James DiEugenio

This happens much too often on these Z film threads. Chris Bristow is an honest guy who has done some research on the subject. He posts what I think is a legitimate criticism of Costella. But instead of discussing that issue, we have about 20 straight posts about Butler. And I tune out what somebody consistently spells people's names wrong. I mean what is that about?

I just took a look at some of the characters in this upcoming movie. Joe is correct. The Brad Pitt and DiCaprio characters are fictional. DiCaprio is an up and coming actor, and Pitt is his stunt double. Apparently they are modeled on Burt Reynolds and Hal Needham. I have no idea where that comes from. And I don't really want to know. Some of the other people depicted in the film are, please sit down: actor Wayne Maunder, actor James Stacy, singer/actress Connie Stevens and Bruce Lee. Again, I have no idea as to why. Except I guess the title gives it away, "Once Upon a TIme..." They guy who turned the Nazi regime into a comic book, who turned slavery into a spaghetti western, will now turn Tate/LaBianca into a fairy tale. What a wasted opportunity.

Dave: In my book I note that Deana Martin, Dean's daughter, said that Manson had been to the house when Melcher was living there. She was his girlfriend at the time. She said she had seen Manson there more than once. This makes sense since Melcher and Gregg Jakobson, his business partner, had been trying to get a documentary film deal about the clan. She said that once he was there with Watson and once with a couple of girls. She could not forget it since he was wearing a striking looking ring and he noticed her looking at it. He gave it to her and said, "You're Dean Martin's daughter, right?" (DiEugenio, The JFK Assassination: The Evidence Today, p. 18) I have always considered what Bugliosi wrote about Melcher to be part of his cover up, and part of the overall DA's office effort at concealment. They did this in order to divorce the drug element from the crimes and to protect the celebrities involved in that milieu, like Steve McQueen and Cass Elliot. Living in LA, I understood how this system works. Melcher then cut a deal with Bugliosi so Martin would not testify at the main trial. She did testify at the Watson trial, but this aspect was carefully avoided. From my understanding in the upcoming book the Altobelli, and especially, the Melcher angles will be more fully explored.Once Melcher and Jakobson heard about the shooting of Crowe by Manson, they started doing everything they could to cover their tracks with the clan. IMO, Melcher lied at Watson's trial about how many times he met with Manson. At a real trial with real lawyers, instead of the incompetents the defense had, the defense should have presented Melcher, Elliot and McQueen. Punching holes in their stories would have gone a long way in establishing what really happened and why. As per the glasses, my information was that Manson dropped them there to confuse matters. (ibid, p. 23) I agree with you about Weston. He made many valuable contributions with the Jerry Rose journal.

This is one of the reasons I did not buy the whole Manson mastermind scenario that Bugliosi sold to the jury. Manson knew Altobelli was gay. He knew Altobelli had lived in the guest house. How could he have known those things unless he was either at the place before and/or had been in that milieu. And if he was masterminding it, would he not have told them to check the guest house for witnesses?

The Garretson/Parent aspect was something that I could not really explain so I pretty much avoided it. First, I agree with Joe, that it is hard to comprehend how Garretson could have slept through what happened. But yet Parent was killed in his car while trying to drive away? Did Garretson fall into a deep sleep ten seconds after Parent left? I think its more credible that he was hiding out someplace when he realized what was happening. Which is something he would not want to admit of course. Second, I don't see the point in highly fictionalizing something that is so bizarre to begin with. Terence Malick, in his classic film Badlands, took on a similar murderous tale but he turned it into something poetic, visually rhapsodic and ultimately tried to make a philosophic statement about it. (What happened to his career since that admirable film is really puzzling.) Bugliosi and Gentry did a disservice to history in the first place. (Although I think it was was really Bugliosi who provided the spin on the event, from his conduct of the trial.) And, IMO, it was through that hackery that he managed to keep people in jail much longer than they ever should have been. In my opinion, it was him who deliberately leaked that list of actors and actresses that Susan Atkins BS'd about in order to get herself a deal, which she did not get anyway. (Which is an interesting matter in itself.) Towards the end, she wrote a book which actually tried to approach the case in an honest way, and she accented the shooting and wounding of Crowe as a key event. The way I got onto this case was while reading Reclaiming History. I thought, if Bugliosi could mangle the JFK case that badly, maybe its time to take a second look at the Tate/LaBianca killings.

