He's gotten to the bottom, but I don't expect him to get back to the top of the slide

Vincent Bugliosi, who set the mark for tough-minded and effective prosecutors in Los Angeles that we have all come to expect and has never been sullied since, has died of cancer at the age of 80. In 1970, with a 21-0 record for murder prosecutions, he got handed a case unlike anything anyone had ever seen. The savage murders of actress Sharon Tate and 6 others at the behest of crazed Svengali and Beatles aficionado Charles Manson, who thought his “family” was bringing about the race war to end all wars. With Susan Atkins bragging about the killings to a grand jury, a lot of Bugliosi’s job was done, so he set his sights on the involvement of Manson, who wasn’t actually present for the killings. The 6-month trial ended with convictions and death sentences for all 4 defendants, though the sentences were overturned when California canceled the death penalty. It also made Bugliosi a star, and his account of the crimes and trial, Helter Skelter, sold more than seven million copies, making it the best-selling true-crime book ever and won an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America as the best true-crime book of the year. He won two more Edgars for Till Death Do Us Part and Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Other books included Outrage: The Five Reasons Why O.J. Simpson Got Away With Murder and The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder. Convicting a deranged maniac and then writing about it had to be its own reward, as his campaigns for district attorney in 1972 and 1976, and for the Democratic nomination for state attorney general in 1974 were unsuccessful.