Manson Murderess Susan Atkins Denied Compassionate Release by California Board of Parole

Convicted murderess Susan Atkins was denied a compassionate release by the California Board of Parole. The 12-member Parole Board officially heard Atkins' request on July 15, 2008, and after deliberating for several hours, announced that she had been turned down. Compassionate releases are granted infrequently to terminally ill inmates with less than six months to live.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Colley both opposed the release of Atkins. Speaking of the Manson massacres perpetrated by Susan Atkins and other members of the Manson "Family" allegedly under the control of Charles Manson, Schwarzenegger said on the day of the hearing, "Those kind of crimes are just so unbelievable that I'm not for that compassionate release in that case."

Schwarzenegger met Susan Atkins in visits to the California Institute for Women in Corona, California, where she was incarcerated in before her terminal illness.

L.A. County D.A. Cooley stated that Atkins' "horrific crimes alone warrant a denial of her request."

Susan Atkins was convicted along with Charles Manson, Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten in the August 1969 murders of movie star Sharon Tate and six others. She is bedridden in a hospital near the prison she has been incarcerated for most of the last 37 years. Atkins, who had her left leg amputated earlier this year, is paralyzed in her other leg and on her right side. She likely will die within the next 90 days. She is the longest-serving woman in the California prison system.

Although the state of California has not commented on her illness, citing privacy concerns, it has been revealed that her medical treatment has cost the state $1.2 million. The cost of her around-the-clock guards at the hospital has set Golden State taxpayers back almost another quarter-of-a-million dollars. If she had been released, the costs of her medical care would have to have been borne by her family, who likely would have filed for assistance from the California Medicaid program, once again sticking the taxpayer with the bill for the care of one of the most renowned and reviled murderers of the 20th Century.

The ruling by the Parole Board was unanimous.

Brain Cancer

According to the Official Susan Atkins Web site maintained by Susan Atkins' husband, James Whitehouse (educated at Harvard Law, he is also her attorney), she is suffering from terminal brain cancer and has requested a compassionate release in order to go home to her loved ones and die with her family. Currently, she is under treatment at a hospital in California's Inland Empire region, with two guards constantly watching over her. In her current state, where she cannot even sit up in bed, according to her husband, Susan Atkins hardly could be considered a threat to anyone. Even former Assistant D.A. Vincent Bugliosi, who successful prosecuted her and other members of the Manson Family, came out in favor of her release.

However the Manson Massacres are so infamous, partly due to Bugliosi's deft handling of the case and the media as prosecutor -- and due to his book Helter Skelter, the best-selling true crime book in publishing history -- all of the sentenced members of the so-called "Manson Family" (a term that Charles Manson never used but that Bugliosi popularized) have repeatedly been denied parole since their death sentences were vacated. Susan Atkins-Whitehouse, who claims she is a born-again Christian and has remorse for her crimes, has regularly petitioned the California Board of Parole Hearings for release. She has been denied parole 11 times.

In that the crimes were so notorious and still are so alive in the public consciousness (a new movie about the Manson Family, The Manson Girls, is in the works), in so much as the case continues (murder has no statue of limitations), Suzan Hubbard -- who has oversight of the prison system that holds Susan Atkins-Whitehouse -- denied the recommendation of the California Institution for Women in Corona that Atkins be released on the grounds of compassion. Relatives of the victims of the Manson massacres appeared before the Parole Board and urged them to keep Atkins in jail.

"No Mercy"

Susan Atkins was sentenced to death in 1970 for her active part in the murders of Sharon Tate, Voitek Frykowski, Abigail Folger, Jay Sebring and Steven Parent at the Tate residence at 10050 Cielo Drive on August 9, 1969, and for complicity in the murders of Leo and Rosemary LaBianca, via conspiracy, the following night. When asking for a conviction of Atkins, Charles Manson and their two co-defendants, Assistant Distinct Attorney Vincent Bugliosi also reminded the jury that though there was no law at the time relating to the murder of a fetus, they should consider the death of the unborn baby of Sharon Tate and her husband Roman Polanski.

The jury convicted Susan Atkins, Charles Manson, Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten of seven counts of murder, and the court sentenced them to death. Manson Family confederate Charles "Tex" Watson was convicted in a separate trial. The death sentences handed down to Atkins, Charles Manson, Tex Watson and the others were reduced to life in prison when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down extant death penalty laws in 1972.

