Author(s): Simon Wells

True Crime

In the summer of 1969, a set of grisly murders shocked the population of Los Angeles and the rest of the US. Seven people lay senselessly butchered, among them actress Sharon Tait, the beautiful young wife of Roman Polanski, just a month away from the birth of their first child. Thin strands of evidence pointed to a hippyish cult set up in an abandoned ranch on the outskirts of Los Angeles, and its delusional, Messianic leader, Charles Manson. Little was known about this would-be rock star and his peculiar 'family' of young acolytes. It was only later, after the sensational court case that ended with six of the cult members being sentenced to death, that the full, horrifying story would emerge: one in which drugs, sex, murder, mind-control, the Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Mafia, and even the President of America all played their part. Collecting testimony from previous members of the Manson family alongside new evidence linking a cult member to a murder in London, and including never-before-published crime scene photographs, COMING DOWN FAST charts Manson's terrifying rise from petty-criminal drifter to one of the most recognisable icons in criminal history, and explores the long reach of his crimes that to this day, so vex and shock the public imagination.