Chaos

Starred review from April 1, 2019
In his riveting debut, journalist O’Neill, assisted by coauthor Piepenbring, offers sensational revelations about the Tate-LaBianca murders at the hand of Charles Manson and his so-called family in Los Angeles in 1969. What began as a feature assignment for Premiere magazine on the 30th anniversary of the crime turned into O’Neill’s 20-year obsession with the murders. He questions the official narrative of the case, that Manson hated blacks and wanted to make it look as though the murderers were black revolutionaries, for instance, by writings pigs, a popular slang term for cops at that time, on the walls of both houses in the victims’ blood. O’Neill interviewed more than 500 witnesses, reporters, and cops in the course of his meticulous research. O’Neill suggests that drug dealers who knew Manson may have hired him to initiate “a vengeful massacre” on actor Sharon Tate and the other victims. O’Neill also uncovered the inexplicable leniency shown Manson and Susan Atkins before the murders by their parole officers when they broke the terms of their parole yet were never jailed for the offenses. In addition, O’Neill posits that Manson might have been one of the subjects of the CIA’s LSD/hallucinogens experiments. True crime fans will be enthralled. Agent: Sloan Harris, ICM.

September 1, 2019

Investigative journalist O'Neill has produced an overwrought deep dive into conspiracy theories that he thinks are continuing to swirl around the infamous Charles Manson family murders in 1969 Los Angeles. O'Neill invested more than 20 years into finding answers to questions about the killings that he claims remain to be solved. He unearthed "shocking evidence" of a supposed cover-up of the official story, police carelessness, legal errors, and intelligence surveillance. In addition, the author goes further into a dark web of secrets about the case, including the notion that the FBI wanted to stir up racial division in order to divide the New Left from the Black Panthers, that Manson was working with the FBI to explicitly incite the violence, that record producer and Hollywood insider Terry Melcher played a role in the crime, and that Beach Boy Dennis Wilson was a silent partner in the mess. O'Neill's work takes listeners through nearly every aspect of the official narrative of the Manson family murders, which has already been thoroughly examined and thrashed out in Vincent Bugliosi's classic, Helter Skelter. Amidst all O'Neill's controversial new theories about this case, at least the author is open about his many dead ends and investigation blanks. He reveals what went wrong with his book, including lawsuits and debt, and he admits that he still doesn't have all the answers. Thankfully, Kevin Stillwell's even-paced, calm reading maintains focus despite the hype and the "out there" arguments. VERDICT Only public libraries in communities that follow conspiracy theorists and the lunatic fringe in AM talk radio should consider this work. Otherwise, all libraries are advised to stick with Bugliosi's conclusive treatment.--Dale Farris, Groves, TX

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 15, 2019
Who put Charlie and the Family up to their murderous mischief? This long excursus on the killings that terrified Los Angeles 50 years ago suggests some unlikely answers. How did it happen that a bunch of peace freaks turned into a band of homicidal maniacs? In this overlong but provocative barrage, freelance journalist O'Neill charts a series of conjectures that begins with famed prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi and ends in the dark chambers of the intelligence community. The logic goes something like this: It's useful to control people's minds, but it's difficult to accomplish if they're sane. If they're a little off balance, needy, and disaffected, though, then give them a charismatic leader and some chores, and voil�--and along the way, if LSD is involved, then you can serve up an object lesson about the dangers of drugs. O'Neill's thesis has its possibilities, but, like Oliver Stone's JFK--and the Kennedy assassination figures here--it's not so much that he ventures a theory as that he ventures all of them: The FBI wanted to whip up racial division to divide the New Left from the Black Panthers, Manson was an agent provocateur, record producer and Hollywood insider Terry Melcher had a hand in the whole thing, Beach Boy Dennis Wilson was a silent partner. And then there was Roman Polanski and his weird proclivities--as O'Neill writes, "remember how Susan Atkins wrote the word 'Pig' on the front door of Cielo Drive, in Sharon Tate's blood?" But what if she really wrote something else? It's all too much. Among the best aspects of the book are the author's confessions of the many dead ends and blank spots he encountered, as when he confronted Bugliosi with the suggestion that he knew more than he was letting on and in fact covered up some of the evidence. "It was the wrong move," he writes. "I'd intended to build to this moment, and now I was leading with it, giving him every reason to take a contentious tone." Fans of conspiracy theories will find this a source of endless fascination.

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May 1, 2019

It's been 50 years since the brutal killing of actress Sharon Tate and her house guests in August 1969 in Los Angeles. Decades after the murders and the conviction of the killers, Charles Manson and his Family, Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry wrote Helter Skelter, asserting that the murders were motivated by Manson's desire to start a race war, inspired by his reading of the Beatles song of the same name. However, journalist O'Neill, while on assignment for Premiere magazine to cover the 30th anniversary of the crimes, unraveled a series of discrepancies. This book, cowritten with New Yorker contributor Piepenbring, digs deep into events and connections before the killings, including Manson's relationship with his parole officer and countless pages of redacted police reports. O'Neil's top-notch investigative work persisted for nearly two decades. Here, he and Piepenbring offer a sobering look into the world of domestic spying in the 1960s and make a convincing argument that there is much more to this case than Bugliosi and Gentry's narrative presents. VERDICT An excellent work of investigative journalism proving the "true story" is not always the truth.--Bart Everts, Rutgers Univ.-Camden Lib., NJ

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.