Who is susan atkins

Melcher later claimed that he wouldn't deal with Manson after hearing he had shot a man. The estate would later be rented by director Roman Polanski and his wife, the beautiful, gentle, on-the-cusp of stardom movie actress Sharon Tate.

As a member of the Manson clan, Atkins known as Sadie would often come into conflict with Charlie, due to her constant demand for attention. More than once, she was blamed for spreading a dose of the clap among clan members, and reportedly, she was once banished from the fold. Atkins and some other clan members lived in the idyllic artists community of Mendocino in northern California for a while, but they were busted after distributing LSD to local kids.

The Manson-affiliated group was dubbed "The Witches of Mendocino" when they went on trial. In October , Susan Atkins gave birth to a boy either she or Manson who was not the father tagged with the strange name "Zezozose Zadfrack Glutz". She took refuge after the birth at the a religious retreat called Fountain of the World.

In less than a year, Zezozose's mother would play a part in one of the most infamous murder sprees in American criminal history. The first murder in which Susan Atkins had a hand in was that of music teacher Gary Hinman, whom Bobby Beausoleil , a talented young musician, had lived with before throwing in his lot with the Manson clan. The bikers claimed the LSD was of poor quality and wanted their jack back. Explaining their plight with the bikers, Hinman refused to refund the cash, claiming the LSD he had sold them was potent.

Manson then allegedly sliced off Hinman's ear with a sword before exiting the house. The remaining crew then reportedly held Hinman hostage for three days. Hinman refused to come up with the cash, and on the third day, either Atkins or Beausoleil stabbed him. In turn, he was suffocated by all three of his captors. Atkins provided a theatrical flourish before taking her leave, writing "Political Piggy" in Hinman's blood on the wall.

Another story recounted at the time of the Manson-Atkins trial was that the Hinman killing had been the result of a busted drug deal. Watson had allegedly dealt with Lotsa Poppa before, so there was little suspicion when he went into the bathroom with the drugs and the cash, supposedly to relieve himself.

What Tex actually did was defenestrate Lotsa Poppa's place with the drugs and Manson's cash, and then failed to inform Charlie of his peccadillo.

Lotsa Poppa put the word out on the street that he was going to have both Watson and Manson killed, as he believed Manson was behind the rip-off. When Manson heard the news, as the alternative story goes, he panicked.

What Manson didn't know was that Lotsa Poppa was just a low-level functionary and a blowhard, and was just sounding off, having never resorted to violence before. Drugs fuel paranoia, and Manson believed Lotsa Poppa was connected with the Black Panthers, who allegedly controlled a good deal of the L.

Manson attempted a sit down to smooth things out with Lotsa Poppa in Hollywood, at an apartment one of Tex Watson's doxies lived in across from the Magic Castle. Apparently, Lotsa Poppa's bluff blew Charie's mind right out of the box and he drew a. Manson believed he had killed Lotsa Poppa, whose lotsa fat and the small caliber of the bullet saved his life. Drug dealers are not ones to go to the police, and Lotsa Poppa really was't connected, so he just let things chill as he recovered.

Bugliosi used the incident during the trial to show that Charlie was capable of murder. Manson did not know this. He did know he needed to get out of the Spahn Ranch, where he was known, and fast. The clan had been supplementing their income stealing cars and stealing, and their position was increasingly precarious. Drugs were being dealt at the Spahn Ranch, outlaw bikers were around, and it seemed to Manson that he would soon be slammed back in stir. Manson needed some fast money to finance the move to Death Valley, and Hinman was the likely candidate to become his banker.

In this story, Hinman was held for three days and mercilessly beaten -- even had his ear sliced off by Manson -- to get information on where he had hidden his stash of cash, which they all -- including his ex-roommate, who knew him well -- assumed was a great deal of money, not just the grand from the disgruntled bikers. In the mythology that was Bugliosi's "Helter Skelter", perhaps one should note that the other outlaw bike gang that were rivals to Marlon Brando's gang in "The Wild One" were named "The Beetles" and likely were an inspiration for the Liverpool band's name; Brando as "The Wild One" appears in biker drag on the cover of "Sgt.

