85: NIGHT CHAOS With Tom O’Neill

Molly Lambert. We are super excited. This week we have a very special guest, Tom O'Neill on to talk about his book Chaos, UM, a new book about the Manson murders and the CIA conspiracies and all sorts of fun stuff that'll be in the second half of the show, but for right now, I just wanted to let go

around and do some recommendations, just like stuff we've been consuming. UM. I wanted to point everybody real quick to Criteria, the Criterion channel, which if you're not a subscriber, I would highly recommend it, and I am not being paid to say this. UM. They are doing a little spotlight on Susan Pitt, who I feel like is a very Nightcall

approved animator. UM. She did a film, an animated film called Asparagus that used to screen in front of Eraser head when it was on its like midnight movie run. She's just a very cool, kind of psychedelic um illustrator and animator, like doing stuff that's very kind of left the center of what when you think of the history of American animation, especially in the time she was working, which was like the seventies and eighties. Um. And yeah, they have a bunch of her short films on Criterion

right now, so check it out. I saw her stuff for the first time at a weird bar in Tokyo, so it's like very turned on. What are they Like, I'm you've convinced me to subscribe to the Criterion channel, but I haven't done it yet. Um, So what's like what what is asparagus Like? It's very hard to describe. It's sort of there's a lot of asparagus, like kind of phallic asparagus. There's a whole sequence where like a

woman basically like filates in asparagus. It's just sort of kind of dreamy and sort of like free association, like all these sort of shape sort of melting into each other. It's just like, I don't know, it's you kind of have to just like watch it to understand it. But it does have that very kind of groovy seventies kind of zap Comex esque aesthetic and like texture and stuff to it, So I can't give a better explanation of

it than that. Emily, what do you think of The Irishman? Yeah, I would definitely recommend watching the short films of Susan Pitt because they are short shorter than The Irishman. I saw The Irishman. You are totally immune to the charms of the Irishman. What charms you were? You were confused. I wasn't fused, you were like, what did everybody else?

I am confused by the general reception to it, though I do feel like the more people that see it, not to besmirche my former fellow critics, but I do feel like the more I talk to people who are not critics who have seen it, the more I feel a little more, uh, you know, backed up in my kind of antipathy towards this movie. It's just so long, and it's funny because now it's become such a binary thing of either you're like pro Scorsese or your like

pro comic book movies. Like there's no one between. It's like the in between. Yah, he bridged the gap. Well, he's now, you know, part of the Star Wars universe. In the Star Wars University. Study's never seen any of the Star Wars movies, nor any of Jon Favreau's movies. He intends, same quote that I don't believe him because he always has the same quote anytime people ask him about like pop cultural things that are older. He's like, I grew up in a tiny village in Bavaria, and

I never saw any cultures. That's so funny, Like what a good troll to say. He says, he never I mean, he was just doing I don't know her. He claims music until he was eighteen. Like, I'm pretty sure he gave me that exact same story when I interviewed him, Like it's just one of his it's like in his file of things that he says. But um, anyway, I

believe him that he's never seen Star Wars. Sure, yeah, but he also didn't even some quote recently where he's like, we have to pay attention to the Kardashians, like we must keep our eyes open to like all the horrors of our culture. Really he's not wrong, though, Yeah, no, totally. I mean that's I feel like that's our philosophy in general. Um yeah, no, it's like I even liked like. It's not that I'm not even a fan of late period Scorsese, although I wasn't a fan of Wolf of Wall Street. Like.

I actually saw Silence somewhat recently because I didn't think I was gonna like it, and I watched it and I was like, it's great. He's a great filmmaker, like, and he's not my favorite by any stretch of the imagination. But this just feels like Netflix paid him a bunch of money to like play all the hits. Um wow, Silence stand Emily, do not put that on my gravest. That is not a defining personality trade of mine. But it was disappointing because it's not like I'm I don't

know I was. I wanted it to be good. I don't want to ask test now about a movie that she hasn't actually seen yet but closely monitoring her opinions on already know a bomb box marriage story. Oh guys, how did you know I'd have opinions on this? Did you know? Of course, I haven't seen it. Well, I put into the universe that it might be a Blue Valentine. I'm really upset because I re issued my very important Twitter pool asking if people's relationships had been destroyed by

Blue Valentine. They always lie. I mean, it's like I know the truth and I people will email me using anonymous email addresses and tell me like my wife and I went on our first date to maybe about a relationship breaking up painfully. I guess what happened next. But marriage Story, I am concerned it's going to have the same effect. I'm very concerned that anyone who sees a

marriage story with their partner will immediately break up. Obviously, don't see marriage story with your but isn't it worse to see it without in a way, Also, the Cusies movies like that except married Couples on Date. Well, soon it's going to be available on Netflix, so you'll just be able to beam it into your home and ruin your marriage from the inside. Well, I think the movie that we all actually want marriage story to be is Greenberg,

which is you know, I've never gotten into Greenberg. Maybe I was. I was coming at it from a place in my life right it was inaccessible. I was saying, like Ben Stiller is a way better stand in for Noah bomb Bach than Adam Driver. Sure. Yeah, well, now they both seem too young to be a stand in for Noah bomb Back, like like Ben Stiller is legitimately his contemporary, so it makes a little more sense. I love Greenberg so much I'm gonna give it another whirl.

