Vincent Bugliosi, 80, prosecutor in Manson trial

LOS ANGELES - Vincent Bugliosi was an anonymous junior member of the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office when he was handed the case that, for better or worse, would define his life: the prosecution of one of America's most notorious mass murderers, Charles Manson.

During an oftentimes bizarre trial that lasted nearly a year, the cool, relentless prosecutor became nearly as famous Manson himself as he denounced the ersatz hippie cult leader as the "dictatorial maharaja of a tribe of bootlicking slaves."

He called Manson's three murderous disciples, who were on trial with him, "robots" and "zombies." He told jurors they eagerly killed actress Sharon Tate and seven others during a bloody, two-night rampage that terrified Los Angeles in the summer of 1969.

After all were convicted, Mr. Bugliosi would go on to recount the case in Helter Skelter, one of the best-selling true-crime books of all time.

He would write 11 more books after that, but Mr. Bugliosi, who died Saturday at age 80, would always be best remembered as the man who put Manson and his followers away. He reflected on the reasons for that in an interview 40 years after the slayings:

"These murders were probably the most bizarre in the recorded annals of American crime," he said. "Evil has its lure, and Manson has become a metaphor for evil."

Mr. Bugliosi was a young, ambitious deputy district attorney on Aug. 9, 1969, when the bodies of Tate, the actress and wife of director Roman Polanski, and four others were discovered butchered at a hillside estate. After stabbing most of the victims repeatedly, the assailants had left behind bloody scrawlings on the door of Tate's elegant home.

A night later, two more mutilated bodies were found across town in another upscale neighborhood. The victims were grocers Rosemary and Leno LaBianca, who had no connection to Tate and her glamorous friends.

When the trial was over and all were convicted, Mr. Bugliosi wrote Helter Skelter.

Later he sought public office, but was defeated in bids for Los Angeles County district attorney and California attorney general.

Born in Hibbing, Minn., in 1934, Mr. Bugliosi attended the University of Miami at Coral Gables, Fla. He earned a law degree from the University of California, Los Angeles.