description: About the AuthorsVINCENT BUGLIOSI received his law degree in 1964 from U.C.L.A. law school, where he was president of his graduating class. In his career as a prosecutor for the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office, he successfully prosecuted 105 out of 106 felony jury trials, including twenty-one murder convictions without a single loss. His most famous trial was the Charles Manson case, which became the basis of his true crime classic, Helter Skelter, the biggest selling true crime book in publishing history. But even before the Manson case, in the television series The DA, actor Robert Conrad patterned his starring role after Bugliosi.Bugliosi has uncommonly attained success in two separate and distinct fields, as a lawyer and an author. Three of his true crime books, Helter Skelter, And The Sea Will Tell, and Outrage, The Five Reasons Why O.J. Simpson Got Away With Murder, reached number one on the New York Times hardcover bestseller list. No other American true crime author has ever had more than one book that achieved this ranking.And as a trial lawyer, the judgment of his peers says it all. "Bugliosi is as good a prosecutor as there ever was," Alan Dershowitz says. F. Lee Bailey calls Bugliosi "the quintessential prosecutor." Harry Weiss, a veteran criminal defense attorney who has gone up against Bugliosi in court, says:"I've seen all the great trial lawyers of the past thirty years and none of them are in Vince's class." Robert Tanenbaum, for years the top prosecutor in the Manhattan District Attorney's office, says, "There is only one Vince Bugliosi. He's the best." Perhaps most telling of all is the comment by Gerry Spence, who squared off against Bugliosi in a twenty-one hour televised, scriptless "docutrial" of Lee Harvey Oswald, in which the original key witnesses to the Kennedy assassination testified and were cross-examined. After the Dallas jury returned a guilty verdict in Bugliosi's favor, Spence said, "No other lawyer in America could have done what Vince did in this case."With the recent compilation CD he produced, Greatest Latin Love Songs Of The Century, which the incomparable Chilean, Lucho Gatica - whom many believe to be the greatest singer of boleros Latin America has ever produced - calls "the best album of Latin love songs I have ever heard," Bugliosi seems to be launching yet another career.Bugliosi lives with his wife in Los Angeles and is working on a book about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.CURT GENTRY is the author of twelve other books, including J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets, The Last Days of the Late, Great State of California and Operation Overflight (with U-2 spy pilot Francis Gary Powers). He lives in San Francisco and is currently working on a history of the mob in Las Vegas.
language: English
title: Helter Skelter
titlecomplete: Helter Skelter
genres: Biography, Cults, Mystery, Psychology, Nonfiction, Horror, Audiobook, Crime, History, True Crime
ratings_count: 143162
places: The United States of America
awards: awardedAt: 157795200000
name: Edgar Award
category: Best Fact Crime
publisher: Bantam Books