A man who sometimes fascinated me, Vincent Bugliosi, has died at the age of 80. The headlines all billed him as the attorney who successfully prosecuted Charles Manson…and you look at the Manson of today — out of his mind, Swastika etched into his forehead — and you think, "How difficult was it to convince a jury that that man was capable of murder?" But the thing people forget is that Manson was not present at the killings for which he was being prosecuted. He sent other mindless people to slay and the trick was to persuade the jury that Manson had committed crimes via remote control.
The victory made Bugliosi famous and he used that fame to become an author and lecturer. If you followed him, you came to see that he was very brilliant and also obsessed with telling you how brilliant he was. He always seemed to argue every matter in two ways. One was a solid presentation based on facts and logic, and this was usually pretty airtight. The other, parallel argument was that he was Vincent Bugliosi and if he said something was so, it was so because Vincent Bugliosi didn't say anything unless he had incontrovertible proof and since he was saying X, that meant there had to be incontrovertible proof of X so End of Argument, fella.
In 2007, he published Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, a book that made a very strong case that the assassination of John F. Kennedy was committed by Lee Harvey Oswald alone, that Jack Ruby acted solo in killing Oswald, and that every book and movie since which claimed otherwise was seriously flawed and probably dishonest. Unfortunately, Bugliosi's book was over 1,600 pages long and I doubt it was ever read by anyone who was undecided or whose mind was changeable on the central question of Oswald's guilt. People read it, or at least some of it, to see their views confirmed or in order to write outraged rebuttals.
I was among the former. I wasn't always but after spending too much of my life amidst the muck 'n' mire of "Conspiracy Buffs," I came to the conclusion that Oswald did it and he did it all by his lonesome. I also decided that if there was a real case to be made in opposition, it was just too hard to locate amidst the hysteria of those seeking to make some irrelevant point — or just make good livings — legitimizing every possible theory except the most obvious one.
I also — and this is why I ask that you not write me and try to get me to read some article that absolutely proves J.F.K. was gunned down by an underground alliance of Cubans from the planet Jupiter and Lyndon Johnson's chiropodist — decided that spending time in that world was a foolish way to squander one's limited years on this planet. When I was thinking about Oswald, I wasn't doing anything that mattered. Nevertheless, when a writer I knew a bit named Fred Haines invited me to lunch with Bugliosi, I went. He wanted Vince to hear one or two of my observations on the Kennedy case…nothing major, just little things. Like, I'd noted that there was the theory Oswald acted alone and there were hundreds if not thousands of theories involving vast conspiracies — but absolutely none suggesting that two people had killed Kennedy. Or three or less than ten. It was always one or a cast of thousands.
That, of course, didn't prove much of anything but Fred, who was assisting Bugliosi with research, thought it was an interesting point, one of several I had which he thought Vince might like to expand upon. Thus, we lunched.
It lasted about 90 minutes, during which I spoke for two minutes and Vince spoke for 88 and looked annoyed whenever I monopolized the conversation. I thought the guy was brilliant except when he kept telling me — and he must have said this ten times — that some view he had was inarguable because he was Vincent Bugliosi and Vincent Bugliosi never reached a conclusion without solid, inarguable evidence. If he'd left all of that line of argument out of the book, he could have gotten the page count down to three figures.
When the waiter came by to ask if we wished to see the dessert menu, Vince told me the peach cobbler they served was excellent. I'm sure he didn't say this but in my mind, I heard him assuring me that if Vincent Bugliosi said the peach cobbler was excellent, that meant the peach cobbler was excellent because Vincent Bugliosi never recommended peach cobbler without thorough and complete investigation and solid proof.
The lunch was before Reclaiming History came out. Afterwards, I saw him one other time at a Book Festival where he was not autographing it or even discussing it. He'd since published a book called The Prosecution of George W. Bush For Murder, making the case that Guess Who should be behind bars. Folks were lining up to praise him for it and get it signed (I never read it, by the way) and when I ran into him in the Author's Lounge on a break, we talked about how his J.F.K. book had not made quite the splash for which he'd hoped. "Almost no one wanted me to go on their TV or radio programs and discuss it," he said, "whereas I'm fighting off offers to go on and talk about this new one."
I suggested it was because (a) the murder of Kennedy was a long-ago matter and everyone who cares about it has made up their minds and (b) interviewers don't like having an author on unless they've read their book and none of them wanted to read a 1600+ page book. He told me I was right and I felt a flush of pride that he'd said that because I didn't think he thought anyone was ever right except Vincent Bugliosi.
A lot of people dismissed him as an arrogant bore, especially when they wished to not address his conclusions. It's a shame he gave them that "out" because his conclusions were usually very wise and pretty sound. Because of its sheer length and digressions, I cannot recommend Reclaiming History to you. You won't read it…though if you want to try, I'll suggest it's easier on Kindle or some other tablet-based format than it is on paper. If I can't dissuade you and you're truly interested in what he said about the Kennedy Assassination, he did an abridged version called Four Days in November that's a little under 700 pages. That's right: The cut-down version is 700 pages.
But I didn't write this to sell books for him. I just wanted to note that the world has lost a very intelligent man who was really good at getting to the truth. And don't even try disagreeing with me about this because I'm Mark Evanier and Mark Evanier never says anything unless he has absolute proof of it…
