I grabbed that new Mobile true crime book yesterday, and while the unsolved 1973 journalist murder has me hooked, I’m not buying the claim that Manson Family members are a key part of three centuries of the city’s underbelly. That’s a huge stretch. The Manson tie-in was a tiny, one-off footnote in local history, not some foundational piece of Mobile’s seedy past. It feels like they tossed it in just to catch eyes, not to tell a cohesive, honest story of the city’s hidden side.