I wrote about Greenberg on Tumbler back in the day. I was like, I am both characters, and isn't that how everybody who loves it feel? I used it as a verbal lot to Greenberg. I would say, like, oh, they got Greenberg nice? Is that mean you'll figure it out when you watch? But I watched the movie? What is it mean? I don't know, Like like an older man was annoying to you, Oh, talk down to you, And that's that's now what I say to everything. It

always works, um. I saw The Squid in the Whale when I was on a road trip and we were rough one for me, see, I loved the Squid in the Whale. I loved it. But I saw it on someone's ancient television in like I don't even remember where we were, might have even been in like a motel or something, and it was in black and white because the TV was a black and white TV and I was like, what a fine film, beautifully shot in black and white. And I only realized it was not shot

in black and white literally last week. Wow. Really, And it's so weird when things like that happen, where there's information that's so obvious and you've seen this, Like, how did I miss it? How did I miss the list? That's incredible. I've been living in a bubble. That's like miss hearing a song lyric times a hundred of all the movie like he made Francis Hall in black and white? Right, hated Francis by the way. That's wild. Oh my god. I also think I may not really take to credit apologies.

I try. I don't know what it is. The cinema of New York intellectuals is overrepresented. That could be I don't need any more Woody Allen movies. We also don't even need the ones we have. Yeah, well see, I never I was never into Woody Allen to begin with. But I guess it's just like if we, like I understand where Scorsese is coming from, if we stopped paying tribute to these things, they will fade out of the cultural memory. And that's just like what should probably happen

with a lot of them. Yeah, but it won't if people keep going like, we have to make more fake Scorsese movies and fake Woody Allen movies because that is what we think is movies are Like, I have a question that's not related to these things. But Molly had looked at Live Science, our favorite website, and found an article asking should we splice human and water bear DNA for Martian travel? Should answer what would a human water bear hybrid look like? Water bears look like? Faceless bears?

Kind of? If you really look stretched bears, Look, they have a bottle face, for sure, they kind of look like a like a flesh colored centipede. Sure we would a human and a water bear cross look kind of like squid? Word? Is that right? So wait? So so life science is just like posing this question just like, hey, I think what we we do what is normally done in science? We see something interesting, let's try it in

mice first. I don't know that splicing mice with water bears is a good idea because I have mice to live forever. I mean, it's good for mice. You know, mice have had it so rough for so long. I think we owe it to mice to give them immortality, not their fault that they spread the plague. Like, no, they didn't make the plague. So I had to really, I had a snake and I had to feed at

the baby mice. And I still feel so bad about that, Like I know that the snake would have eaten the mice in the wild, but when you have to face it yourself, it's a whole other conundrum. And I have the breats. What are we talking about splicing water bears in mice, Emily? Okay, let's take a night call about a critter of the week, and it's technically a night email, but there has a new critter that is very cute. Unlike some of the critters that we've covered on this podcast,

this one is a winner. I I actually really like this critter. There have been some where every own's like did you see that? And I'm like, how don't you know it's it's not it's my atom driver, Like I don't care, but this one I do care about. So we have a night email from Colleen writing this from under the covers as I try to fall back asleep after being jarred awake from a faulty fire alarm scare at two am. That's another night call to be had.

Came across this very exciting, scintillating discovery of the silver backed chevrotaine on camera in Vietnam, a k a. A mouse dear. They are rabbit sized animals that, despite having mouse like features, are not rodents. They're hooved and most importantly they have fangs. And then she includes some links lastly alive in I think this is so cool and I will now be kept awake looking at picks of extinct chevertrain chevro chevrotaine just risk tricky. Has there been

any discussion on extinct animals and species you'd wish to encounter? Colleen? Thank you, Colleen. This chevrotaine. It's cute. It's really cute. It's like a like a more Kauai version of a deer. It's just like so little and but fangs. I like the deer with fangs, but where I I can't see the fangs in the photos which we will link to. It's very Yeah, it's very fetching. I like its coloration. It's but I don't like how it looks like. I'm not a fan of its stance, but I'll let it

fly because I like its ears. It kind of is jackalopus. It's Tod's jackalopus, little cuter. Do you guys have extinct animals that you wish were not extinct anymore? That was what I was going to say. Was so fun. There's so fun. Imagine if you were just like on a road trip, you know, and I don't know, the Great Plains, and you saw a wooly mammoth, just like a wild

hooly mammoth, like that would be very exciting. I would like those like really giant versions of things that are now small, Like you know, there was like a beaver that was as big as right, like that giant sloth. Beavers are not very friendly. I would be scared to see a giant beaver. Were you scared during the full beaver Moon? No? I charged. I was made fun of actually recently at dinner for charging my crystals and my tarot card deck under the beaver moon to get more

powers to make rain. You kept saying beaver Moon. I love that Cristy movie The Beaver Moon. Yeah. My husband brought it up in front of my parents and I was like, God, stop there don't think I'm so crazy. It's like, but I totally I did it, and I guess I deserve to be called out. Um My powers are increasing, however, and there's a slight chance of rain when we were recording this, and there maybe rain next week. So thank god for the beaver moon. Thank God for

the beaver. Should we take a little ad break, Let's do it. Hey everybody, and welcome back to Night Call. We're gonna talk about something we've been talking about, wanting to talk about for as long as we've been podcasting The Sopranos. Tess, why don't you tell our listeners about your November tradition? Okay, ten years ago I started a tradition, and I haven't done it every year. I try to, but sometimes, you know, I'm just doing other stuff, as

one does. But I try to start watching the Sopranos right before Thanksgiving, sometimes on Thanksgiving from the beginning. In previous years, I start with the pilot and I worked my way all the way through and usually I can usually get it done by New Year's Like, I'm I'm really committed. But this year I took last year off. I only dabbled. I didn't watch the whole thing, but I watched some this year. I decided that I am

going to watch it. Well. At first, I was like, I might just go with the episodes I remember best and then go through all of the episodes and kind of a random order and see how that feels. But now I think, having watched two of my favorite episodes, the finale very divisive obviously, and Kennedy and Heidi, I think I might watch the finale that I just watched two days ago again and then go backwards through the series. Yeah.

