Annal:1975 Edgar Allan Poe Award® for Best Fact Crime

Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders

Vincent Bugliosi, Curt Gentry

• 1975 Edgar-Fact Crime winner
• Score: 10.25

In the summer of 1969, in Los Angeles, a series of brutal, seemingly random murders captured headlines across America. A famous actress (and her unborn child), an heiress to a coffee fortune, a supermarket owner and his wife were among the seven victims. A thin trail of circumstances eventually tied the Tate-LaBianca murders to Charles Manson, a would-be pop singer of small talent living in the desert with his “family” of devoted young women and men. What was his hold over them? And what was the motivation behind such savagery? In the public imagination, over…