Susan Atkins

• 1. Introduction

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  On the 24th of September 2009, Susan Atkins died at the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla. Her husband, James Whitehouse, told reporters that her last whispered word was "Amen." At that moment she was California's longest-serving female inmate, a distinction since passed by two fellow members of Charles Manson's Family, Leslie Van Houten and Patricia Krenwinkel.

  Inside the Family she went by Sadie, and sometimes Sexy Sadie. Manson's followers carried out nine murders at four California locations during five weeks of the summer of 1969. Atkins was convicted for her part in eight of them, including the Tate murders, the most notorious of the lot.

  This documentary follows her through three questions. How did a girl who sang in a church choir end up on that ranch? Which of her many accounts of one terrible night can be trusted? And when a prisoner is dying, does a sentence of life still mean life?

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• 2. A Choir Girl Adrift

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  Until she was 13, Susan Atkins lived in a middle-class home in the Cambrian Park area of San Jose, California. She was born on the 7th of May 1948 in San Gabriel, the second of three children. Those who knew her remembered a quiet, self-conscious girl who sang in her school's glee club and in the local church choir.

  Two weeks before her mother was hospitalized for the last time, Susan arranged for members of the church choir to sing Christmas carols under a bedroom window. Her mother, Jeanne, died of cancer in 1964. Atkins later said that both of her parents, Jeanne and Edward John Atkins, were alcoholics.

  After Jeanne's death, relatives were asked to help look after Susan and her two brothers. Over the next three years the family gradually broke apart, with frequent moves and Susan eventually leaving home to live on her own. Her father took her and her younger brother Steven to Los Banos, California. When he found work on the San Luis Dam construction project, he left the two children to fend for themselves.

  During her junior year, Susan took a job to support herself and Steven. She had been an average student at Leigh High School in San Jose. At Los Banos High School her grades slid, and she stayed with various relatives.

  In December 1966, Atkins asked two classmates to join her on a trip to San Francisco over the Christmas school break. By early 1967 she was working as a stripper in Los Angeles, where Anton LaVey hired her for a performance. Later that year she met Manson, who was playing guitar at a house where she lived with several friends.

  The police raided the house a few weeks afterward and left Atkins homeless. Manson invited her to join his group, which was setting out on a summer road trip in a converted school bus painted entirely black. He and a man who was making her a fake ID gave her the name Sadie Mae Glutz. She later claimed that she had believed Manson was Jesus.

  The growing Family settled at the Spahn Ranch in the San Fernando Valley. There, on the 7th of October 1968, Atkins gave birth to a son whose father was Bruce White. Manson called the boy Zezozose Zadfrack Glutz. Her parental rights were terminated after her murder convictions, and no one in her family would take responsibility for him. He was adopted, renamed, and never had contact with his mother again.

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• 3. Hinman and the Nights of August

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  By the summer of 1969, Manson's commune at Spahn's Ranch had drawn the attention of police, who suspected auto thefts and were wary of the many underage runaways living there. Manson wanted money to move the group to the desert, and he encouraged drug dealing. A botched drug scam by Family member Charles "Tex" Watson reportedly led Manson to confront and shoot a man named Bernard "Lotsapoppa" Crowe.

  Manson believed that he had killed Crowe, and that Crowe was a Black Panther. Neither belief was true. Even so, he feared retaliation from the Black Panthers and pushed his followers for more cash. Then someone suggested that Gary Hinman, a Family acquaintance, had just inherited a large sum. Manson hoped Hinman could be persuaded to join the commune and hand it over.

  On the 25th of July 1969, Manson sent Atkins, Bobby Beausoleil and Mary Brunner to Hinman's home. Hinman said he had inherited nothing, and Beausoleil beat him badly. When Hinman held to his story, Manson arrived in person and swung a sword at his head, slicing his face and cutting his ear. Manson told Atkins and Brunner to stay behind and tend the wounds.

  Two days later, after a phone call from Manson, Beausoleil made Hinman sign over his car registrations. Then he stabbed Hinman twice, fatally. A bloody hand print and the words "Political Piggy" were left on the wall, reportedly in the hope of pointing police toward the Black Panthers. Beausoleil was arrested on the 7th of August 1969, asleep in one of Hinman's vehicles. He still wore his bloodstained clothes, and the murder weapon was hidden in the trunk's tire well.

  On the evening of the 8th of August 1969, Manson gathered Atkins, Linda Kasabian and Patricia Krenwinkel in front of Spahn's Ranch. He told them to go with Watson and do as they were told. In her grand jury testimony, Atkins said that Watson told the group in the car they were headed to a house to get money from the people inside and to kill them. At that house, Atkins wrote "PIG" on the front door in Sharon Tate's blood.