Hinman threatened to go to the police after his ordeal, and Beausoleil called Manson and was told, in cryptic terms, to kill Hinman. Thus, Charlie was guilty of murder. Whether it was the result of a broken drug deal or the bikers' demand for a refund, the fact was that Gary Hinman was murdered. Beausoleil, the former roommate of the slain Hinman, would naturally have been a prime suspect in his slaying, He eventually was arrested in northern California driving Hinman's car and using his credit cards, both of which Bobby claimed that Hinman had freely given him.

It seemed like an open and shut case, but for the revelation of who had been in on it with Beausoleil. With his confederate arrested for the murder, it might have seemed to Manson that his time as a free man would be up shortly unless something could be done.

Some observers claim the subsequent murders that took seven lives on the nights of August 9 and 10, were engineered copy-cat murders to make it appear that Beausoleil was innocent of the Hinman murder, that Hinman had been murdered by some psychopath still on the loose.

While much remains unknown or unknowable about Charles Manson and the group around him, what is known is that on the night of August 9, either acting under Manson's orders or not, Atkins and fellow Manson clanistas Tex Watson, Patricia Krenwinkel and Linda Kasabian drove to Cielo Drive with the intent of committing mayhem, most likely murder.

Some believe that Manson's motive was to scare Terry Melcher , to send him a message, although Manson's connection with his musical sponsor -- Dennis Wilson , who later claimed he had inadvertently helped create Manson's "Family" -- was over, so a message to Melcher would have gotten him nowhere fast. What is known from almost two decades worth of psychiatric evaluations of Manson before the Tate-LaBianca killings was that Manson was a person constantly in need of attention.

What soon transpired would make him one of the most famous -- and infamous -- people in the world. Actress Sharon Tate , the wife of Roman Polanski who was at the early stages of a promising movie career, and three of her friends were staying at the house.

It is unarguable Manson knew the layout of the estate, but whether that effected the murder crew's ability to commit the crime can be put up to question. The fact Tex Watson had also frequently been at the estate as a guest of Dean Moorehouse, father of Manson clan member Ruth Ann Moorehouse, was not introduced into evidence at the trial.

Dean Moorehouse, a familiar of Manson -- Charlie has almost been jailed in for his relationship with Moorehouse's daughter -- had lived at Cielo Drive after Terry Melcher moved out and before the Polanskis moved in. Moorehouse had been visited by Watson at least three and perhaps as many as six times. Bugliosi did not want the jury to know of Watson's intimate knowledge of the estate and the house where the slayings took place as he wanted to emphasize Manson's link to the house instead of Watson's.

This was perhaps why Watson was tried separately, to help ensure Manson's conviction by portraying him as a Dr. Mabuse-style criminal mastermind. What was most relevant about the estate is that it was remote, and there were no neighbors within distance who could be expected to hear what was about to take place. While Linda Kasabian stood guard, Atkins, Krenwinkel and Watson entered the estate after cutting the telephone wires.

The first victim that night was year old Stephen Parent, whom Watson shot with the same. According to the purveyors of the Lotsa Poppa scenario, Watson was chosen to commit the bloody deed to serve penance for getting Manson into so much trouble in the first place.

Parent had been in the process of leaving the property after visiting the caregiver who lived in a separate cottage in another part of the estate , who was a friend. According to Atkins, Kasabian was horrified by the Parent shooting.

Atkins, Watson and Krenwinkle then entered the Polanski-Tate home and committed one of the most cold-blooded murders to disgrace the annals of crime, calling into effect the very nature of the human soul. What boggles the mind is the sheer evil of the event, the intensity of the killers as they lay waste to an innocent, heavily pregnant young woman and her three friends. When it was over, the word "Pig" was written in Tate's blood on the front door of the house now demolished as it had the attractive power of Lourdes for the ghoulish and neo-Manson freaks , another theatrical flourish from Atkins.

The next evening, Watson, Krenwinkle, former high school home-coming queen Leslie Van Houten and allegedly Manson himself broke into the home of wholesale grocer Leno LaBianca and his wife Rosemary and committed another irrational, heinous murder.

That night, Atkins was with Kasabian and clan member Steve Grogan who had sung on a recording of Manson songs made at the Spahn Ranch with mobile recording equipment supplied by Dennis Wilson , who were trolling around L. The trio picked up Manson, having left the LaBianca home before the killing started, who had them drive him to the beach for a stroll. While at the beach, Manson asked Kasabian about Saladin Nader , a Lebanese actor who had portrayed the rival of the poet Kahlil Gibran a turn of the 19thth century Aran poet whose collection "The Prophet" made him an icon of the s , who lived nearby.

