Vincent Bugliosi Biography

Vincent Bugliosi moved into the spotlight as the assistant district attorney whose prosecution of Charles Manson sent the mass murderer to prison for life. The 1969 murders of actress Sharon Tate and friends, followed by that of supermarket chain owner Leno LaBianca and his wife in their Los Angeles home, were considered especially horrific crimes. Bugliosi's chronicle of the crime and 41-week trial, Helter Skelter, marked the beginning of his reputation as a keen legal mind. While that was the most celebrated case in which he pursued justice, as a Los Angeles prosecutor Bugliosi succeeded in 105 of 106 felony cases throughout his career, with twenty-one of those being murder cases. Born in Hibbing, Minnesota, on August 18, 1934, Bugliosi became a well known author and celebrated defense attorney. Bugliosi attended the University of Miami on a partial tennis scholarship and graduated in 1956. He moved to Los Angeles and graduated from UCLA Law School in 1964. He met his wife, Gail, in Miami while working as an assistant tennis pro. They had two children and lived in a Los Angeles suburb.

In addition to a successful Beverly Hills legal practice, Bugliosi maintains his place in the spotlight through his writing, primarily about other famous murder cases and serious crime issues such as drugs. In addition to Helter Skelter, and Outrage, on the O.J. Simpson trial, he wrote: Till Death Us Do Part, And the Sea Will Tell, Drugs in America: A Citizen's Call to Action, The Phoenix Solution: Getting Serious About Winning America's Drug War, and No Island of Sanity, in which he discusses the Paula Jones lawsuit against President Clinton. Bugliosi was also on the slate to argue the case when the Showtime cable network broadcast a simulated trial of Lee Harvey Oswald, alleged assassin of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. Oswald never stood trial due to his own assassination two days later by Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby. Bugliosi acted as prosecutor in the five and a half hour program in 1986, while famed attorney Gerry Spence headed the defense.

Gleaning much about murderers from his early days with the Manson trial, Bugliosi studied the O.J. Simpson trial in 1995. His book, Outrage, was on the best seller list for weeks after its arrival in 1996, less than a year after Simpson was acquitted. According to an interview with Elinor Brecher, Bugliosi was certain that had he prosecuted the case Simpson would have been convicted.

Recent Updates

May 16, 2004: Bugliosi served as executive producer for the drama Helter Skelter, which aired on CBS. Source: New York Times, www.nytimes.com, May 14, 2004.