There is no doubt that Angleton played a strong role in shifting the balance toward Israel after Kennedy's death. There is a good BBC video on the Liberty incident that brings him into that affair.

That's what he did with this story? Talk about a disappointment. Is Dicaprio supposed to be the kid who got killed visiting the young man in the cottage behind the main home? Because that is a whole new interesting area that Tom told me he had some new information on but was saving it for his book. I don't even think I will see it now. I was unable to sit through Inglorious Basterds or Django Unchained. I truly regret the day that Hamsher and Murphy plucked Tarantino out of that Redondo Beach video store. A guy who can make Kill Bill and Jackie Brown simply has nothing to say.

In the work I did on this case, in addition to the above, Bugliosi also censored the drug angle. There were two previous crimes, one a shooting, one a murder, that preceded the Tate/Labianca killings. They were the shooting of Bernard Crowe and the murder of Gary Hinman. These were both drug related and were done over drug burns, the first was caused by Tex Watson who screwed over Crowe. The Hinman one was over the fact that the Manson gang thought Hinman had screwed them over. What Bugliosi does with those two cases, is about as bad as what he does with JFK. Because if you do not fully understand them, then I think it deprives the reader of key information he needs to understand why the Manson followers left those blood etchings on the walls at both consequent murders and also a more plausible reason for the crimes. And Dave is right, the Beatles song was about an amusement park ride. Later on, Bugliosi managed to disguise those cases in his version of the crimes as presented to the jury and the public, and a TV audience. In fact, Bugliosi filed the HInman case separately and had another attorney try it. Some of the people who were part of the clan, but who were now free, went along with this. They even said that Manson was a Beatles fan when, from what I can see, he was not. The clan's idea was to link the Tate /LaBianca killings to the Hinman case. Because in the latter, they had tried to disguise Beausoleil's role by writing things like "Political PIGGY" in blood up on the wall to make it look like a Panther hit. And the thing is, the two county sheriff office investigators who examined the HInman case understood this relationship. They were really the ones who cracked the case. What I thought was the other key to Tate/LaBianca was a guy named Joel Rostau. Rostau was a mob associated cocaine dealer who supplied people like Jay Sebring with coke. On the eve of the Tate/LaBianca trial his body was found beaten to death in the trunk of a car at LA airport. Rostau supplied Sebring with drugs that he would then distribute to his clients like Steve McQueen. Rostau's girlfriend worked for Sebring. According to her, Rostau was supposed to make a delivery to Polanski's home that night ( The JFK Assassination: The Evidence Today pp. 16-23) Needless to say, you will not find Rostau's name in the index to Helter Skelter. But there is more, and to me its crucial. The day after the murders at Cielo Drive, Steve MeQueen sent his assistant to Jay Sebring's home. Her job was to clean out his home of any drugs so there could be no linkage to him or any of Jay's clients. This is why the police were at Cass Elliot's house within 24 hours of the murders at Cielo Drive. Then, four days after Manson was arrested, the review of the police case stipulated that the most likely motive for the Tate murders was a drug burn or drug related crime. (ibid, pp. 17, 19) Again, try and find this in the Bugliosi/Gentry book. And the TV movie was even worse.

If you read that review of Mattson, the Israelis set up a front company. But it appears that Glenn Seaborg was the guy at the AEC who kind of looked the other way at what was happening.