A hitchhiking Kasabian had been picked up by Nader, and they had begun an affair. According to Kasabian, who was the state's star witness at the Tate-LaBianca trial, Manson's blood-lust had remained unsated, and he ordered the group to do in Nader. According to Kasabian's subsequent trial testimony having not committed any of the murders, she was granted immunity in exchange for her testifying against the others , she deliberately knocked on a wrong door in the apartment building in which Nader lived, thus sparing his life.

Bugliosi used this event to exonerate her in the eyes of the jury, although some believe that she simply didn't remember where his apartment was located, which seems unlikely but was not impossible. While Kasabian was knocking on the wrong door as Atkins and Grogan waited around a corner, ready to spring on Nader and kill him for what purpose has never been established other than an insane desire for murder , the other members of the Manson clan were finishing up their orgy of murder at the LaBianca home, using the couple's blood to write words on the walls of their home.

Leon LaBianca had a knife stuck in his throat and a carving fork stuck in his stomach, allegedly a reference to The Beatles song "Piggies", George Harrison 's bad karma inducing indictment of materialism.

The reference is given credence by the word "Piggies" written in blood at the LaBianca home. Los Angeles assistant district attorney Vincent Bugliosi , in presenting his case to convict Charles Manson of multiple murder, faced the fact that Manson had actually killed no one, a precondition that might encourage one or more jury members to feel lenient towards him. This was also the period of the high tide of the liberal Warren Court, when right-wingers drove around in cars festooned with "IMPEACH EARL WARREN" bumper-stickers; that is, the age of the technicality, when trials had grown longer and convictions more precarious as increasingly liberal federal courts, including the Supreme Court, expanded the rights of those on trial and overturned many convictions on technicalities.

The days of the expedient capital trial were over. Prosecutors had to be extra-careful. As part of his strategy to convict Manson, whom he believed was evil, Bugliosi claimed that Manson was a cult-leader with a bizarre philosophy dubbed "Helter Skelter" after a Beatles song from the same "White Album" on which "Piggies" appeared.

In Bugliosi's scenario, Manson allegedly prophesied a coming race war a prophecy not out of tune with the times in a country that had seen multiple race riots starting with the Watts rebellion of , a time that included such notorious conflagrations as the riots in Newark, New Jersey and Detroit, Michigan; a riot had even hit Washington, D.

Manson's "prophecy" was that blacks would eventually triumph against the white race and wipe them out, but unable to rule due to innate inferiority Manson, according to Bugliosi, was a hardcore racist, likely because his own barely known father had been part black; the allegation about his father, a "Colonel Scott", being biracial was never proven and likely is false but was part of Bugliosi's buildup of Manson as a proto-Hitler, creating a psychology -- and thus a motive for Manson's ordering the killings by his "acolytes" that they and Manson were on trial for -- that would explain him; some had alleged that Hitler's fanatic antisemitism was the result of one of his grandparents being Jewish.

Manson and the Family would then have dominion over the world, with Charlie -- as the risen Jesus Christ -- ruling as one of five co-prophets, the other four prophets being The Beatles! In the early s, after the time of psychedelia and the youth revolution and the breakup of The Beatles and John Lennon's unsettling flirtation with radical politics, this seemed more plausible to a jury than it might now.

The idea of Ringo Starr as a prophet ruling the world is frankly absurd, but The Beatles were the avatars of the Youth Generation, and had been touted as prophets fit to rule a new world populated by the Children of the Age of Acquarius by LSD champion Dr. Timothy Leary. John Lennon would boast in that LSD and The Beatles popularization of the psychedelic drug had undermined the Establishment and freed a generation, little appreciating the toll psychedelics had taken on many, including former straight-A student Tex Watson and an acid-addled Baby Boomer, David Chapman, who would soon kill him.

The problem with the "Helter Skelter" theory was that Charles Manson was no Baby Boomer, but a hardened ex-convict in his mids who had lived a harsh, brutal life since he was an illegitimate child sold for a pitcher of beer by his teenage mother. He was not some flower-power hippie with stars in his eyes, and his music was not influenced by or evocative of The Beatles, but had a more country flavor.

