![]() ![]() But he’s really smart, really intuitive, and a great writer. I was apprehensive, because Dan wasn’t even alive when the murders happened. I figured if he was good enough for Prince, he was good enough for me. Before Prince died, Dan collaborated on his memoir. The first manuscript was 120,000 words and only had a quarter of the story! I needed a collaborator to help me distill the most important stuff, because I’d lost perspective, and my faith in myself wavered. What role did Dan Piepenbering, your collaborator, play? The new information will be shocking, even to those familiar with the case. ![]() Several had never talked to the press or media before. I interviewed 500 people, critical witnesses and suspects. I did that first, so that everything I revealed later had a context. That was one of the biggest obstacles of the book, to make it interesting-the motives, why the people were killed, were they targeted or not. In the first few chapters, I had to lay out the official narrative that Bugliosi concocted in his book Helter Skelter, and in the trial, and then I gradually took it apart. ![]() With all the information you gathered about Manson and the crimes, how did you organize the book? Buck Compton, a chief deputy DA said giving the case to Bugliosi was the biggest mistake of his life, because he created a monster. I started hearing from cops and attorneys that he wasn’t mentally well. Stephen Kay, his coprosecutor, was physically threatened by Vince. I was looking into his conduct at the trial, which really upset him. But once I found out he was monitoring me-checking in with people I was interviewing-I started backing away. He gave me so much access, six hours that first day, and several phone conversations after that. They said McClure was following Garrett’s orders.I met him in April 1999 and was initially awestruck. The witnesses said they decided to talk at McClure’s trial because he broke a cardinal rule among biker and prison gangs: “snitches” should be killed, but their innocent children should not be harmed. The inmates said they heard McClure brag about the 1977 killings of Compton, her daughters and a friend, and describe how the children’s heads were shattered by his bullets. Witnesses will include many of the same prison inmates affiliated with the Hells Angels or the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang who testified against McClure. Prosecutors have said Barger was enraged by the case because he felt that killing innocent children was unwarranted. Several Hells Angels, including the motorcycle gang’s leader, Sonny Barger, attended parts of last year’s trial of Robert “Bugeye Bob” McClure, a Hells Angels “wannabe” convicted of committing the killings, allegedly at Garrett’s orders. Hamilton believes Hells Angels members will be on hand this week for the start of the trial, and tight security is planned for the Washington County Courthouse in suburban Hillsboro. “This is one of those where you just wonder if it will ever come together, and you just keep plugging away,” Hamilton said. Compton had testified against Garrett in a preliminary hearing and was preparing to do the same at his trial when she was killed in Laurelwood, 25 miles west of Portland. Garrett is accused of ordering Margo Compton’s death.Ĭompton, 24, had worked briefly as a prostitute for Garrett in a brothel known as the Love Nest in San Francisco, Hamilton said. He will help prosecute Odis “Buck” Garrett, 52, a former president of the Hells Angels’ Nomad chapter in Vallejo, Calif. “We are going to come after you forever.” “You send messages in cases like this that if you kill witnesses, let alone witnesses with little girls, we will never quit,” said Robert Hamilton, assistant state attorney general. It’s been nearly 18 years since a witness in a prostitution case was forced to watch the murders of her twin 6-year-old daughters and a friend, before being killed herself.
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