The Manson Women and Me: Monsters, Morality, and Murder

In the summer of 1969, Leslie Van Houten and Patricia Krenwinkel carried out horrific acts of butchery on the orders of the charismatic cult leader Charles Manson. At their murder trial the following year, lead prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi described the two so-called Manson Women as “human monsters.” But to anyone who knew them growing up, they were bright, promising girls, seemingly incapable of such an unfathomable crime.
 
Award-winning journalist Nikki Meredith began visiting Van Houten and Krenwinkel in prison to discover how they had changed during their incarceration. The more Meredith got to know them, the more she was lured into a deeper dilemma: What compels “normal” people to do unspeakable things?
 
The author’s relationship with her subjects provides a chilling lens through which we gain insight into a particular kind of woman capable of a particular kind of brutality. Through their stories, Nikki Meredith takes readers on a dark journey into the very heart of evil.

• Member of the Family: My Story of Charles Manson, Life Inside His Cult, and the Darkness That Ended the Sixties
• Hunting Charles Manson: The Quest for Justice in the Days of Helter Skelter
• Creepy Crawling: Charles Manson and the Many Lives of America's Most Infamous Family
• Will You Kill For Me
• Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties
• Manson Exposed: A Reporter's 50-Year Journey into Madness and Murder
• Charles Manson and the Killing of Shorty Shea
• Hippie Cult Leader: The Last Words of Charles Manson
• Member of the Family: My Story of Charles Manson, Life Inside His Cult, and the Darkness That Ended the Sixties
• Reflexion