Good Neighbors: The Manson Murders and the My Lai Massacre

On March 29, 1971, the front pages of American newspapers showed side by side the outcomes of two great trials: Charles Manson and his three female co-defendants were sentenced to death for their participation in the 1969 Tate-LaBianca murders, and Lieutenant William L. Calley was found guilty of multiple murders committed during the 1968 My Lai massacre. At first sight, the exceptionally gruesome murder of Hollywood's beautiful people does not have much in common with a brutal search-and-destroy mission in a Vietnamese village, but the historic coincidence of these two stories is the entry point for an investigation into the uncanny parallels between the Manson murders and the My Lai massacre.

Drawing primarily on trial transcripts and media representations, Claudia Verhoeven will demonstrate how Manson became an alibi for My Lai. In their exceptionalism, the Manson murders could cover over war crimes that arguably were worse precisely because they were more of a norm. In turn, it is this worse that reveals why it was Manson who became America's icon of evil.