I know, I'm crazy. I respect this. Thank you. If you learn anything new from that, you should tell us immediately. That feels like listening to a record back where clocks will start, like finning in Revers Twin Peaks, Remix. It is um. It's really interesting when you start from a strange place in the Sopranos, because it also kind of reminds you. I first saw the Sopranos um when I

was home. I think I might have been in college and I was in Connecticut over winter break with my mom and she was what she had just gotten really into the Sopranos, and it was like on HBO, and it was the Tracy episode, which is also one of

my favorite episodes. And I was like, what is this and I sat down and we just watched it kind of like even in high school, but anyway, we we were like watching it in silence, and it was so awkward because the Tracy episode is like, I mean, they're all extremely violent, but it was very violent and liked to watch Tracy. Oh oh yeah, that's like one of the most horrifying. It's a horrifying episode. But it also

that's the Sopranos for you. That's I think that's that might have been one of the first TV episodes that ever made me cry. Oh yeah, that was the I mean it was so a fact, like it was incredible, and I think she's actually a yoga teacher. Now the actors who played Tracy every so happened. I'm like, what's up with Tracy the actor? Because she's an amazing Actually, she's so phenomenal. I don't think i'd seen her in

anything else since then. Um, but yeah, Tess, you're really viewing of the Sopranos made maybe like that's a good idea. I'm going to copy you. And then I started doing it too. It's a really great holiday thing. Yeah, and it's just like I could watch it all the time. Uh, and now that we're so far away from it in the oversaturated TV world, but like, so few things are as good as that. Um, I always say, nothing is

as good, nothing is as good. But it's always weird to me to be like the first batch of shows that were prestige shows that I loved, We're all like not famous people and just really character driven, we're not super high budget, and now it feels like it's turned into movies where people are just like whoever spends the most is going to win, which also isn't proving to

be true. And that's one of the things I'm really stoked about Elena Smith's show Dickinson doing so well is that it is a very specific vision by a specific person,

which is also what the Sopranos has going forth. So you're you guys are going to murder me for saying this, but like I did watch I actually started watching Sopranos a couple of months ago, and just like watched about I think I watched the first season, or maybe I didn't get through the entire first season, but like one thing that I was struck by because I haven't watched it rewatched nearly as much as you guys. But man, you don't have to go back too far for this.

But Sopranos is a great example of it. TV shows that are actually shot on film. There's like a nice feeling there and you can you can you can taste the difference. I mean, it's true. It's also like it makes New Jersey look like the most beautiful in the world, and New Jersey is beautiful and it's weird. I was always trying to convince my folks to move to New Jersey because I was like, it's so cool because you could just go into New York and then you get

to be in beautiful New Jersey. And they just like relentlessly made fun of me because they were like, yeah, you just can't even you can't say that. It's like, but it is. It's very beautiful in New Jersey. It's just across the river, but it's a thousand miles away. It's true. Um, but yeah, we I'm in a force Emily and Molly to be watching more Sopranos throughout the next couple of months. Um. But I did want to recommend if you are just wanting to watch a single episode.

I'm going to make them recommend which ones they love the most, But I'm I'm going to stand for Kennedy and Heidi as one of my favorite episodes. It's the eighty three I believe episodes. It was in the sixth season. Um, but it's great for a number of reasons. It's a lot happens, uh and what happened? I dragged my memory because it's been a way long time since I watched a sixth season of The Sopranos. Okay, spoiler alert, go away if you if you don't know anything about The Sopranos,

go away. It is comfortably numbs is playing in the car with Tony and Christopher when Kennedy and Heidi are two teens and they just are in this it's titled Kennedy and Heidi, but they're just like two teenagers on their learners permit driving at night, and you see them for a brief second. They're having a conversation, at which point Christopher is driving the car. He swerves to avoid them, the car rolls over, and then something else happens that

I just can't bring myself to spoil. It's such an interesting one for you to be like, watch the climactic point of the series. Well, I don't know if you should. If you haven't ever seen in the Sopranos, obviously you have to start from the pilot and work your way through. But if you've seen the Sopranos and you want to like dip back, dip back in, I there's also because so Paul, you know, Polly's adopted mother has recently passed away.

She's having a dueling funeral with another main character who has also died. And I feel like there are no bad episodes. There are no bad episodes. But also I think in Kennedy and Heidi, the cat who stares at um a picture and miaw is a lot, I think that that or maybe that's in the finale, but that was like another one of my favorite elements is like the animals who are reincarnations of people who have passed um. Yes, So, anyway, we are all going to be watching the Sopranos for

months and months, and you are invited to join. And if you have thoughts about the Sopranos, give us a call at two four oh four six night. I think I know which one I'm when I rewatch which one, which I don't think is a good episode. I picked a weird up. I did Mr Ruggierro's Neighborhood, which is the season three opener, which is like about the FBI bugging the house uh as a aiming device, so it's

like only intermittently about any of the main characters. But it features one of my favorite moments of the whole show, which is Tony singing dirty Work by Steely Dan alone in his car. It's just like a ten second getaway. That's one of the best parts of the show. And I watched things around the Sopranos like The Matrix, which co stars Joe Pantoliano right of course, and the movie Fallen, which co stars Uh, James Candalfeni and Aita Tutuo as

