Susan Atkins

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Susan Atkins 2001

Susan Denise Atkins-Whitehouse alias "Sadie Mae Glutz" (born May 7, 1948 in San Gabriel , California ; † September 24, 2009 in Chowchilla , California) was a member of the Manson Family , which formed in the summer of 1969 over a period of five weeks committed nine murders. Atkins was sentenced to death by gas for involvement in eight murders. After the death penalty was abolished in California in 1972 , the sentence was changed to " life ". Requests for parole and clemency were rejected a total of 19 times.

Life

Childhood and youth

Susan Denise Atkins was born on May 7, 1948 in San Gabriel, California. Her father Edward Atkins was a construction worker; her mother, Jeanette Atkins, did odd jobs. According to Atkins, her parents were alcoholics . She had an older and a younger brother. She grew up in Millbrae , California, until she was five , after which the family moved to San José . In January 1964, her mother died of cancer. To be able to pay his wife's hospital bills, Edward Atkins sold the family home. Susan Atkins and her younger brother moved to live with their grandparents in Los Banos , where she attended high school . In the 11th grade she dropped out of school.

In Oregon , she was hitchhiking in a stolen car, whereupon she was arrested for car theft and given a suspended sentence. She moved to San Francisco where she worked as a "topless" dancer in a bar; She also sold drugs and took part in stage productions (Witches Sabbath) by the satanist Anton Szandor LaVey .

Manson Family

In 1967 Atkins met the then 32-year-old convicted musician Charles Manson at a party in their shared apartment on Lyon Street in Haight-Ashbury . About a week later, she joined Manson, Mary Brunner , Lynette Fromme , Patricia Krenwinkel , Ella Jo Bailey, and three or four unfamiliar men, and spent the next year and a half touring with them in an old school bus through several states in the western and southwestern United States .

In the Manson group she called herself "Sadie Mae Glutz". The group experimented with LSD and other drugs. Atkins later said, "Charles Manson was Jesus and Satan rolled into one for me at that time." Manson's rapidly growing group referred to as Family ("Family"). Atkins lived with a group of Family members for a while in Mendocino , California. There she allegedly distributed LSD to children with other family members. When they were later arrested and sentenced, they were nicknamed Witches of Mendocino ("Witches of Mendocino").

The Manson family moved into a ranch near San Fernando , California in the late 1960s . Here Atkins gave birth to a son. According to her information, Manson should not have been the father. The boy was named Ze Zo Ze Cee Zadfrack. The name was later changed to "Paul".

In July 1969, she was involved with Mary Brunner and with intermittent participation of Manson and Bruce Davis in the murder of Gary Hinman by Bobby Beausoleil . On the night of August 8th to 9th, 1969, Atkins broke into the property of Rudi Altobelli on Cielo Drive in Beverly Hills along with three other Manson supporters, Charles Watson , Patricia Krenwinkel and Linda Kasabian . Terry Melcher previously lived in the house, but has since been rented to the young married couple Sharon Tate and Roman Polański . Heavily pregnant Sharon Tate was at home with her friends Jay Sebring , Abigail Folger and Wojciech Frykowski when the family members armed with knives and a revolver wreaked havoc among those present. Steven Parent , who happened to be on the property, was also murdered. The actual course of events cannot be precisely reconstructed, but it is evidence of a high degree of brutality. The next evening, the Manson Family committed two more high society murders in Los Angeles, in which Atkins was not involved.

Susan Atkins was arrested by accident in November 1969, along with other members of the Manson Family , for car theft and arson, and then bragged in front of several other inmates about the murders of Tate and her acquaintances.

At the trial, she described in detail how she had tortured, pleading for mercy, Sharon Tate and butchered it with countless knife wounds. Atkins was sentenced to death in the gas chamber on March 29, 1971 , but was pardoned to life imprisonment by an ongoing change in law (the death penalty was not reinstated in California until 1978).

Move away from the Manson Family

In the first years of her imprisonment she was still loyal to Charles Manson and his ideas, but later distanced herself from the family and turned to Christian beliefs. In 1980 she married the alleged Texas multimillionaire Donald Lee Laisure in prison . It turned out, however, that he was a marriage swindler and had already been through 35 marriages. Atkins later married Harvard graduate James Whitehouse, who had campaigned for her pardon since 2000 and filed numerous petitions on her behalf . In 2003, she described herself as a political prisoner and unsuccessfully sued California Governor Gray Davis for rejecting almost all requests for clemency from murderers. Atkins' pardon was denied for the eleventh time in June 2005. The last hearing was in 2009 and a dismissal was again refused. The next hearing for a pardon was scheduled for 2012 but was canceled due to Atkins death.

Imprisoned in California's Corona Women's Coronation Center until her death, Susan Atkins was the longest serving prison inmate in the United States. She died of a brain tumor on the evening of September 24, 2009 at the Chowchilla inmate hospital .

In the movie

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Aging Manson "Family" members long for freedom on edition.cnn.com (English)
  2. ↑ a b c d Elaine Woo: Susan Atkins dies at 61; imprisoned Charles Manson follower. In: Los Angeles Times . March 26, 2013, accessed September 8, 2019.
  3. ↑ Susan Atkins, Manson Follower, Dies at 61 on nytimes.com (English)
  4. ↑ Vincent Bugliosi, Curt Gentry: Helter Skelter. 2017, p. 259 ff.
  5. ↑ Susan Atkins, Bob Slosser: Child of Satan, child of God. Logos International, 1977, ISBN 0-88270-229-7 , p. 110.
  6. ↑ Bugliosi, Vincent; Gentry, Curt (1974). Helter Skelter. Arrow Books Limited. ISBN 0-09-997500-9 , p. 473
  7. ↑ Susan Atkins on crime.aubout.com (English)
  8. ↑ Elvis of the mass murder - Telepolis article 6/2007 on heise.de
personal data
SURNAME Atkins, Susan
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Atkins, Susan Sadie; Atkins, Sadie; Glutz, Sadie Mae; Atkins-Whitehouse, Susan Denise
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American murderess
DATE OF BIRTH May 7, 1948
PLACE OF BIRTH San Gabriel , California , United States
DATE OF DEATH September 24, 2009
Place of death Chowchilla , California , United States