Helter Skelter: A Cold Hard Review

Is this fiction or non-fiction? I couldn’t tell. That was a good thing in the long run. It read like a very distant 1^st person or a distant and omniscient 3^rd person perspective. The tone and atmosphere was mainly due to the matter-of-fact and objective quality to the writing. It could have easily lost my attention given the shear amount of information that came from the murders. Its objectivity was the strength and structure that lends power to the piece. There’s also something about the writing that has a personal spark to it, as if the narrator incorporated his own thoughts and experiences into the piece.

The nature of the murders is something which play a central role in the piece. It is not just the fact someone murdered another, or 5 people for that matter. It’s the severity in which the act was done. The details in the pages about the murders, coupled with the cold, objective language adds a certain depraved tone to the piece. “She was you, blond, very pregnant” (pg 9) doesn’t dull the edge. The ritualistic aspect to the murders is another thing. Brutality in murder may certainly be considered part of a ritual. To inflict as much pain and do the most physical damage to one’s victim may be part of a ritual murder. There are also the weapons used in the murders. A revolver, which per the text, does not leave a casing and a bayonet. Considering the human monster behind these events has a god-complex, it is not unreasonable to think along those lines.

There’s another aspect to the Manson murders, which have earned the monster himself a level of celebrity. Journalists had a hand in generating a fair amount of confusion and coupled with the tight control on information by the police and other entities involved, a frenzy generated by morbid curiosity came to be.

In a way, the relationship between the investigators, the media, and the public became strained. The public is a curious entity and the media is an extension of the public. Inadvertently, this may be what attributed to Manson’s celebrity. If you keep a monster in the dark, you keep the interest in it.

Also, consider those who followed Manson and what that says about Manson as a person. His followers do have similarities: they wanted something that only Manson could give them. In a cult, there does seem to be a desire among the members for an ideal existence outside of society. This is a weakness to be manipulated by someone like Manson. The profile generated by this text indicates Manson preyed on the least mentally stable, the easily swayed, the idealists. Garretson is one such person. The information provided indicates that his is unstable, and yet thrives for attention.

Overall, this book takes a hard, objective consideration of the Manson phenomenon. It reads much like fiction, with aspects of first and third person. The cold detached presentation of the information and the narrative flow created a fusion of the two forms of writing.