  Two nights later, on the 10th of August 1969, a larger group drove to the home of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca. It included Manson, Atkins, Krenwinkel, Watson, Kasabian, Leslie Van Houten and Steve "Clem" Grogan. Manson and Watson went in and tied up the couple. Manson then returned to the car and sent Krenwinkel and Van Houten inside to do as Watson said.

  Prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi came to believe the murders had many different motives, all of which served Manson. Atkins offered a simpler one. She said she wanted to commit a crime that would shock the world.

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• 4. The Jailhouse Confession

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  On the 16th of August 1969, police raided Spahn's Ranch in connection with auto thefts. The charges were later dropped and everyone was released. Manson and his followers then moved to Barker Ranch, another isolated spot. Authorities raided that site in October 1969 and arrested the group on auto theft and arson charges, which proved to be the last taste of freedom for many of them.

  Just after that arrest, another member of the group implicated Atkins in the Hinman killing, and she was charged. In jail she befriended two middle-aged career criminals, Virginia Graham and Veronica "Ronnie" Howard. To them she confessed her part in the Tate and LaBianca murders. She said she had stabbed Tate and tasted her blood.

  Graham and Howard passed her statements to the authorities. Together with information from other sources, their reports led to the arrests of Atkins and the others involved: Van Houten, Krenwinkel, Kasabian and Watson.

  Roman Polanski had offered a $25,000 reward for solving the case, and Graham and Howard later received most of it. Their testimony was backed by extensive forensic evidence, by Kasabian's testimony, and by Atkins's own grand jury testimony. That grand jury testimony has been argued over ever since.

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• 5. Competing Accounts

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  Atkins agreed to testify for the prosecution on one condition. In return, the State of California would not seek the death penalty against her. She was asked whether she understood that she had no immunity and might incriminate herself. She answered, "I understand this, and my life doesn't mean that much to me." She added, "I just want to see what is taken care of."

  Her grand jury testimony was extremely lurid. She said she stabbed Frykowski in the legs and held Tate down while Watson stabbed her. She said Tate pleaded for her own life and that of her unborn child. Atkins told the jury she answered, "Woman, I have no mercy for you." She explained that she meant the words to reassure herself, not to address Tate. She also denied her earlier claim to Howard and Graham that she had tasted Tate's blood.

  Before the trial, Atkins repudiated that testimony in a written statement filed with the court and stopped cooperating. California then sought the death penalty against her. She later explained her reversal. She said Manson "sent his followers to suggest that it might be better for me and my son". The suggestion was that she not testify against him.

  Bugliosi described her grand jury testimony in his book Helter Skelter as "substantially truthful," with a few omissions about the second night. In a 1976 interview, by then a born-again Christian, Atkins gave a different version. She claimed she had stabbed no one during the Tate murders and that Watson alone killed Sharon Tate.

  Watson's 1978 memoir went further. He declared himself responsible for all of Tate's injuries. He dismissed Atkins's early confessions as exaggeration, jailhouse bragging and a bid for attention.

  Still, from the early 1970s onward Atkins told parole boards that her grand jury account was true. That account did not entirely match the forensic and autopsy reports.

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• 6. Trial and Sentence

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  On the 15th of June 1970, Manson, Krenwinkel, Van Houten and Atkins went on trial together. Watson was tried separately because he was in Texas fighting extradition. Kasabian, who had no direct involvement in the murders themselves, was offered legal immunity and accepted it.

  During the sentencing phase, Atkins testified that she had stabbed Tate. Her reason, she said, was that she was "sick of listening to her, pleading and begging, begging and pleading." Little credibility was given to her testimony because it so often contradicted known facts. She also claimed that Manson had told his followers to take the stand and say they acted entirely on their own, deliberately and without remorse.

  Throughout the trial, Atkins and her co-defendants tried to disrupt the proceedings. Observers noted their lack of remorse for the victims and their lack of concern for their own fate. They sang songs written by Manson as they were led to the courtroom. On the 29th of March 1971, all four defendants were sentenced to death.

  Atkins arrived on California's new women's death row on the 23rd of April 1971. After the Tate and LaBianca trial, she was convicted in the Hinman case and pleaded guilty. She testified that she had not known Hinman was to be robbed or killed.

  Her death sentence lasted barely a year. In 1972, the California Supreme Court decided People v. Anderson, which invalidated every death sentence imposed in the state before that year. Atkins's sentence was automatically commuted to life in prison.

