements taught that he was killed by
Speaker 7: the Manson family. Manson family was arrested, you know, in
Speaker 7: Death Valley two weeks after Tenarelli's body was found, and
Speaker 7: once they were understood to actually be killers. In Los Angeles,
Speaker 7: local law enforcement, including the DA there thought that they
Speaker 7: had killed this guy Tennarelly because the circumstances of the
Speaker 7: suicide were very suspicious, and one law enforcement officer reported
Speaker 7: seeing him in the company of two people that he
Speaker 7: identified from mugshots as Manson family members. What local law
Speaker 7: enforcements and the Bishop police were the only ones who
Speaker 7: didn't think that he was killed by the Mansion family.
Speaker 7: They were sure it was a suicide and they would
Speaker 7: not allow the case to be investigated by anybody else,
Speaker 7: and they had it closed. I came along in two
Speaker 7: thousand and five, I think in six just ask some
Speaker 7: questions about it. And again it was because once I
Speaker 7: got access to the DA files in Ingno County and
Speaker 7: then from police reports, I saw all this evidence that
Speaker 7: hadn't been available. Believe was he never even mentioned the
Speaker 7: guy in Helper's Shelter, but Ed Sanders mentioned him briefly
Speaker 7: in the Family that book, and I found him referred
Speaker 7: to in some of the early news coverage of the
Speaker 7: Manson family after they've been identified as Pei lab Beyonca's
Speaker 7: suspects and they're in stove. It's the co prosecutor told
Speaker 7: Rolling Stone that he thought Tennarelli was a victim of
Speaker 7: the Manson family. So I brought this massive amount of
Speaker 7: information to the head of the Bishop Police Department at
Speaker 7: Kathleen Sheehan, who had just been and name the first
Speaker 7: woman chief of the police there ever, and she announced
Speaker 7: to the media that based on my information, she was
Speaker 7: going to have the case reopen. So you have to
Speaker 7: read the whole chapter because it's pretty complicated. But what
Speaker 7: they did was they reopened it just to get all
Speaker 7: my information and then immediately closed it without doing any
Speaker 7: investigation like they had promised. So his family, you know,
Speaker 7: he had I think seven siblings, five of them were
Speaker 7: sisters who were still alive. They're all in their eighties,
Speaker 7: and they're determined to find out what happened because they
Speaker 7: never believed he committed suicide, and they're determined to find
Speaker 7: out what happened to him. And they don't even want
Speaker 7: I mean, their their main concern, their main priority is
Speaker 7: just to have his death certificate change from suicide to
Speaker 7: unknown cause of death. And that's all they want because
Speaker 7: they're very Catholics, Immigrant Catholics, and you know, you can't
Speaker 7: be buried in the Catholic raveyard if you committed suicide.
Speaker 7: And if you believe in Catholicism and the faith, you
Speaker 7: go to hell. That's the biggest mortal sin after killing
Speaker 7: someone else's killing yourself. And it's you know, they've been
Speaker 7: waiting for years to have this change, and it wasn't
Speaker 7: until I came to them with actual, actual proof. But
Speaker 7: he more likely was killed than not. That they kind
Speaker 7: of energized. And one of the Filippo's nephews, Cosmo, has
Speaker 7: actively hired people, attorneys, investigators and stuff. Oh, he's talking
Speaker 7: to them, don't know if he's hired them yet about
Speaker 7: suing the state, suing bishop, trying to get just the
Speaker 7: cause of the changes. I'm not saying it doesn't have
Speaker 7: to be changed the murder, although they'd be happy with
Speaker 7: just unknown causes or unknown cause.
Speaker 5: Certainly you talked about the prosecutor, Stephen k but also
Speaker 5: that Terry Belcher's attorney approached this DA again, the co
Speaker 5: prosecutor of the mansion case. What did he ask for
Speaker 5: from yes, what did he ask for him?
Speaker 7: He asked me to write a letter saying that Melcher's
Speaker 7: relationship with the Manson family consisted of the three meetings
Speaker 7: that are in the official book and testified to a trial,
Speaker 7: once at Dennis Wilson's house and then twice at the
Speaker 7: Spawn Ranch. And that was before I even began reporting.
Speaker 7: Stephen k told me that in an interview about Melcher
Speaker 7: sending him this of Malchie's lawyer asking him to do this,
Speaker 7: and he said he did it. And I said why
Speaker 7: and he goes, well, that was all I knew until
Speaker 7: you showed me what you showed me. And I said,
Speaker 7: you still have a copy of that letter, And unfortunately
Speaker 7: he didn't. I you know, I couldn't even get the
Speaker 7: name of the experience. But remember that that had happened,
Speaker 7: I think in the eighties or something. I think somebody
Speaker 7: else who's well, I know this that somebody else had
Speaker 7: written the book Barnie Hoskins, about just a rocker and
Speaker 7: role scene in southern California, and he has a chapter
Speaker 7: on the Manson family. And he was forced to, at
Speaker 7: the threat of a lawsuit, remove a lot of the
Speaker 7: stuff he'd written about Meltzer's relationship with the Manson family.
