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This show argues that the Son of Sam killings were committed by a Satanic cult with ties to Charles Manson?
Sort of! Zeman tries to split the difference between presenting Terry’s theories as fact and telling a cautionary tale about obsession and conspiratorial thinking, and at times you can feel the show collapsing under these opposing pressures.
She Escaped Charles Manson’s Murderous Sex Cult
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April 25, 2021, 1:56 AM·34 min read
Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast / Photos Getty/AP/Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast / Photos Getty/AP/University of Nevada Reno
Charlie, Juanita, Clem, and Sadie huddled together in the back of the Dodge van that had become Juanita’s traveling home in the summer of ’68. Clem and Sadie made no attempt to conceal their sexual desire for each other, and soon retreated to the upper loft. Now, alone with Juanita for the first time that day at the beach, Charlie knew he had her cornered.
The Covidian Cult
One of the hallmarks of totalitarianism is mass conformity to a psychotic official narrative. Not a regular official narrative, like the “Cold War” or the “War on Terror” narratives. A totally delusional official narrative that has little or no connection to reality and that is contradicted by a preponderance of facts.
Nazism and Stalinism are the classic examples, but the phenomenon is better observed in cults and other sub-cultural societal groups. Numerous examples will spring to mind: the Manson family, Jim Jones’ People’s Temple, the Church of Scientology, Heavens Gate, etc., each with its own psychotic official narrative: Helter Skelter, Christian Communism, Xenu and the Galactic Confederacy, and so on.
Thanks to the pandemic, some trends solidified into routine parts of our lives: Zoom meetings, outdoor concerts, online shopping and an insatiable thirst for bloody crime.
As if the world wasn t scary enough, gorging ourselves on the goriest and most shocking crime stories became a common pandemic pastime. The genre s revival it had its first heyday in the 80s has raised questions about both who the audience is and why we find true-crime documentaries so fascinating. (Women like them more than men, generally, partly because women find them useful for tips about how to avoid becoming crime victims themselves,