I love Jannis. The other another really good one is the Janis under the Boardwalk thing, but well, yeah, I'll get into that later. Emily, what were you going to? Which one were you going to start with? I don't know the title of the episode off the top of my head, but it's the one where Christopher is gonna write a movie. Yes, I just remember that. The closing credits on that are Cake, Frank Sinatra and for some

reason that like stuck in my head. I thought that was like the most epic like black cut to credits that I had ever seen a very they were so good. That was one of their their finest little flares. Song by Cake. Oh great song. Yeah, put it on many A Mix CD. Yeah. Before we wrap up the Sopranos segment, we did get a night text I believe. I don't know that their night text or gave a name, but

they say, hey, night call. Just wanted to share that people always forget that Polly's car horn is the theme from the Godfather, And that's one of my favorite small things on the show is that that's a and that's a real car horn, Like that's a that's a thing you. Oh, you can get a car one that does a song. Yeah. Here, there's a cuaracha one you hear sometimes. Yeah, that one's that was very common out here, but I feel like

I've heard the Godfather one in New York. Yeah. Well yeah, Well we're going to take a quick break and when we come back, we'll be talking with Tom O'Neil. Our guest this week joining us now is author Tom O'Neil, author of the book Chaos Charles Manson, The CIA and the Secret History of the Sixties with co author Dan Pipe and Bring and Ring. Welcome Tom, thank you, thanks for having me, Thanks for having us, Thanks for taking

us on this journey. People were suggesting Chaos to us before we even picked it as a book club book because they were like, you just should talk about this book on your show because you talk about all the things in it anyway, And then we all just crunched it. Thank you, guys, crunched it, finished it today. Perhaps we went on the spree. Yeah, so this is our book club pick this month for our Patreon and Molly had

already read it. She's been on a Manson journey UM and a Laurel Canyon journey also, so she had read the book. But then Emily and I had about two weeks. So in a way it worked out really well because we two became very obsessed, had no choice. I could feel horrible, I mean if I'm responsible, but no, it was great. We all I think highly recommend. This is a very night call book and it's it's super readable,

but it also leaves you feeling so confused. Yeah, tell us, I mean just for readers who haven't aren't familiar with the book yet if you just give us. We were saying, this is probably hard, but the elevator pitch on this massive book about conspiracies and you know, graph charts and

everything else that you put together. It didn't begin as a conspiracy book and began as a magazine assignment that was supposed to commemorate the then thirty anniversary of the crimes in and I was just looking at different ways to make that story interesting because it had been written to death obviously, and I didn't even want to do it, but I took it. And the kind of elevator pitch is I went on a rabbit hole and never got

out for years. Exact interviews we set a thousand because we decided if I told the true number, I look even more crazy. And it's also how do you define an interview? Is it like so many people hung up at me or shut doors in my face, but I get one sentence from them before, but multiple thousands, you know, people that I returned to an interviewed again and again who agreed to talk. It almost got into a thousand, probably,

but the one hits are some of them? Yeah, they weren't the pleasantest ones, and there's so much that didn't end up in the book. But what happened was I found out that the prosecutor, Vincent Bugliosi, who became famous at the trial and with his book Helter Skelter, which to this day is the number one true best selling true crime book of all time. Let's say he cut

some corners. That's a polite way, but the true way is he subordined perjury during the during the case and hit evidence, fabricated evidence, manipulated witnesses, threatened people, et cetera.

And when I found that out in the beginning, like in the first year, that's when things started taking a lot of detours, and I started uncovering other stuff connected to other historical events and found out that there was a good possibility that there were darker forces at work than just a crazy, quote unquote hippie guy who was telling his followers what to do for him. That might

explain it. Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things that sets this book apart is how much your voice and your own skepticism about what your reporting comes through and just you know, by the time you're starting to get into the g f K assassination. Even in you're in the moment, you're like, oh God, I'm getting into the GfK assassination. It just has this thing of you note you can see, you know, the next year of reporting or more, because it really in ability to

for us all we've all done some interviewing. Just the idea of getting addicted to interviewing people, Yeah, obsessed with just reporting, getting addicted to the reporting. Especially when you're like a freelance journalist doing celebrity interviews that some of us also may have been trying to do something more important. You're like, oh, I gotta like that's going to be the thing that's going to get me out of this. Yeah, exactly.

So you also got your haircut three times just to interview. Yeah. Yeah. One of the stylists to the Stars, Little Joe, who charged a lot of money. But my magazine, which doesn't exist anymore, I think I put them out of business. To Premiere was a monthly film magazine. They were the ones that assigned it. I had an expense account, so I told them before. You know, I always would take people for meals and stuff like that, but that seemed

a lot. It is also like you're telling tales of like a land are away that none of us have ever. Don't magazines give you a budget and they're like, it was, well, they didn't. They did in this case, but it wasn't you. It was an anomaly that they let me do that because I got the editor in chiefs as obsessed as I was and as desperate to get out of I think entertainment journalism, because he really believed believed in the story.

But the expense account that I got from Premiere, I ended up having to reimburse them for all those hundred dollar haircuts and everything else. When the whole thing fell apart. Well, I'm still kind of in the process of reimbursing pay there's no Premiere anymore. That's actually we'll talk about that.