Speaker 7: Nothing quite as dramatic, is what I found in police reports,
Speaker 7: but that showed that Meltzer was sextually involved with one
Speaker 7: of the fourteen year old girls who then became fifthly
Speaker 7: he met her when she was fourteen. And Melcher's lawyers
Speaker 7: threatened his publisher with a lawsuit, and they burned all
Speaker 7: the existing copies of his book, and they reissued it
Speaker 7: with all these modifications. And it's fun. You can. I
Speaker 7: have it in the end notes of my book, the
Speaker 7: page numbers from the first edition that you can still
Speaker 7: get because it was available for about a year before
Speaker 7: the publishers pulled it. And you can compare the pages
Speaker 7: and see how they were changed at the order of
Speaker 7: Meltzer's attorneys. So Meltcher I wasn't the first one to
Speaker 7: come to him with this information.
Speaker 5: You also include the case of Gary Hinman again with Dakins,
Speaker 5: Bobby Bulislow, Mary Brunner, and the torture of this guy
Speaker 5: over this inheritance. So you give all the gory dells
Speaker 5: what happens.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it was never been proved that he got the inheritance,
Speaker 7: and Buliosi's version they went over there to steal money
Speaker 7: from him that they believed he had inherited. H he
Speaker 7: claimed or he told them he didn't have it. And
Speaker 7: you know there are other police people believe that him
Speaker 7: and was manufacturing I think mescaline and selling it. He
Speaker 7: sold a bad bunch to straight Satan who Getny de
Speaker 7: Carlo was a member of through Bobby Bosley, and that
Speaker 7: they wanted their money back, and that's what he was
Speaker 7: getting tortured and killed work. They were trying to get
Speaker 7: the money back that they said he had ripped off.
Speaker 7: I still don't know what really happened, except that Bobby Bossley,
Speaker 7: mar Bruno and Susan Atkins killed him after three days
Speaker 7: of holding him hostage and torturing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, incredible. Let's get to Stephen Kay the prosecutor, and
Speaker 5: his conclusions when he looks at the material that you
Speaker 5: provide for him, and when you alluded to and we
Speaker 5: mentioned that this would be cause for another trial. If
Speaker 5: it were that that's strong an evidence to be able
Speaker 5: to would be able to overturn or be able to
Speaker 5: have another trial, I should say, tell us exactly his
Speaker 5: reaction to learning this and what he asked of Bulagosi.
Speaker 5: If he thought this would happen, what else would he
Speaker 5: think Bullegosie was capable of tell us about this exchange him.
Speaker 7: Yeah, well, I mean I didn't even frequently in the
Speaker 7: first year or two of my reporting. But it wasn't
Speaker 7: until I had all my ducks lined up, you know,
Speaker 7: all the documents showing how much evidence was held Hodge
Speaker 7: perjury had suborn in witnesses, and I knew Stephen would
Speaker 7: meet with me because we are pretty good terms. So
Speaker 7: I it took me till two thousand and five and
Speaker 7: I went to see him at his office and he
Speaker 7: knew what I was coming for. I said, I had
Speaker 7: this evidence that showed the bulios. He had completely you know,
Speaker 7: invented certain aspects of the prosecution, including you know, getting
Speaker 7: key witnesses to persion themselves. And he told me, he goes, Tom,
Speaker 7: I know this case as well now as since it
Speaker 7: because because at that point Stephen Kay had been doing
Speaker 7: all the parole hearings for all the Manson family members
Speaker 7: since they became eligible for parole in the mid to
Speaker 7: late seventies, and he was going to retire like six
Speaker 7: months later. And he said to me that day he goes,
Speaker 7: you know, I'm sixty and oh that sixty times he
Speaker 7: appeared opposite Manson family members when they had their parole hearings,
Speaker 7: and at each of those hearings he had to go
Speaker 7: through what they had been convicted of. I'm a new detail.
