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Previously unreleased prison audio of Charles Manson forms the evidentiary core of a new Netflix docuseries that directly challenges the race-war theory prosecutors used to convict him.
Joe Berlinger directed the three-part series "Conversations with a Killer: The Charles Manson Tapes," and he argues that the "Helter Skelter" framework was a prosecutorial invention, not the operational motive behind the 1969 Tate-LaBianca killings.
The architecture of a conviction Prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi faced a specific legal problem: Manson was absent from both murder scenes.
To convict an absent defendant, Berlinger contends, Bugliosi assembled the race-war theory as a legal structure that could tie Manson to his followers' actions.
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