Los Angeles • Stephen Kay was a fresh-faced prosecutor just 27 years old and three years out of law school when circumstances handed him the Charles Manson “family” murder case.
Over the next half-century, it would come to define his career and lead to death threats that to this day he worries a Manson sycophant might try to carry out.
"I don't dwell on it, but I'm careful. I always look around to see if I'm being followed or anything," the retired prosecutor said recently as he paused to discuss the case that punctured the peace, love and happiness movement that flowered in the late 1960s.