One thing frequently overlooked is if Manson had believed this story, and with the amount of drugs consumed in those times and the weird life being lived in the desert, one can speculate that some of this fantasy might have had some resonance in his psyche, something thrown up from the unconscious that he may have used as a story-teller to bind people to him -- something from his psyche that he may have believed in kind an imminent race war; the failure of Western civilization in the near future; sitting out Armageddon in the desert; returning once "society" was over and he -- an outcast - could be appreciated by a race of outcasts, the people of color who inherited a world destroyed by the white race -- these were apocalyptic times lived in the shadow of The Bomb and nuclear annihilation but not in degree.

If Manson was speaking in anything but metaphor, then he was beyond psychosis and was insane, and couldn't be responsible for his actions. This was the course that Bugliosi was navigating, the Scylla and Charybdis of trying to convict Charles Manson : that he was likely insane and could be perceived as such by a jury.

So: How to convict him? Sadie Mae Glutz gave Bugliosi the smoking gun. In October , the Barker Ranch in Death Valley that Manson and the clan had moved to was raided after Charlie -- a fervent environmentalist to this day -- burned a Forest Service tractor.

Members of the Manson clan were arrested for arson Charlie was not there at the time. Clan member Kathryn Lutesinger implicated Atkins in the Hinman murder while they were both incarcerated, and Atkins was transferred to another prison, ostensibly due to the new charges, though there is a possibility that she was being set up for a "jailhouse confession".

For it was in her new surroundings that she began bragging to her cellmates about her and the Manson clan's involvement in the Tate massacre, which was the talk of the country in late Sadie, that is Susan Atkins, supposedly loved to talk, and talk she did, according to her cellmates. She talked to them about the Sharon Tate murders, claiming that it was she who had done it along with the gang congregated around Manson. She told her cell mates about Manson's "Helter Skelter" philosophy, that Manson had decided to get the race war underway by murdering prominent Caucasians and blaming it on Afro-Americans, such as the Black Panthers, who would then feel the retaliation of the white race.

That the Black Panthers were being systematically destroyed by the FBI's Cointelpro program, which likely included assassination, is besides the point.

Thus, would the rough beast of the racial Apocalypse be unleashed. Then again, it could have been something cooked up by prosecutors who coached her with the story as she was, at one point, interested in saving her own hide, put in jeopardy by the Hinman murder.

Ironically, one of Atkins two cellmates who heard her jailhouse confession had been an acquaintance of Jay Sebring -- one of the victims at the Polanski-Tate residence - and had actually been to Cielo Drive properly pronounced "cello", the Italian word that means "Heaven" was given to the stringed instrument as it was the sound of heaven , the site of the Tate massacre, and quizzed her about the property to see if she was telling the truth -- whether she had actually been there -- or was just repeating what she had read in the newspapers.

The cellmate realized she was telling the truth, and attempted to inform the L. It is quite probable that Charles Manson was concerned with a coming racial Armageddon that did seem imminent in the late s after years of inner-city riots riots recently matched by those of middle-class university students protesting the Vietnam War and the strictures of the Estabishment and that he did want to move himself and his friends as far away from the failing civilization as possible as a survival mechanism.

In this, he is kin to the "Survivalists" of the s and s and our own times who have retreated to rural areas in the Pacific Northwest to avoid the consequences of an anticipated societal meltdown, many of whom are white supremacists fearful of a black planet.

Manson and three others involved in the murders — Patricia Krenwinkel, Leslie Van Houten and Charles "Tex" Watson — remain imprisoned under life sentences. Thornton said that at the time of Atkins death she had been in prison longer than any woman currently incarcerated in California. 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's younger sister, told the parole commissioners Sept. 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.

Supreme Court in the s. During the sensational 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.

One night in August , 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. The next night, a wealthy grocer and his wife were found stabbed to death in their home across town. She said she felt "no guilt for what I've done. It was right then and I still believe it was right.

The matronly, gray-haired Atkins who appeared before a parole board in cut a far different figure than that of the cocky young defendant some 30 years earlier. I sinned against God and everything this country stands for. 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. Her mother was stricken with cancer and died when she was 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.