When it was complicated, At what point did you become obsessed enough and have enough information that was knew that you could get your editor in chief to agree that this was worth Really just a couple of months in. Really I had some big breaks a couple of months in, but then you know, stuff will kind of level off and then something else would happen. It was a magazine story for almost two years, I think eighteen months after

I missed the first three month deadline. Jim, the editor in chief, who believed in this, and really I wouldn't be sitting here now if he hadn't. Uh. He just gave me an open contract. He paid me monthly to keep reporting, so I would report back to him every month or two. You know, we blew the thirtieth anniversary deadline in the beginning, and it wasn't until he got fired from the corporate owners for let's say, probably the story that the new guy came in and said we

wanted in a month or two. And at that point I obtained a book agent and I said, I can't report this stuff now because I'm giving too much away without the answers. So give me another couple of years, give me a book deal, and then we'll reimburse Premiere. He said, I can get you out of your obligation to them, but later we'll have to resolve that. Later is now. So this was originally supposed to be, as you said, a thirtieth anniversary story, and now it's a

fiftieth anniversary story. And so you know it being an anniversary year of the Tate La Bianca murders and um the trial and everything. You know, it's it's been very much in the air. Your book is a part of a bunch of stuff that's been came out about not

only the last fifth of the moment. I have to say that reading your book really put that movie in a new light for me, of like it being just such a fairy tale, especially with regards to just Sharon and what was going on with her personally at the time, and made a lot of sense to me, you know that the maybe a pregnant woman wouldn't want to be living at like a party house, right, especially with that kind of there was violence at that Yeah, but even I feel like in some of the other books, like

I've been reading The Family by Ed Sanders as well, just that you know, they sort of loss over that aspect of it more because Polanski was still sort of

playing the grieving husband for a long time. Yeah, obviously there's been other things about Polanski that, Yeah, I feel like a lot of it is a sort of armchair psychology that everybody has about Roman Polansky just being this like extraordinarily fucked up person who had a lot of fund up stuff happened to him, but also obviously did a lot of funked up stuff and you know, wanting to understand him as a victim in that in that moment,

just because it was so horrific. You know, it's obviously so much more complicated, and that moment where it's like, oh, it wasn't the end of the innocence because like a lot of Yeah, what's interesting about the Sharon and Romans stuff is UM the UK Publishers, which was Penguin Random House, ironically the same company that UM sued me when I didn't deliver when it became a book deal. This is all in the book if your listeners read it. About

seven years into that deal, the same thing happened. The publisher pulled the plug on it, canceled the project and that was devastating, and then they sued me for a return of the advance, which was horrible. And but when we sold it in seventeen to Little Brown Penguin, actually the same publisher who had sued me, and that had taken two years to resolve. For the first ones to

make an offer for it didn't make any sense. I thought I was being and they offered exactly as much as Little Brown did, and I said to my agent, I can't even consider this unless they offer more as a sign of good faith. And he said that's reasonable. He said how much more? And I said, don't tell them, but I'd be even happy with five or ten grand, just you know, something symbolic. They wouldn't even do that,

and I told him to go to hell. So then their UK branch bought the UK rights of this, you know, so they published it there and the only thing their lawyers had a problem within the book, and it was a serious problem, was everything about Roman mistreating Sharon. And yeah, well, I think I hate to admit this. I had to, you know, I had to give in to the lawyers over there. The libel laws are much stronger, and he's

successfully sue advanity fair. I think we've seen also that one of the ways that people keep stories like that out of the press, it's by being like, well, it's unapprovable. How did Weinstein keep anyone from reporting on that on his you know, being a rapist for so long? It's because they would go after anyone who intimated anything being like him. But that also seems so futile, because even as recently as last week, there was another rebelligation against

Herman plants. I know they're like, yeah, I got in touch. A woman got in touch with me. A lot of people that are kind of crazy get in touch with me. Since the book has come out, this woman sounds legit. She's gotten some press. She says she was raped by him in Hollywood when she was I think fifteen, and you know she than sending me stuff. I get a lot of that. But you know, they were so scared of him over there that I'll tell all of your

people if they're I don't know. If you have listeners in the UK, try to get the United States version if they read Polish, even the Poland version, which is you know, his home country, and we sold that quickly to the rights they didn't ask for any change. Is just in UK shocked. The UK libel laws are hard because I feel like they published crazy thing. Yeah, well you have the tabloids. But that was a compromise I

had to make. So if your listeners are going to get the book and they're in the UK, I don't know how easy it is to buy an American version on Amazon. I mean imagine it's just more shipping fees. Get that one. Maybe you can download the American version and give it away from free. Um. Speaking of lawsuits, how many? So I know like BULIOSI threatened you with what a d million dollars lawsuits? That was one figure he threw out, but he basically said you'll be working

for me the rest of your life. And to Penguin who were still was still my publisher, then he said, I will own your company and every prophet, any of your books made in perpetuity. My family will if you published this band's book. So um, yeah, he was trying to scare me. I would like to corroborate that Bilioc

is a crank. According to a friend of mine who worked at the Lemley Pasadena, I love these stories, and he said Biglio would come in and like throw a fit at the staff and be like don't you know who I am? Really? Yeah, like all the time, and be like read Voltaire, Oh my lord. He was mentally ill. I truly believe it. Mentally well, well, all the stuff about you know, everything that came out when he what was he running for for d A And there were two different cases he was involved in and he was

running for office. I mean he was kind of like Trump is now. I mean he was just fearful of repercussions and thought he was above the law. And the Milkman case and the mistress case both really were the reasons he He might not have one anyway, because everybody in Los Angeles, especially in law enforcement at the d a's office, knew he was crazy. He was only there. People don't understand that he was only there like six years. He left as soon as he finished this case because

