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. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

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 Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.