Why pop culture can't get enough of criminal-cult leader Charles Manson

What is the big deal about the Manson family?

As Quentin Tarantino’s new film revisits Los Angeles at the end of the ‘60s, a man who was there — and literally wrote the book on Manson — argues that we never really left.

The Manson case had a touch of evil to it — in fact, more than a touch; it was, in many minds, a post-apocalyptic deluge. It exposed how defenceless the folk-rock stars, the movie stars, the producer stars, the drug stars, the limo driver stars and thousands of would-be and wannabe stars were in their pretend fortresses up in the hills of Los Angeles and Malibu.

No one