he wanted to be more famous. But Buck Compton, who was the famous uh I forget what they called managing d a's guy who assigned the attorneys. I interviewed him and he said it was the biggest mistake in my career to assign that case. Events. He said, I created that monster. Yeah, yeah, I mean I think what you do find as a new angle about the case is you really address the sort of police corruption and uh sort of the and as well just sort of the general incompetency of the l A p D is one

of the things. That's what I was always trying to balance. Is it incompetence where is it deliberate? And I had this one retired d A. Lou Watt, who told me this, and it was so important at that stage of my reporting, he said, you know, I'm looking at this. I had shown him Manson's federal parole file where he kept getting arrested, released, arrested, release, and I had gotten that through a lot of Freedom of Information Act request. It took me like two years

to get it all. I brought it to him and he was literally dying. I can't remember where the disease was, but he was not a respirator and he's wheezing, and he's like, chicken ship, this is all chicken shit, Like what do you mean, Mr Wattnick. He goes, well, you know, this can sometimes be explained by incompetence, but this was intentional.

They were releasing him when they should have not only violated his parole, convicted him, then sent him back with the new New Year's at it one And when you sort of make that connection of like, well, like the l a p D would probably be stoked if people were doing crimes in the name of white supremacy, because

that's also what they're did. The the part about the a up of the you know, you really frame it in this great way because I think the sixties, it's like the cool people are always very overrepresented, and the idea that everybody was like, you know, with it and progressive. It's like no, a lot of people were super square and they wanted to crush whatever else was happening. I guess Tarantino kind of got that in his movie because

Leo Dicabrio and Brad Pitt's character were old Hollywood. I just I wrote the intro for this Eve Babbitt book, and she wrote this piece about the Godfather and if there's this quote where she's like everybody in l A wants guys who look like al Pacino, because in l A, like guys who look like Brad Pitt are everywhere and they pump your gas. That's exactly what that movie gets, right. Yeah, I want her to read my book. I could go

on to her for a blurb. She's great, Yeah, yeah, I mean I think for me that was probably the section of the book where I started to go galaxy.

Mine the whole section about the Sheriff's office and uh and all this you know, repeated opportunities that people had to put Man's in a jail, between the parole and the surveillance they had on the red I found a document showing that they knew he was coming back from the Bay Area the day that Sharon Tate was killed with this runaway girl, and all that was correct, except that he was really coming back from Big Sir, which

is just a little bit below the Bay Area. But all that stuff was suppressed and not shared with the defense. And one thing that always bugged me about the case was I was like, how could they squat on this land for so long without anyone getting mad? Because like, one thing I know about unoccupied land in Los Angeles is that people get fucking furious occupied and you're not allowed to Well. Also, I mean they had visited so many times and he was on parole, and they knew

that he had like an arsenal. It's just absolutely not underage girls, drugs, a machine gun. Uh. And when the cops or sheriff's would come on to spawn rash, she threatened their lives. And he said when he lost the ammunition for I forget what it's called the banana eclipse for a machine gun full off a doom bug, he told the cops he wanted it back. He called he's on federal parole. I mean, nothing made sense. Yeah, And that's a famous line of man since there's no sense

makes sense. Well, yeah, like putting it in the context of all these other sort of operations that we're going on at the time to discredit the counterculture and student protests and activism and the Black Panthers and all of that, it makes you know, I would I would hesitate to say, like your thesis, because I think they're still like I think there are many questions that are left open at the end of the book, but in general, the premise that like, it would be very possible if one wanted

to at this time to create an example out of somebody like a Manson like figure um to you know, spook everybody out of the out of the sixties basically um. And it doesn't feel far fetched when you look at stuff that's actually on the record that happened on that time.

You do have great job of building it, of being here's the first thing that kind of didn't seem right, and I went into it more and like found all these bugs under the rock, you know, so that by the time you get to like, here's the JFK assassination, I didn't sound as crazy like go with me here, right, Yeah, And I think because you're coming at it like you're not a true crime person. And that's that was the hardest part of the book, was trying to figure out

the structure. And that's where I got gifted with the fantastic collaborator of this young guy Dan, who now has the best selling book with Prince Health. He wrote with prints, the beautiful one. You're that great thing about writing that thing with Prince. Yeah, that's a prologue to the book. I mean he got him, damn, because Prince died, so you know, everything got halted because the family was dealing.

I don't want to say fighting, he says, don't say fighting there, but they were fighting over the estate and the book got stopped. So he had probably he thought a year or two years, and I'm like, oh damn, it took me twentys, gonna take us five. And he was just so kind of self possessed and not in an arrogant way. He said, we'll figure out how to do it in a year or two and he helped

me with all. I couldn't have done it without him because I had lost my Well, you need someone to come in at a certain point, organize the files for you, yeah, and tell me what I mean because I lost perspective on what was most important, what wasn't We still do. We're talking about possibly doing um a second book, and I was telling you guys earlier there might be a podcast. So I mean, there's so much stuff that I do want to get out there into the world that's sitting

right now into ours. But at least I got this much, because there was a lot of years that I thought, oh my god, I'm gonna get run over by a bus. My family is gonna not I told them, you know what's important what's not, But there's too much that they're just going to say, all right, crazy brother, do put in a dumpster get rid of it. Did you become paranoid while you were working on it? I ever, really? I mean people everybody asked me that infect you with

the paranoia? And the only thing I was really frightened of. I mean, in the first couple of years of the drug guys that I was investigating, who are the big dealers? At the time, they were making some pretty serious threats, but I kept thinking, and you know, one of them.

