Below is a letter that Jay Sebring's nephew, Anthony DiMaria, sent in response to Rolling Stone story on Manson. It is republished with permission from
Restless Souls.
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| mansondirect.com |
On June 15, 1970 Rolling Stone featured Charles Manson on it's magazine
cover. Sadly, the narrative following the massacres on the nights of
August 8th and 10th, 1969 holds firm approaching four and a half
decades- Manson and his clan are sensationalized, glamorized as anti
establishment pop celebrity icons, while their eleven victims remain
trivialized and vilified to fit the sexy packaged formula of good old
true crime mass murder. The Tate - LaBianca killings have become a
massive source of interest and profit for countless news/tabloid
organizations, books, TV/film companies, TIME, LIFE and prosecutor
Vincent Bugliosi.
It is
painful and disturbing to see that the Rolling Stone piece by Erik
Hedegaard (December 5, 2013) is yet another example of how horribly the
victims are disregarded, even slandered ( "Sharon Tate wasn't a movie
star. Even now, nobody's ever really heard of her, even though she was
supposedly killed by Charlie Manson, the most famous guy in the world.
And that's the only reason anybody knows who she is. And still nobody
knows who the fuck she is") while Mr. Hedegaard presents Charles Manson
in a reverent, mystical light, "I will never know or understand why when
Manson rested his hand on my arm it felt so good, not passively good,
but actively... it's a presence."
Apparently, Mr. Manson has
the same impact on Mr. Hedegaard as he had on Vincent Bugliosi's wrist
watch when it stopped suddenly upon Manson's telepathic powers as
depicted in Bugliosi's 1974 television version of "Helter Skelter".
It is curious that Mr. Hedegaard would omit from Manson's interview
what the interviewee said he would do to a random baby ("he says
something truly awful about what you could do to that baby, worse than
you could imagine"), yet the author printed Manson's abhorrent slander
of one of his victim's ( Sharon Tate's) character, " She compromised her
body for everything she did. And if she was such a beautiful thing,
what was she doing in the bed of another man [Jay Sebring] when that
thing jumped off? What kind of shit is that?"
So the
narrative continues and everyone wins. Charles Manson is back in the
spotlight as mystical boogeyman, fascinated consumers satiate their
appetites- while an author and his employers line their pockets with
cash.
But for eleven people who lie in their graves, the
blood letting continues... this time at the hands of Erik Hedegaard and
Rolling Stone magazine.
