Sep 10, 2020 · Kanarek died Sept. 2 at age 100. Irving Kanarek, the hard-charging and bombastic criminal defense attorney who represented Charles Manson and argued through the decades that his notorious client ...
Nov 20, 2017 · Minnesota-born lawyer Vincent Bugliosi had only been a deputy district attorney for five years when his superior told him to build a case against Manson and his followers for brutally murdering ...
Jun 09, 2015 · Vincent Bugliosi, prosecutor of Manson case, dies at 80. June 9, 2015 / 10:01 PM / AP. LOS ANGELES -- Vincent Bugliosi was an anonymous junior member of the Los Angeles County District Attorney's ...
Mar 10, 2012 · By Bruce Weber. March 10, 2012. Maxwell S. Keith, who defended two members of the so-called Manson family in their notorious cult murder trials, stepping in …
Actress Sharon Tate, eight months pregnant, was stabbed to death and hung from a rafter. Hair stylist Jay Sebring, aspiring filmmaker Wojciech Frykowski and coffee heiress Abigail Folger were also stabbed to death, as was a young man who was visiting the estate’s caretaker.
Kanarek was born May 12, 1920, in Seattle, one of two children. He earned a degree in chemistry from the University of Washington and worked in the aerospace industry until he lost his security clearance after he was accused — falsely — of being a communist. He sued and his security clearance was restored, along with his back pay.
Later in life, Kanarek told the Guardian that he continued to reflect on the Manson case. Asked why an attorney would represent someone accused of such loathsome crimes, Kanarek said he’d do it again if given the chance.
Ronald Hughes was among the first lawyers to meet with Charles Manson in December 1969. Initially, he signed on as the attorney for Manson, but was replaced by Irving Kanarek two weeks before the start of the trial.
In his book Helter Skelter, Vincent Bugliosi wrote that Sandra Good, an associate of Manson and a close friend of devoted Manson family member Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, claimed that Manson family members had killed "35 to 40 people" and that, "Hughes was the first of the retaliation murders.".
The trial lasted nearly a year and was a spectacle from start to finish. Manson lunged at a bailiff and taunted the judge. Defendants Susan Atkins, Leslie Van Houten and Patricia Krenwinkel laughed, doodled on legal pads and arrived in court with Xs carved into their foreheads.
The years after the Manson case were at times turbulent ones for Kanarek. He admitted he “flipped out” after barging into the district attorney’s office in Torrance and was eventually handcuffed by police and admitted to Harbor-UCLA Medical Center for psychiatric evaluation.