The motive prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi presented for the Manson murders was, Tom O’Neill explains (in Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties), spellbindingly bizarre, combining racism, apocalyptic, biblical rhetoric, and the Beatles:
Manson was an avid follower of the Beatles and believed that they were speaking to him through the lyrics of their songs… “Helter Skelter,” the title of one of the Beatles’ songs, meant the black man rising up against the white establishment and murdering the entire white race, that is, with the exception of Manson and his chosen followers, who intended to “escape” from Helter Skelter by going to the desert and living in the Bottomless Pit, a place Manson derived from Revelation 9.
When Paul Watkins, a former Family member, took the stand to elaborate, O’Neill explains, the details were even more jarring:
Watkins spoke of “a big underground city,” secreted away in a hole wide enough that “you could drive a speedboat across it.” From the book of Revelation, the Family knew the city would have no sun and no moon, and “a tree that bears twelve different kinds of fruit.” Subsisting on that fruit in their subterranean Elysium, the Family would multiply into 144,000 people.
It gets worse.
After they were found guilty, and the trial moved to its death-penalty phase, the three convicted women from the Manson Family — Atkins, Krenwinkel, and Van Houten — took the witness stand:
One by one, they explained their roles in the murders, absolving Manson of any complicity and proclaiming their utter lack of remorse.
[…]
To kill someone, the women explained, was an act of love — it freed that person from the confines of their physical being.
Almost unblinkingly, Susan Atkins recalled how Tex Watson had told her to murder Tate: “He looked at her and he said, ‘Kill her.’ And I killed her… I just stabbed her and she fell, and I stabbed her again. I don’t know how many times I stabbed her.” Did she feel animosity toward Tate or the others? She shrugged. “I didn’t know any of them. How could I have felt any emotion without knowing them?” She knew that what she was doing “was right,” she added, “because it felt good.”
Patricia Krenwinkel said she’d felt nothing when she stabbed Abigail Folger twenty-eight times. “What is there to describe? It was just there, and it’s like it was right.” Why would she kill a woman she didn’t even know? “Well, it’s hard to explain. It was just a thought and the thought came to be.”
“‘Sorry’ is only a five-letter word,” Leslie Van Houten told the courtroom. “It can’t bring back anything.” She’d helped stab Rosemary LaBianca forty-one times. “What can I feel?” Van Houten said. “It has happened. She is gone.”
Woof. Even Judas felt guilty after the fact.