Did you know the Bug was sued for one of the many unsubstantiated statements in his landmark book HELTER SKELTER?
The problem I have with the book is that he made shit up so that the only person that looks good in it is him... the cops suck in it...Stovitz his partner sucks... everyone sucks except St. Bug.
He wildly asserts that Charlie et al "may be responsible for up to 35 murders." Then why did he not go and prosecute them all? Doesn't Zero deserve justice? Gaul? Habe? That is, if of course these people WERE responsible.
It's interesting that I found this last night, since Lisa at KTS posted her Friday Case NONFACT. If you read and study HS like you should if you are gonna be here with the Col, it does CLEARLY indicate that a James Forsher was a driver with Hughes to Sespe Hot Springs, where Hughes drowned. It later wildly and incorrectly speculates that Forsher might be the James that was somehow involved in the "Body in the basement" murders, perhaps even the victim, James Willett. Now of course, James Willett was killed because he knew about the robberies of Montfort, Pitman et al. But in HS, BUG clearly states that he thinks these things are related. Because of the "reach" Manson has and all, don't you know.
So Forsher sued BUG. he ultimately lost and on appeal lost too. You can read about it in detail here- it's good reading.
"There is another possibility. It may be that both James and Lauren Willett were killed because they knew too much about still another murder.
"James and Lauren. Something about those first names seemed familiar. Then it connected. On November 27, 1970, a James Forsher and a Lauren Elder drove defense attorney Ronald Hughes to Sespe Hot Springs. After Hughes disappeared, the couple were questioned but not polygraphed, the police being satisfied that when they left the flooded area Hughes was still alive.
"At first I thought 'Elder' might be Lauren Willett's maiden name, but it wasn't. Nor, in checking the police reports and newspaper articles, was I able to find any description of Forsher and Elder. All I did find were their ages, both given as seventeen, and an address, from which I subsequently learned they had long since moved. All other efforts to track them down were unsuccessful.
"It appears unlikely that James Forsher and James Willett were the same person: Willett would have been twenty-four in 1970, not seventeen. {Page 26 Cal.3d 802} But Lauren is a decidedly uncommon name. And, nineteen in 1972, she would have been seventeen in 1970.
"Coincidence? There have been far stranger ones in this case.
"One thing is now known, however. If an admission by one of Manson's most hard-core followers is correct, Ronald Hughes was murdered by the Manson Family."
By way of innuendo appellant alleged: "By publishing the book Helter-Skelter ..., Defendants ... intended that when Helter-Skelter was published the readers thereof would believe that Plaintiff was a participant in the alleged murder of Ronald Hughes, that he was guilty of the crime of murder or the crime of being an accomplice or accessory to murder and that Plaintiff was a member or close associate of the Manson 'Family.' The aforesaid portions of Helter-Skelter, when read in the context of the whole book, were, in fact, understood and believed by numerous readers of Helter-Skelter to mean that Plaintiff was a participant in the alleged murder of Ronald Hughes, that he was guilty of the crime of murder or of the crime of being an accomplice or accessory to murder and that he was a member or close associate of the Manson 'Family.' Said understanding and belief on the part of said readers of Helter-Skelter was reasonably drawn from the aforesaid portions of the book when read in the context of the whole book."
I have to go with Forsher- it reads to me like he is somehow linked, AT LEAST to the Hughes murder- which of course was NOT a murder. In my experience, courts are loathe in the US to go forward with libel cases unless they are crystal clear. I see why they threw it out.
But read the whole transcript. Watch the lying Bug squirm.
( Oh and not nice guy Mark Turner should correct his awesome site here-- they can't have vanished if he sued Bug twice.)
1 comment:
It doesn't look like Bugliosi is trying to say anything negative about James Forsher and I can see why it was thrown out.
That section in Helter skelter, if it shows anything, it shows that Bugliosi was trying too hard to connect every death occurring with the family if the deceased had had any connection with them. He had started to do the same thing with Randy Starr's death. It's like he was going the opposite way to LAPD who ignored info that LASO gave them the day after Cielo, only for the info to be shown to have been worth pursuing.
A case of extremists {not interested vs too interested}, it really says nothing about James Forsher and I think he was silly to even attempt to pursue this one.
Post a Comment