Speaker 7: You know, how they killed, why they killed, what was
Speaker 7: present a trial. So he did really know the case,
Speaker 7: probably as well or better than Buliosi. And he said,
Speaker 7: nothing you can show me is going to convince me
Speaker 7: of anything other than what I already know. But once
Speaker 7: he went through the documents, you know, I just saw
Speaker 7: him sinking deeper and deeper into his chair, you know,
Speaker 7: holding his head in his hand, shaking his head, and
Speaker 7: finally saying, I don't know what to think about what
Speaker 7: I thought I knew so well anymore. And he goes,
Speaker 7: this is Vince's handwriting. These are his notes telling a
Speaker 7: very different story, and they crossed out. Everything that was
Speaker 7: kept from me and from the rest of the world
Speaker 7: is crossed out by Buliosi. He says, this is really
Speaker 7: really serious. And I said to him, you know, what
Speaker 7: do I do with that as a journalist. And he said, well,
Speaker 7: you could take it to the district attorney, the current
Speaker 7: district attorney, who is Geve Cooley. And I said, then
Speaker 7: what might he do with this information? And that's when
Speaker 7: he said, you know, he didn't want to say it.
Speaker 7: I don't think he's trying to be straight with me
Speaker 7: that you know, he could call habeas corpus, which means
Speaker 7: vacate their convictions and then have, you know, then decide
Speaker 7: is it worth putting out a whole new trial against
Speaker 7: Charlie Manson when Lecily van Houghton, Text Wats and Susan
Speaker 7: Atkins boost Davis knows all of them would have to
Speaker 7: get new trials or just let him go, you know.
Speaker 7: And I said, Okay, that's all I needed to hear.
Speaker 7: And I didn't take it to Steve Cooley because I
Speaker 7: didn't trust what he'd do with it then. But I
Speaker 7: did think that I was going to have it out
Speaker 7: within a year as a book, and I knew he'd
Speaker 7: still to be an office, and I thought, that's when
Speaker 7: he can do it. Unfortunately, it took a lot longer
Speaker 7: than that. And the fact is the book's now for
Speaker 7: two months right now, and nobody in the medium Los Angeles,
Speaker 7: nobody at the LA Times has asked anybody from the
Speaker 7: GA's office or the LAPD for a statement on this.
Speaker 7: Nobody's doing anything about it. I mean I'll give you
Speaker 7: a little scoop. The New Yorker's got a big story
Speaker 7: coming out about the book about the legal aspects of
Speaker 7: my findings, where they're all analyzed, and I think it's
Speaker 7: going to come out either the end of this week
Speaker 7: or next week. I think that might cause some change.
Speaker 7: That's what I'm hoping for.
Speaker 5: This is as Stephen Cay said, this would have presented
Speaker 5: a lot of problems for Vincent Bulagosi, and but it
Speaker 5: still will to his reputation and to the LAPD and
Speaker 5: other people as well. Is that that's in your book.
Speaker 5: It's cert in terms of the evidence that a lot
Speaker 5: of people don't want this unofficial story to come out
Speaker 5: that you have published, do they.
Speaker 7: Well, yeah, you know, the only shooting distric Attorney's office
Speaker 7: in Los Angeles been convicted. A lot of the best
Speaker 7: known murder cases, obviously, OJ is the first one that
Speaker 7: comes to mind, Robert Blake murder. So for something that
Speaker 7: seems has open and.
Speaker 4: Shot as the Tanco murder, you know, committed by this
Speaker 4: group of so called hippies who you know, shaved crosses
Speaker 4: in their heads, shaved head cut crosses in their.
Speaker 7: Head during the trial and was thrown out of the
Speaker 7: courtroom every day. I mean for them to have to,
Speaker 7: you know, suck it up and say that trial was run,
Speaker 7: that those convictions were one on false pretense and on
Speaker 7: lives and fabrications. They don't want to do that. And
Speaker 7: again I think that's why the main reason why, the
Speaker 7: most important piece of evidence that they have never been shared,
Speaker 7: and that's the text Watson audio tapes mm hmm.
Speaker 5: The notes that you that you talk about in this
Speaker 5: it were crossed out against some Lagosi were very very
Speaker 5: powerful as well.
Speaker 7: One they yeah, that was his first interview with Danny
Speaker 7: de Carlo, and Dannie de Carlo was describing seeing Meltzer
Speaker 7: at the Spawn Ranch in September and then out at
Speaker 7: Death Valley in later September. I don't think think when
Speaker 7: I had the Paul Watkins interview. I did show that
Speaker 7: to Buliosi six years later in my two thousand and
Speaker 7: eight or six or seven, and again he said he
Speaker 7: had never seen it before. But he could say that
Speaker 7: because I don't believe him, because, as he says in
Speaker 7: his book, he saw every single piece of evidence, every
Speaker 7: report in the trial. But he told me that day
Speaker 7: when I showed it to him, he had no idea
Speaker 7: what it meant. He never saw it. But when I
Speaker 7: showed him his own notes, he admitted that those are
Speaker 7: my notes. And yes, I guess Danny Carlo told me
Speaker 7: all of that, but I must have decided he wasn't
Speaker 7: telling the truth or something later and I said, well,
Speaker 7: you were so obligated to share with the defense, and
Speaker 7: he didn't have an answer for that or for why
Speaker 7: he crossed out that Carlo interview knowes I think on
Speaker 7: like sixteen or seventeen pages. The only thing that's crossed out,
Speaker 7: and that doesn't it isn't contained in the testimony Carlo
Speaker 7: did give, was that information about Melcher being at the
Speaker 7: ranch after the murders twice?
