Vincent Bugliosi, chief prosecutor in the Tate-LaBianca murder trials, was born in the northern Minnesota town of Hibbing (also the childhood home of musician Bob Dylan and basketball star Kevin McHale). His family moved to southern California, where Bugliosi graduated from Hollywood High School before attending Miami University on a tennis scholarship.
After graduating from UCLA Law School in 1964, Bugliosi took a job in the office of the Los Angeles District Attorney. Bugliosi quickly developed a strong reputation, winning convictions in 103 of 104 felony jury trials. On November 18, 1969, Bugliosi learned that he had been given his greatest responsibility to date: trying the Tate-LaBianca murder case.
Bugliosi threw himself into the case, working 100-hour weeks for the almost two years between assignment and sentencing. Unlike many prosecutors, Bugliosi became very involved in the investigation, accompanying detectives on searches of Spahn and Barker ranches, checking on leads, and interviewing key witnesses.
Bugliosi's chief goal in the Tate-LaBianca case was securing a first-degree murder conviction of Charles Manson. He identified the key to the case as proving that Manson had total dominion over other Family members. With the important testimony of Linda Kasabian and others, he was successful in doing so.
During the course of the trial, Charles Manson told the bailiff, "I am going to have Bugliosi and the judge killed." Knowing Manson's record, officials did not take this to be an idle threat and a bodyguard was assigned to accompany Bugliosi during the remainder of the trial. Bugliosi received numerous hang-up calls during the middle of the night (even when he changed to an unlisted number), but no attempts were made on his life. After Manson's sentencing, Bugliosi had, at Manson's request, a ninety-minute conversation with Manson, in which the convicted killer told him, "I don't have hard feelings" and that he did "a fantastic" job in convicting him.
After the Manson trials, Bugliosi took to almost full-time writing. His book about the Manson trial, Helter Skelter, was published in 1974. Other subjects of his writing include the war on drugs, the Kennedy assassination, and a 1996 book on the O. J. Simpson trial, Outrage: The Five Reasons Why O. J. Simpson Got Away With Murder.
Two of his most recent books are No Island of Sanity: Paula Jones v Bill Clinton (1998) and The Betrayal of America (2001), a book criticizing the Supreme Court decision handing the presidency to George W. Bush.