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• 7. Life Behind Bars

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  In 1977, Atkins published an autobiography titled Child of Satan, Child of God. It recounted her time with Manson and the Family, her religious conversion and her experiences in prison. On the question of what she knew about Hinman, the book contradicted her earlier testimony that she had not known he would be robbed or killed.

  From 1974 onward, Atkins said she was a born-again Christian, after seeing a vision of Jesus Christ in her cell. She became active in prison programs and taught classes. She received two commendations for helping with emergency health interventions for other inmates, one of them a suicide attempt.

  On the 2nd of September 1981, she married Donald Lee Laisure, whom she had met by mail. He claimed to be a millionaire, which was untrue. Atkins was his 36th wife, and the two divorced after he sought to marry yet again.

  In 1987, she married James W. Whitehouse, a Harvard Law School graduate 15 years her junior. He represented her at her 2000 and 2005 parole hearings and kept a website devoted to her case.

  Her first parole consideration came on the 14th of September 1976, and she was denied. Her minimum eligible parole date was the 6th of October 1976. At the 2000 hearing, Debra Tate read a statement written by her father, Paul. He wrote of watching a young woman who "giggled, snickered and shouted out insults" in court. He asked, "If Susan Atkins is released to rejoin her family, where is the justice?"

  In April 2002, Atkins told a Los Angeles Times reporter that she worked to discourage teenagers from idolizing Manson. She hoped to live someday in Laguna Beach, California. In 2003, she filed a federal lawsuit calling herself a "political prisoner" because her parole requests were repeatedly denied regardless of her suitability.

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• 8. The Release Question

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  On the 1st of June 2005, Atkins faced her 17th parole hearing and received a three-year denial. She had been given less than six months to live, and she requested compassionate release. Her attorney, Eric P. Lampel, said she was paralyzed on one side, could talk only "a little bit" and could not sit up in bed without help. Debra Tate and members of the Sebring family attended and asked that parole be denied.

  In April 2008, it emerged that Atkins had been in the hospital for more than a month, and that her illness was terminal brain cancer. Her left leg had been amputated. Her medical care since she was hospitalized on the 18th of March 2008 had reportedly cost more than $1.15 million. Guarding her hospital room had added over $300,000.

  Bugliosi, who had prosecuted her, said he did not oppose her release given her condition. He argued she had paid "substantially, though not completely, for her horrendous crimes." Paying completely, he noted, would mean the death penalty. He supported release to save the state money.

  Stephen R. Kay, a former prosecutor of Manson supporters, opposed it as a matter of principle. He had attended about 60 parole hearings tied to the murders and had spent considerable time with the victims' families. Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley wrote that she had failed to show genuine remorse. Suzan Hubbard, director of adult prisons in California, recommended against release. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said, "I don't believe in compassionate release." Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas objected to paroling her into his county.

  On the 15th of July 2008, the Board of Parole Hearings took up her request during its monthly meeting. The hearing lasted 90 minutes, and each speaker was limited to five minutes. Atkins did not attend because of her failing health. Debra Tate, by then the only surviving immediate relative of Sharon Tate, said, "She will be set free when judged by God. It's important that she die in incarceration."

  Anthony DiMaria, nephew of victim Thomas Jay Sebring, reminded the board of "the nine people who lie in their graves." Gloria Goodwin Killian, director of the Action Committee for Women in Prison, spoke in support. She said, "Susan has been punished all that she can be." Whitehouse told the board, "I'm asking for this release." He added that doctors had given his wife about three months. She would in fact live more than a year longer.

  All 11 members of the board unanimously declined to refer the request to the sentencing court. That court, the Los Angeles Superior Court, would have had the final say. On the 24th of September 2008, Atkins was moved back to the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla, into its skilled nursing center. Before her last parole hearing, her husband's website claimed she was paralyzed over 85 percent of her body. On the 2nd of September 2009, she was denied parole for the final time.

  Nancy Wolfe played Atkins in the 1976 made-for-TV film Helter Skelter, and Marguerite Moreau took the role in its 2004 remake. Maureen Allisse played her in The Manson Family in 2003, and Anjelica Scannura in Manson, My Name Is Evil in 2009. Devanny Pinn portrayed her in House of Manson in 2014, and Ambyr Childers in the 2015 TV series Aquarius. Sarah Paulson played her in American Horror Story: Cult, with Kristine Hayworth in Prettyface and Marianne Rendon in Charlie Says. The most recent portrayal in the record is Mikey Madison's, in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

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