Helter Skelter Post 2

Isabella Valdez, Opinions Editor

The book begins the night of-the streets of Los Angeles are quiet, the hum of streetlamps the only sound for hours. Past midnight, several residences hear three gun shots, then nothing, so nothing is what they think of it. In the morning, the housekeeper arrives at 10050 Cielo Drive and finds two bodies in the house she was supposed to clean. When the police arrive, they are perplexed and horrified when they discover three more bodies strewn about the grounds. This isn’t a break-in gone wrong or even a crime of passion, there are oddities-the screen of a window cut out and presumably used as the entrance point, the word ‘pig’ written in blood on the front door, none of the houses’ possessions disturbed.

 

The Telegraph UK-Becky Watts

The sixteen year old from Bristol was reported missing from her father’s house in St. George March 4, 2015. Her step-brother, Nathan Matthews, and his girlfriend, Shauna Hoare, have been charged for her murder, and several others have been charged as accessories to the crime. I didn’t gather any tension between the step-siblings from this article, it appears to be an act done for the rush of it, especially since there were people there/people who knew about it that were not involved in the actual murder. The savagery (dismemberment) reminds me of the unfeeling aura around the 10050 Cielo Drive murders. But it’s sometimes hard to get the feeling of a situation from text, especially an article because its duty is to relay information, not feelings and images.

 

The Atlantic-“A Phone Call With Charles Manson”

The entire call is just Manson ranting on about how everyone is tricked by what we’ve been taught, I think. It really just sounded like babble, things blurring into each other and I could kind of see how he hoped from one topic to the next but not really. In what little I’ve read about Manson, he’s been described as a “cult leader” and in order to be a cult leader, I think, you need to have cohesive thoughts but I didn’t get that from this phone call. But jail and isolation can do that to a person, I guess.