Speaker 5: Yes, absolutely, which offers a lot of support for your
Speaker 5: idea that once the Lagosi had his official narrative, and
Speaker 5: of course the book was very very important to him
Speaker 5: and he went on to have a very very successful
Speaker 5: career as an author. So you just say that his
Speaker 5: motivations were there and didn't want to upset that apple
Speaker 5: cart that he had set up.
Speaker 7: Yeah. Yeah, you can tell your listeners, or I can
Speaker 7: tell your listeners that they want to see these documents
Speaker 7: and not buy the books. Some of them are reproduced
Speaker 7: in the book, but a lot more of them are
Speaker 7: on websites that I've created for the book. One is
Speaker 7: I don't even know if you call the website. One
Speaker 7: is a Facebook page for the book, which if you
Speaker 7: just search the book pedle you'll get to. And the
Speaker 7: other one is an Instagram page. It has the mostly
Speaker 7: the same information that I think. It's called Chaos the
Speaker 7: book I can't even remember. If you put my name
Speaker 7: and medicine in the Instagram, you'll find it. And I've
Speaker 7: got almost all the documents we've discussed now scanned and
Speaker 7: presented their I also have excerpts of audio interviews of
Speaker 7: me and Stephen Kay, with Stephen Kay making those important
Speaker 7: statements to me, with BULIOSI and myself. I haven't put
Speaker 7: up to Terry Meltzer one audio yet, but I'm going
Speaker 7: to put that up in the next month, and a
Speaker 7: lot of other things about Chaos MK. Also that kind
Speaker 7: of thing.
Speaker 5: Is an incredible investigation that you undertook to do this book. Chaos.
Speaker 5: Also wanted to just ask what again you're waiting for
Speaker 5: the reaction from the media in Los Angeles for this book.
Speaker 5: What interview do you have next.
Speaker 7: About this book. Well, there's two important things that are
Speaker 7: about to come out. The New Yorker story, which, like
Speaker 7: I said, is a very long, in depth analysis of
Speaker 7: mostly my legal finding. You know what it means, whether
Speaker 7: I had enough proof, and you know, the journalist told me,
Speaker 7: I'm going to be very happy with it. When I said,
Speaker 7: he didn't want to tell me too much, but he
Speaker 7: said he wasn't some of the leading experts on criminal law,
Speaker 7: you know, legal scholars about perjuries, a boarding perjury, what
Speaker 7: it defends, what a prosecutor is required to share, just
Speaker 7: to see whether or not my findings held water. And
Speaker 7: he didn't tell me exactly what they said. He said,
Speaker 7: you're going to be very happy with the story. So
Speaker 7: I'm hoping that changes things, because you can't get a
Speaker 7: really a better platform than a New Yorker with their reputation,
Speaker 7: people are going to take seriously what they decide, what
Speaker 7: they conclude. And then there's another online magazine called The Intercept,
Speaker 7: which is a national security magazine, and they're exerting our
Speaker 7: chapter on Jelly West and the CIA and mk Ultra
Speaker 7: and I've just been working on the edit of that
Speaker 7: because they had to condense it, and I'm just making
Speaker 7: sure everything's accurate, and there's some up they had to
Speaker 7: cut out that needs, you know, a little bit of exposition.
Speaker 7: And I just gave it all to my collaborator after
Speaker 7: I finished with it yesterday and he's going over it
Speaker 7: now and then hopefully that'll be out sometime after her
Speaker 7: labor day.
Speaker 5: That's fantastic. I also wanted to mention for the audience
Speaker 5: too that's going to pick up this book. The incredible
Speaker 5: photo collection that you have in this book is this remarkable,
Speaker 5: So I got to commend you on that along with
Speaker 5: along with this book just jam packed with every bit
Speaker 5: of information about I've read all kinds of things about Manson.
Speaker 5: I've a read Helter Skelter and Diane Lake's book. This
Speaker 5: is got everything and much much more in this book.
Speaker 5: I want to thank you very much Tom O'Neil for
Speaker 5: coming on and talking about Chaos, Charles Manson, the CIA
Speaker 5: and the secret history of the sixties. As you mentioned,
Speaker 5: there's a Facebook page for Chaos and also Instagram. Just
Speaker 5: type in your name and I'll get around to that
Speaker 5: information on Instagram posting great.
Speaker 7: Thank you so much for having me Dan, I really
Speaker 7: appreciate it.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much. It's been fantastic. Have a great night.
Speaker 7: Good night all right you two. Bye bye.