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. She moved into a commune in the Haight Ashbury district and it was there that she met Manson. While still in her teens, she ran away to San Francisco where she wound up dancing in a topless bar and using drugs. Her father, reportedly an alcoholic, sent her and her brother to live with relatives. Her mother was stricken with cancer and died when she was 15.
Susan Denise Atkins was born May 7, 1948, in the Los Angeles suburb of San Gabriel. When she fell ill, she was moved to a medical unit at the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla. She spent 37 years in the California Institution for Women at Frontera. 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." I sinned against God and everything this country stands for." She said she had found redemption in Christianity. "I don't have to just make amends to the victims and families," she said softly.
The matronly, grey-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. 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?" She said she felt "no guilt for what I've done. "She kept begging and pleading and begging and pleading and I got sick of listening to it, so I stabbed her." "I don't know how many times I stabbed (Tate) and I don't know why I stabbed her," she said. "I was stoned, man, stoned on acid," Atkins testified during the trial's penalty phase. "Helter Skelter" was written in blood on the refrigerator. The next night, a wealthy grocer and his wife were found stabbed to death in their home across town.
He was not home, but Tate, who was 8 months pregnant, and four others were killed. They went to the home of Tate and her husband. 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. But once they were convicted, the so-called "Manson girls" confessed in graphic detail. Supreme Court in the 1970s.ĭuring the sensational 10-month trial, Atkins, Manson and co-defendants Krenwinkel and Van Houten maintained their innocence. 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.Ītkins' prosecutor, Vincent Bugliosi, had spoken out earlier in favour of release, saying the mercy requested was "minuscule" because Atkins was on her deathbed.Ītkins 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. Debra Tate, the slain actress's younger sister, told the parole commissioners Sept.