I have a scene in the book. I took him to Cocoa's for lines place and he's you know, he's in a wheelchair and I have to lift him, Charlie Taco, and he's you know, he used to be a very big strong man, but he was eight and dying and he's threatening me while I'm putting him from my car to the wheelchair, and I will kill you on theology, right, Charlie, I could just drop you on the drive away. You can't.

Can you reach that point to where you're like? I realized that when someone said they were going to kill me or sue me, that man I had gotten yeah, yeah, but then scared me. I mean some of the stuff I learned that he had done, and as I learned it, I hope it comes out in the book. I started realizing I wasn't dealing just with somebody who was possibly First I thought I was dealing with someone that just wanted to make a lot more money by having a

more sensational case. Then I realized it was something much more sinister than that dark and then I saw what he did to other people who had caught him and stuff. I mean, he went full on attack again like Trump kind of does you make the parallels between him and Manson too, that they were the same age it's crazy. I could never decide who was crazy. But they were both like they like thirty four, like thirty two, thirty three, I think when the trial started. Yeah, but they're on

the same. Yeah. It was just such a different version of you know, yeah, but just that violent male ego. Yeah, the same. You kind of have to be a sociopath to be either a cult leader or district attorney. True. Yeah. Was there any point at which you just wanted to stop? Yeah, I like every other day. At one point you described you had a hundred and ninety I think binders in your apronment and a white word with the word manson

in the middle, and then lyne, I'm going out. I thought it was very brave of you to put that, Like in the photo section in the book. You know,

my Dan went through some of my personal pictures. He said, I want a progression of photos from you aging through this and he said, I want to see you have a picture of the white board, and I said, I've got it, like I think just the first year, so you don't see it with like twenty pages of paper tacked up around the white board, you know, beyond the perimeter, and I you know, I just said, you know what I want to be. That's what happened. I created a

white board as part of the story. Yeah, we'll put it in so um. But yeah, I used to. I never once, I think, seriously considered stopping. But I would think what if? And then I just thought, how can I get out of bed? I would have wasted many years you were. And it wasn't just that. I also wanted people to be accountable, you know. I wanted to report what I found to set I know it sounds real presumptuous, but to set the record straight about also

chasing people before they die. It's like that kind of the thing about the fiftieth anniversary is you're like, I got to get these people while there's still a lot and then at the end you're like, I have all this evidence, like doesn't mean anything. Yeah, the people that could have been held accountable or dead. I know a lot of people have accused me. I mean there's a lot of people who are not happy with this book.

The Manson blog people, oh yeah, yeah, the Manson blog people, Internet people, but also people who are part of Vince's world. He doesn't have a lot of defenders, but I've had some serious they've come threats and I know this person really is a member of the family because I said in one response, and I know I'm not supposed to respond, but I'm like, you have to be Vince is relative because you're the threats are identical to his, and he said he was a member of the family. I was like,

which one exactly? Um this story? Like, you know, we were friends with Crean along Worth who did Death and the Poet. Remember this series on Charlie Manson, and I think like it's in her series and a lot of stuff that we've read, like this is really understood as has been understood historically as like a Hollywood story. It's a Hollywood crime story, and obviously your book goes into how it goes a lot further than that. I mean, it's maybe it's a California story, but it's definitely a

California story. But I kind of wonder, like, having gone through all this reporting and having talked to all these people and gotten such a kind of cross section of like all these different places that people were at in the culture in this time period, and like since then, can you still even think of it as a Hollywood

story or is it transcend that. I mean, it kind of ruined me for having any kind of perspective on it as something that just wasn't so sinister and deep, even if I couldn't prove or if I could only present a circumstantial case, but it made me lose such faith and like stuff that I used. I was never naive. I've always been um, you know, raised by lefty parents and um. But and I always was a little bit careful about authority. But at this point now I feel

like I don't trust cops. I don't trust the judicial system. I don't trust the freeing in a way though I guess it is Yeah, do you realize I mean, you know, we're talking about the d A earlier, like the current d A of l A like hasn't prosecuted any cops

who've murdered anybody like a decade or something insane. It's just like, yeah, if you put your trust in those systems to sort of and you really do a good job also of talking about the connections between the l A p D and the l A times again, something I would have suspect, you know, once you said it, I was like, oh, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, And there was more there too. I wish well the l A Times too. I started looking into like the guy who founded the l A. Times. This guy otis total

citizen Kane. You know, he was like a hearst. I mean, you published whatever served his interest. He hated communists, anarchists, and the power structure in Los Angeles in the late sixties. Was him at the l A. Times. You already who was a very right wing mayor Reagan who was the governor and H. Nixon became president in January. I mean he was elected in the fall, but he was inaugurated

January sixty nine. And Evil Younger, the d A who was in charge of the case, you know, Vince was working for him, was an ex oss guy, which is what the c I A evolve doubt of it. He was a spy and the FBI, and not that that makes him automatically, you know, suspicious, but when you look at everything else I lay out about what was hidden and all that he had to be part like the

center of that. Whell. Maybe I'm the only person to take an optimistic view point away from this book fight Like, given all the effort they did put into trying to crush leftism and crush counterculture in Los Angeles, like to me, the fact that it always comes back in some way. You know that you can't crush ship crushed like diverse.

