Ronald Markman (1) (1936–)

I read a lot of true crime, and have for years. It is not often any more that I come across one that truly impresses me. This one really did for the author's insight and open revelation of his struggle with the difficulties from a psychiatric system that does not communicate with a judicial system resulting in the dangerous out on the street, or the insane receiving incarceration instead of treatment. Not all the cases are famous, but they are all delivered with insight. Perhaps from taking show more efficient patient history notes, the author can in a compact few pages run down a perpetrator's entire life from childhood to criminal act. The connection to the Tate-LaBianca murders is what brought me to this book. I am surprise at his casual acceptance of fact that Manson was at the scene of the LaBianca murders and tied up the adult vicitims. He interviewed Leslie Van Houten (and, later Polanski). However, that was a fact as part of Manson's conviction:

“In Count VIII the defendants are Charged with conspiracy to commit murder in Violation of Sections 182.1 and 187, Penal Code of California, a felony, as follows:

That on or about the 8th through the 10th.day August, 1969, at and in the County of Los Angeles, State of California, Charles Manson, Charles Watson, Patricia Krenwinkel, Susan Atkins, Linda Kasabian, and Leslie Sankston (whose true name is. Leslie Van Houten), the said
defendants, did willfully, uawfully, feloniously and knowingly conspire, combine, confederate and agree together to commit the crime of murder, a violation of Section 187, Penal Code of California, a felony.

It is alleged that the following were overt acts which were committed in this state by one or more of the defendants for the purpose of furthering the object of the conspiracy:

...

OVERT ACT NO. IV
That on or about August 10, 1 969, the defendants, Charles Manson, Charles Watson, Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Sankston (whose true name is Leslie Van. Houten) did enter the residence at 3301 Waverly Drive, City and County of Los Angeles.”

Oh, the horror of some of the cases here - like the Vampire of Sacremento and the sexual sadist murderer duo Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris.

The book ends with the story of Marvin Gay, Sr. slaying Marvin Gaye. Fascinating as I didn't know Sr. suffered from a benign brain tumor during the killing.

While individual case interest brought me to this book, I was most affected by two ideas expressed by the author:

1) the "cold of passion": The idea that long term abuse (examples here are children, wives) can result in a planned, long-term killing that is not first-degree murder though it is premeditated and the actor knows right and wrong.

2) The author's experience and expertise support that no matter how repellant the acts describe herein, the potential lies within us all. show less

This book is remarkable in that Dr. Markham gave psychiatric evaluations to many very famous criminals, including two of the Manson family members. However, it's also quite dated. This book was published in 1989; the laws pertaining to criminals and the mentally ill have changed significantly since then. So I couldn't give it as many stars as I might have. But it was a good book.