[Deathwatch] Susan Atkins, Manson "family" member, 61

[Deathwatch Central]

Sat, Sep. 26, 2009

Manson follower Susan Atkins dies
By LINDA DEUTSCH

Susan Atkins, a member of the Charles Manson "family" who admitted
ruthlessly stabbing pregnant actress Sharon Tate to death in the cult's
1969 murder spree, has died in prison less than a month after a parole
board turned down a bid for compassionate release. She was 61 and had
brain cancer.

Atkins, who eventually came to call the crimes a sin, died late
Thursday, according to the California Department of Corrections.

Corrections spokeswoman Terry Thornton said that at the time of Atkins'
death she had been in prison longer than any woman currently
incarcerated in California.

Atkins' final chance at freedom was denied on Sept. 2. Terminally ill,
she was brought to a parole board hearing on a gurney and slept through
most of it, but managed to recite religious verse with the help of her
husband, attorney James Whitehouse.

Atkins was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2008, had a leg amputated and
was given only a few months to live. She underwent brain surgery, and
in her last months was paralyzed and had difficulty speaking.

She had been transferred to a skilled nursing facility at the
California Central Women's Facility at Chowchilla exactly one year
before she died.

Tate, the 26-year-old actress who appeared in the movie "Valley of the
Dolls" and was the wife of famed director Roman Polanski, was one of
seven people murdered in two Los Angeles homes during the Manson cult's
bloody rampage in August 1969.

Atkins was the first of the convicted killers to die. Manson and three
others involved in the murders - Patricia Krenwinkel, Leslie Van Houten
and Charles "Tex" Watson - remain imprisoned under life sentences.

Atkins, who confessed from the witness stand during her trial, had
apologized for her acts numerous times over the years. But 40 years
after the murders, she learned that few had forgotten or forgiven what
she and other members of the cult had done.

Debra Tate, the slain actress' younger sister, told the parole
commissioners Sept. 2 that she "will pray for (Atkins') soul when she
draws her last breath, but until then I think she should remain in this
controlled situation." Debra Tate noted that she would have a
40-year-old nephew if her sister had lived.

Atkins' prosecutor, Vincent Bugliosi, had spoken out earlier in favor
of release, saying the mercy requested was "minuscule" because Atkins
was on her deathbed.

Atkins and her co-defendants were originally sentenced to death but
their sentences were reduced to life in prison when capital punishment
was briefly outlawed by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1970s.

During the sensational 10-month trial, Atkins, Manson and co-defendants
Krenwinkel and Van Houten maintained their innocence. But once they
were convicted, the so-called "Manson girls" confessed in graphic
detail.

They tried to absolve Manson, the ex-convict who had gathered a
"family" of dropouts and runaways to a ranch outside Los Angeles, where
he cast himself as the Messiah and led them in an aberrant lifestyle
fueled by drugs and communal sex.

Watson had a separate trial and was convicted.

One night in August 1969, Manson dispatched Atkins and others to a
wealthy residential section of Los Angeles, telling them, as they
recalled, to "do something witchy."

They went to the home of Tate and her husband. He was not home, but
Tate, who was 8 1/2 months pregnant, and four others were killed.
"Pigs" was scrawled on a door in blood.

The next night, a wealthy grocer and his wife were found stabbed to
death in their home across town. "Helter Skelter" was written in blood
on the refrigerator.

"I was stoned, man, stoned on acid," Atkins testified during the
trial's penalty phase.

"I don't know how many times I stabbed (Tate) and I don't know why I
stabbed her," she said. "She kept begging and pleading and begging and
pleading and I got sick of listening to it, so I stabbed her."

She said she felt "no guilt for what I've done. It was right then and I
still believe it was right." Asked how it could be right to kill, she
replied in a dreamy voice, "How can it not be right when it's done with
love?"

The matronly, gray-haired Atkins who appeared before a parole board in
2000 cut a far different figure than that of the cocky young defendant
some 30 years earlier.

"I don't have to just make amends to the victims and families," she
said softly. "I have to make amends to society. I sinned against God
and everything this country stands for." She said she had found
redemption in Christianity.

The last words she spoke in public at the September hearing were to say
in unison with her husband: "My God is an amazing God."

She spent 37 years in the California Institution for Women at Frontera.
When she fell ill, she was moved to a medical unit at the Central
California Women's Facility in Chowchilla. She died there.

Susan Denise Atkins was born May 7, 1948, in the Los Angeles suburb of
San Gabriel. Her mother was stricken with cancer and died when she was
15. Her father, reportedly an alcoholic, sent her and her brother to
live with relatives.

While still in her teens, she ran away to San Francisco where she wound
up dancing in a topless bar and using drugs. She moved into a commune
in the Haight Ashbury district and it was there that she met Manson.

He gave her a cult name, Sadie Mae Glutz, and, when she became pregnant
by a "family" member, he helped deliver the baby boy, naming it
Zezozoze Zadfrack. His whereabouts are unknown.

The Manson slayings remained unsolved for three months, until Atkins
confessed to a cellmate following her arrest on an unrelated charge.
Police found Manson and other cult members living in a ranch commune in
Death Valley, outside Los Angeles.

Besides Tate, their other victims were celebrity hairdresser Jay
Sebring, coffee heiress Abigail Folger, filmmaker Voityck Frykowski and
Steven Parent, a friend of Tate's caretaker; and grocery owners Leno
and Rosemary LaBianca. Atkins also was convicted with Manson of still
another murder, of musician Gary Hinman, in July 1969.

Atkins married twice while in prison. Her first husband, Donald Lee
Laisure, purported to be an eccentric Texas millionaire. They quickly
divorced. Whitehouse, her second husband, is a Harvard Law School
graduate and had recently served as one of her attorneys.

Many thanks to Deathwatch Central for posting this obituary