That's the reasons. Yeah, I'm from l A, so I have a in defending it against being like well, I was also like it was satisfying to me because there's so many like apocalyptic Day of the Locust narratives about l A. Reading the Manson murders to be like no, this was a like a government engineered Yeah yeah, this was not like something that was born out of Yeah here again like that I can blame Washington, d C. I think the thing that I like was the most

paranoid about after reading this book was just the idea of like what if everybody who ever runs for any office is just like being planted there? Like the book after this, because I definitely kept going down the hall, I read weird scenes in the canyon. I gotta be careful with that. That one was like fascinating because that one was like I was like, Okay, this is too crazy for me, but also that I would like fact

check things and they'd be true, you know. But he's the person who thinks like everybody's in the CI parents, so they have to be in. Then he makes the first point he makes is like Jim Morrison's dad started Vietnam and it turns out to be true, like his dad was the navy officer who I don't know if I knew that. He said. He's like, oh, yes, Jim Morrison's dad was the navy officer in the Gulf of Tonkin.

And there's a picture of Jim Morrison like with him as a kid on a boat, and I don't send me down on another rev. I was gonna say, So, now that this book is out and then you're talking about kind of how to adapt it and what's next in that, do you have any desire to look into a new mystery? Well, I mean I left substantial reporting about the RFK assassination hand, and obviously if people have

read the book, you see there are parallels. And not only that, it was literally a year and like two months before the Tate La Bianca more, same city, same DA, same cops. Uh and I found out a lot of really important information and at one point it was going to be part of the book, and then we finally decided so that book, I think it's five d some pages. Little Brown. The contract only wanted less than three because it's hard to sell. I don't think they knew who

they were dealing with. But they were great. I mean when we got to uh, I think about for fifty or something or four or sixty, I was so pleased. Then I had to do the end notes and they said, we'll give you about ten pages and I said, no, no, no, I need let the hundred and they said, are you crazy? We gave you an extra hundred and fifty. So I ended up getting I did a hundred twenty pages. We got it to sixty of end notes at the back.

And that's the most important part of the book to me because it shows all my sourcing that and you know, the depth of it. But um, the RFK s or hands stuff that could be a book in and of itself.

And there's other stuff that I did find out connected to the same scene in Hollywood at sixty nine that ended up not having any real events are connection, but I found out some amazing singular like standalone story in the dead ends are the most interesting part deciding that driving around l A you know, and skirts, Yeah, very cinematic, and it's like the book is cinematic because it's framed that way, like, now I got to drive to this valley, right, Yeah,

Santa Monica rooftop. Yeah, it's very like a Raymond Chandler novel. I like that. That's a nice comparison. The guy who's doing the adaptation for the movie spent about a week with me about a month ago, and I said, oh my god, you're gonna have a nervous breakdown too, and he said, I just I don't care this. We're not supposed to say this, but I don't care. I wanted it to be a limited series. We sold it to Amazon,

and they wanted to be a feature film. And this guy is a big deal and he's like, but I don't know how to, you know, compress the story twenty years into two hours. And I said, that's my life. I mean, that's I didn't know how to do it in the book, and now you're trying to figure it out. I wanted it to be like a limited series. And I actually think he's at the end of the week. He had a good angle on it. But now I have to wait and see the first draft, and I'm

not a little nervous about that. We talked about Zodiac a lot too. It's like the movie. Yeah, a lot of people say that, Um, I guess his obsession was that I can't remember enough. It was a copy of the Journalists Journalists. But also it's the same thing where like it drives everybody to well, it's contagious because once you start to realize that this is true, then all of a sudden, nothing else. Tom, Tom What do you do to decompress? What do you watch in your off

time when you were doing this? Uh? Rank at had like really bad you know, bad partners, anything that could really be dramatic enough to make me not think about it for a few hours. Um, what do I watch? Like on in movies and TV? I kind of like detective drama and stuff. I mostly only watched streaming now because I need to see stuff that seems as really I mean, I finally started watching Succession. Yeah, so I've

actually got like I'm going to Death Valley tomorrow. I've never been to the Barker Ranch where they were captured. And the cop if you get near the end of the book, Paul Dusty was a cadaver dog cop who thinks he has sights in the around the two ranches. He's been trying to get me to go there for ten years and I finally agreed to go tomorrow. So I'm gonna go for two or three days, but I'm supposed to go out tonight and I'm like, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna finish Succession. I gotta see the

last couple episodes. Anything really good? Be careful in Death Valley? Yeah, well, why would you say be careful? It's called death Valley? But something are talking about the elements, but maybe you mean Manson family, the haunt, don't fall in the hole. I'm looking for the whole. We're all still looking for. Well, Tom, thank you so much for joining, Thanks for having me. This is fun and uh for our Patreon subscribers, will be releasing our book club episode on Chaos, so we'll

be talking even more about it behind the paywall. But good of reason is any to pick up the book and check it out if you want me to come back for a Q and anything or something when they're all done reading the book, If they read it, if they get any questions for Tom, you can put them through us to four oh four six Night or Nightcall Podcast at gmail dot com and we'll pass them to Tom and hopefully I've been back on the show. Thank you, thanks for having me guys, thanks for picking the book

as a book club. Yeah. Absolutely, thank you for listening Tonight Call. We'll be back again next week. If you'd like to follow us on social media, we are Night Called Pod on Twitter, Night Called Podcast on Instagram and Facebook. Um you can leave us a night call at to four oh four six night or a night email at Nightcall Podcast at gmail dot com. As always, we would love if you would support our Patreon It's patreon dot

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