MINNEAPOLIS, Sept. 30 – It really annoyed him, Vincent Bugliosi said, to watch Tom Snyder’s June interview with Charles Manson, knowing all the while that the mass murderer might be cashing in on his coast-to-coast appearance on NBC.

The network has no comment on Bugliosi’s contention that a California newspaper reporter, who is collaborating with Manson on his memoirs, got $10,000 to set up the interview. Bugliosi, who prosecuted the Manson case and wrote about it in the best seller “Helter-Skelter,” said he figures Manson got a cut of the proceeds.

“I think it’s disgusting that a guy who may be responsible for 35 murders — who was convicted for nine — may be getting paid to talk about the murders he committed,” Bugliosi said.

It disgusts him that every year Manson, who is serving nine life sentences for the 1969 murders of several Hollywood celebrities, comes up for parole, and that his release even would be considered.

Bugliosi says he believes Manson and all mass murderers are touched with the mark of Cain, “that feeling inside you can’t do anything about.”

He says he doesn’t know just how to describe it, but Bugliosi says he is convinced that there is a germ that infects some souls and makes them killers forever.

“All murderers walk the earth/ Beneath the curse of Cain,” English poet Thomas Hood wrote, providing an epigraph for Bugliosi’s new book.

Bugliosi was in Minneapolis last week to talk about “Shadow of Cain,” a novel he and co-author Ken Hurwitz wrote about the theory.

Bugliosi says he believes it was because of the “mark of Cain” that Charles Starkweather murdered the parents and 2-year-old sister of his (Starkweather’s) girlfriend, Caril Ann Fugate, then took her on a cross-country trip in which he shot and stabbed seven more people.

He says he believes it was the “mark” that made Richard Speck stab and strangle eight nurses in Chicago on July 14, 1966 — just two weeks before another marked man, Charles Whitman, carried sandwiches, peanuts, toilet paper, pistols, ammunition and a transistor radio to the top of a 300-foot observation tower at the University of Texas and shot 46 people, killing 16.

Bugliosi believes David Berkowitz, New York City’s “Son of Sam” killer, was marked, as was John Wayne Gacy Jr. of suburban Chicago, who was convicted of 33 sex-related murders of young men and boys, and Dean “Candyman” Corll, who sodomized, tortured and murdered 27 boys he paid an accomplice $200 each to procure.

And, Bugilosi believes, Charles Manson and his cult also were cursed by the mark.

“There is a different thing they probably have deep down in the recesses of the gut or soul,” Bugliosi said. “Something that enabled them to do what they did, something that you and I are fortunate not to have.

“You may not be able to put a psychological label on it, but there is something there that enabled them to do something the rest of the society is incapable of doing.

“You may have 10 psychiatrists examine them and say they’re OK.” But, he says, the fact of what they did means they shouldn’t go free.

In Bugliosi’s new novel, the “Shadow of Cain” marks Raymond Lomak, who is driven to the edge by the thought of “all the parties he had never been invited to, the jokes he had overheard about his out-of-style saddle shoes, his January-sale khaki pants.” He guns down five of his wealthy classmates and one maid.

He’s caught, sent to prison, and released 21 years later as a born-again Christian who convinces a parole board he is rehabilitated.

“He goes back to LA,” Bugliosi said. “He can’t get a job, can’t find a place to rent, people shrink from him as though he were a leper. But he’s undaunted, determined to find a place in society and become a model citizen.”

But, Bugliosi said, “there is a chilling conflict between his new life as a born-again Christian and what might be an unchanging instinct for murder inside him that might not be eradicated.

Following his release, Lomak is blamed for two murders. Bugliosi won’t say how the story ends. Naturally, he’d prefer that people read the book.

“In a sense it’s a sequel to ‘Helter-Skelter,'” he said. “Thus far I don’t think there’s ever been a mass murderer set free on society.”

Starkweather was executed. Whitman shot by police, Corll killed by an accomplice, Speck, Gacy and the Manson gang imprisoned.

But Bugliosi is worried: “I think there’s going to be a day one of them gets out.

“Manson and Speck have parole hearings every year.

“Sirhan Sirhan [convicted killer of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy I now claims he’s been rehabilitated and should be set free. I guess what he did to Kennedy and the country is supposed to be forgotten. He may have altered the course of the country, yet he says, ‘I should be free.’ ”

The problem, Bugliosi said, is that people forget there are three reasons for sending people to prison: Retribution, deterrence and rehabilitation.

“So many people have the mistaken notion that once a criminal is rehabilitated he should be set free,” Bugliosi said.

He said watching Manson or, the Snyder show confirmed his belief that Manson is still marked.

“His eyes and gaze appeared weaker. He wasn’t quite as glib or quick-witted. He didn’t pontificate as much. But for the most part I thought it was vintage Manson. I saw no mellowing whatsoever.

“He was still disarming, intelligent — there’s no question about his intelligence …. He speaks in riddles but there’s normally a message.”

Thinking about Manson brings back memories, and Bugliosi looks as though he can’t quite believe the cult murders really happened.

“It’s the bizarreness. This little guy getting middle-class kids to kill. It wouldn’t even make good fiction, it’s so freaky.”

Bugliosi doesn’t think there’s much chance of Manson being released from his California prison. But he is worried about the future of Tex Watson, one of the Manson “puppets,” he says, when Manson was pulling strings.

“Tex Watson is a born-again now,” Bugliosi said. “I think he will be getting out, yes.”

By GEORGE JOHNSON