Everybody remembers that famed Manson Family prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi , who passed away this week at the age of 80 , drop a line Helter Skelter . But Bugliosi was a fecund author whose other volumes are well worth pluck up — especially true - crime slaying mysteryAnd the Sea Will Tell .
Bugliosi ’s affaire in the slip come after he left the Los Angeles District Attorney ’s office . Though he ’d forever be eff as the valet who convict Charles Manson , in secret pattern , he proved evenly adept at defense . His most far-famed post - Manson character gained even more ill fame because of the book of account he indite about it , a effective - seller which was later on made intoa TV movie — but also because of its strikingly strange and spectacular circumstances .
First of all , the setting : isolated Northern Pacific atoll Palmyra , located South of Hawaii and loosely governed by the United States . The law-breaking : the theft of the racing yacht Sea Wind , and the suspected slaying of its moneyed , San Diego - based owners , Muff and Malcolm Graham . The suspects : a dire couple who go after what they want by any means necessary . The takeaway : that even in paradise , evil lurks .
Bugliosi defended one - half of the couple accused of murder Muff Graham , whose skeletal clay were find in 1981 , six years after she and Malcolm vanished . ( His body has never been found . ) The accuse wereex - conDuane “ Buck ” Walker and his girlfriend , Stephanie Stearns , who ’d sailed to Palmyra at the same time as the Grahams with inadequate supply and a falling - apart foxiness … and read back up in Hawaii in command of the Grahams ’ sleek Sea Wind . Their explanation of why it was they , and not the Grahams , aboard the racing yacht was both far - fetched and flimsy ( involving capsized dinghy , shark - overrun waters , and the impression that they were planning to devolve the gravy boat to the Graham menage ) , and they were convict of thievery .
Murder charges would not come until 1985 . Walker , back in hold after managing toescape jailwhile doing his stretch for theft , was find shamed ( he wasparoled in 2007 before die of cancer ) , while Stearns , with Bugliosi heading up her defense , wasacquitted .
Top image : Muff and Malcolm Graham in an dateless photograph . Credit : AP Photo / Federal Bureau of Investigation
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