The relationship between Manson, the Beach Boys and Melcher is really kind of interesting. Personally, from what I was able to decipher, this is an aspect that Bugliosi concealed and also disguised. When I met with Tom O'Neill he agreed with that. Not only did Manson know Melcher, he knew the landlord at Cielo Drive also, well enough to know his sexual orientation. Which, in those days, was not something people were upfront about. I also think that Vince was deceptive about how he wrote the book. He said he wrote it because no one else would. But from what I was able to discover, Curt Gentry, his co-author, was getting materials from Vince, during the trial. Which would indicate the decision had been made at that time to produce and publish a book, since Gentry was an experienced and none too cheap author.

Thanks again Micah. And I agree it would be downloaded. I think Hood College is kind of limited it their ability to put stuff online. From what I understand Baylor is the best in that regard.

I tend to agree with that. Ben Gurion would have rather stepped down than give in. We will never know what would have happened in this game of chicken though. Since LBJ essentially gave them a blank check. The other thing to note is that once France pulled out of the Dimona deal under DeGaulle, DeGaulle had his foreign minister send JFK a message that Israel was building an atomic weapon. But he also tried to tell JFK that the Israelis were now shopping around for uranium and WGP (weapons grade plutonium). The incredible irony on that is that the Israelis ended up stealing the materials from the USA. As can be seen from my review above of the Roger Mattson book on the subject. So the Israelis lied their heads off to Kennedy about Dimona, and they then set up a shell company in Pennsylvania to steal the fissionable materials from the AEC to make the bombs. In 1973, Moshe Dayan actually proposed using the bombs to stop the Egyptian advance across the Sinai. One of the nuttiest things I ever heard.

Can you give me the chapter and page, since I might use it again when I do a new edition later on.

Thanks Micah. BTW, what is the title: is it Mailer's Tale or Mailer's Tales?

Tom O'Neil's book on that case is finally coming out in a couple of months. He spent decades on that case. He also got a major publisher to do it, Little Brown. I really regret that Bugliosi is not alive to debate him on TV. But he told me he included a taped discussion they had in the book. IMO, Vince did a disservice to the public with Helter Skelter. I never heard of Charlie Says Joe, thanks for the alert.

Its listed in his unpublished manuscripts. But it looks like they took it offline. Too bad, it made for an interesting discussion when Martin found it and linked to it.

Micah: martin Hay discovered that and provided the link at this forum. You may want to look for it that way.

This book is not a worthy follow up to The Reporter Who Knew too Much. And as I note, I have a hard time understanding why Mark Shaw wrote a book since he had so little new to offer on the Kilgallen case. What we get are his ideas about Melvin Belli, and his Mob did it alone theory which is pretty inept these days. I mean when Chuck Giancana and Frank Ragano are your touchstones, please. https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-reviews/mark-shaw-denial-of-justice Anyway I will be talking about this on BOR tomorrow night plus taking questions about James McCord.

Thanks for the photo Adam. Is that in the WC volumes? Does it have an exhibit number? Has anyone ever heard os the windshield swipe?

Paul: That interview is with W, not HW. But I agree its fascinating. HW was at a luncheon meeting in Tyler Texas at the Blackstone Hotel. There were about a hundred people there.

Thanks Vince. Who is Bjork Pat?

That is true also. Lardner wrote the second attack against the film, about six months before it was released.

I read his book and met him once in Dallas. A really good guy who was a police detective in England. His book, No Case to Answer, has some interesting essays in it. His work on the paper bag, Harry Holmes, the rifle, Elrod, the line ups and Howard Brennan, and above all the Helsinki hotels, was quite good. I have a surprisingly small library of JFK books. Since, having read many too many, I have concluded most of the 1500 or so are not worth reading or keeping. But his I have on my shelf. RIP Ian.

If Hunt could speak he would have told you that he was obeying a higher patriotism. And JFK was a traitor. As per Reagan, if no one was around.....

Was McCord one of the guys getting Nosenko to the USA?