Charles Mason Family Member Susan Adkins Dies

Mason Family Member Susan Adkins Dies at the age of 61, from brain cancer.

Susan Atkins, a follower of cult leader Charles Manson whose heartless and remorseless witness stand confession to killing pregnant actress Sharon Tate and her unborn child, in 1969. The trial shocked the world and made it an unforgivable act to many Americans.

Atkins’ death comes less than a month after her last parole board hearing. For the last time, her probation was turned down. It was Susan Adkins’ last chance at freedom on September 2nd, 2009. She was brought to the hearing on a gurney and slept through most of her trial accompanied with her husband/attorney, James Whitehouse.

Charles Mason Family Member Susan Adkins Dies in California Central Women’s Facility at Chowchilla, a facility for incarcerated convicts. A place where she lived the last 37 years of her life. Spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections, Terry Thornton, confirmed that Susan Atkins died late Thursday night, September 24th, 2009.

Back in 2008, Susan Adkins had been diagnosed with brain cancer and. At that  had a leg amputated. At that time, she was given only a few months to live. She lived exactly a year.

In her last months, she underwent brain surgery but was still paralyzed and had difficulty in speaking.

At her last parole hearing, she managed to speak briefly at the September 2nd, 2009, hearing. She with the help of her husband, recited a religious verse.

Sharon Tate, 26, was an actress who appeared in the movie “Valley of the Dolls” and was the wife of famed director Roman Polanski. She was just one of the seven murdered in two Los Angeles homes during the Manson cult’s bloody rampage, one fateful weekend in August of 1969.

Atkins is 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, still remain imprisoned under life sentences in California prisons.

Susan Adkins was California’s longest incarcerated woman in prison. No other woman had ever been in  been in prison longer than Susan Adkins.

Susan Atkins, Charles Mason 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. That law stayed in effect, in California.

During the sensational 10 month long trial, Susan Atkins, Charles Manson,  Krenwinkel and Van Houten maintained their innocence. But once they were convicted, the so-called “Manson Girls” confessed in horrific and very graphic details about their acts of slaughter.

The family tried to absolve Charles Manson, an ex-convict who made a “family” of dropouts and runaways on a ranch outside Los Angeles. He considered himself as their Messiah and led them in a lifestyle with drugs and communal sex.

One horrible night in August of 1969, Manson dispatched Atkins and others to a wealthy residential section of Los Angeles, telling them, to “do something witchy.”

Baby Boomers remember the trail well…They went to the home of Tate and her husband, director Roman Polanski. He was not home, but Tate, who was 8 1/2 months pregnant, and four others were and they were brutally killed.

The group left words like “Pigs” was scrawled on a door, written in blood from Sharon Tate.

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 their 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 (Sharon 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 stated that 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?”

An older gray haired Susan Atkins who appeared before a parole board in 2000, cut a far different figure than that of the cocky young defendant Susan Adkins some 30 years ago.

When Susan Adkins gained Christianity in her life…her out looked changed. She stated, “I don’t have to just make amends to the victims and families. I have to make amends to society. I sinned against God and everything this country stands for.”

The last words she spoke at the September 2009, hearing were to say in unison with her husband: “My God is an amazing God.”

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 Sharon Tate and her unborn child, 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.

Susan Atkins also was convicted with Charles Manson of another murder, that of musician Gary Hinman, in July of 1969.

Atkins married twice while in prison. Her first husband, Donald Lee Laisure, purported to be an eccentric Texas millionaire. They marriage ended quickly. James Whitehouse, her second husband, is a Harvard Law School graduate and also was one of her attorneys.

Mason Family Member Susan Adkins Dies in prison. She was one of the lucky ones, not to be stabbed to death, like those back in that fateful weekend in 1969 by the “Manson Family.”