The Los Angeles Times, the newspaper with the largest circulation in the state of California, believed that Susan Atkins should remain incarcerated. In an editorial entitled "No Mercy," the Times editorial board recommended that the parole board deny her a compassionate release, even though it acknowledged the repentant killer is no longer a threat to society. The L.A. Times says that society has the right to take vengeance.

According to the Times editorial, "Atkins gravely wounded our collective peace, and society has a right, even the obligation, to exact vengeance. For some criminals, including Atkins, the crime is so great that the price should be imprisonment until death."

Robots

Susan Atkins did not receive a sentence of life without parole, however. When her death sentence was vacated, she was re-sentenced to seven years-to-life, with possibility of parole. The fact is, Vincent Bugliosi did his job so well, in his attempt to get Charlie Manson into the gas chamber, that he created a myth that persists nearly 40 years after the crime. He created a myth of Charles Manson as a Dr. Mabuse of Hippiedom, turning Susan Atkins and the other Manson Girls into soulless robots, who killed on his command. This is the image that society cannot shake.

Vincent Bugliosi's "Helter Skelter" scenario and his depiction of the Manson "Family" as victims of Charles Manson was partly motivated by his desire to reduce the culpability of star witness Linda Kasabian in the eyes of the jury. As Bugliosi admitted in his final summation, Kasabian was equally as guilty of the murders, according to California law. (She had been granted total immunity by Bugliosi after Susan Atkins, whom he called a "little bitch" during the trial after she scattered his notes as he delivered his summation to the jury, had reneged on a deal to turn state's evidence in return for a promise not to seek the death penalty against her.)

Bugliosi's "robots-in-the service of The Pied Piper" scenario also smacked of Cold War fears of the Manchurian Candidate and brain-washing, which held that communistic and anti-social beliefs could be a result of indoctrination, in which the individual abdicated his/her free will. Though it seemingly would be a relic of the Cold War, the idea of being "possessed" and losing one's free will continues to be popular in America, originally among depictions of troubled women. People are not personal responsible for their acts, as they were seduced or indoctrinated by other individuals, by society at large, or by the media. This reasoning frequently is used to condone bad behavior.

Vincent Bugliosi explained away anomalies in Linda Kasabian's character by saying, for instance, that she stole $5,000 under orders from "Charlie." Despite the fact that she had known Charles Manson for a little over a month before she engaged in the murders, and a week-and-a-half, according to Manson, before she stole the money, that's all it took: 10 days in the charismatic force-field of Charles Manson's personality, and Kasabian was ready to steal for him. It is very far-fetched, as is most of Bugliosi's "Helter Skelter" story.

Ironically, while this "brain-washing" scenario could have been seen as making Susan Atkins and the rest of the Manson Girls less culpable in the eyes of the public, their behavior during the trial, where they seemingly WERE under Manson's control, made them pariahs. Susan Atkins and the other Manson Girls never gained the sympathy of society, partly due to the heinousness of the murders, but also because of their outrageous behavior. That their behavior might have been a result of a quickening, that is, that they molded their behavior in response to the expectations of the public and of Bugliosi, playing out the scenario defined for them, has not been seriously considered.

Taboo

Susan Atkins and the Manson Girls, along with Tex Watson and others, violated the deepest taboo of society: It's desire for order. Vincent Bugliosi, by crafting the "Helter Skelter" scenario (its very name being synonymous with disorder), doomed Atkins to a life behind bars, as she is a symbol of anarchy and an individual's loss of control. In some ways, Susan Atkins can be considered a witch, to be burned at the stake, for the sins of the countless of individuals who have sinned, and then came back from the brink, guilty and relieved to have saved themselves, and willing to blame it on The Other that led them astray.

Charles Manson became the ultimate symbol of The Other, the darkness that persists in the human psyche despite thousands of years of civilization. Susan Atkins, through her behavior at the trial, showed that she was one with The Other. Linked to this ultimate symbol of The Other, the dark anarchic side of the human personality, Susan Atkins was condemned to die at the hands of the state back in 1970, and was condemned to die in the hands of the state in 2008. Was justice served? It's for our individual consciences to make that judgment.

Vincent Bugliosi said, in declaring his support for Susan Atkins, that those people not kin to the victims who opposed a compassionate release for Atkins were behaving like "robots." Since he is the person who created and promulgated the robot theory, does he have special insight into the Atkins case?

Sources:

Associated Press, "Release denied for dying Manson follower"

Dallas Morning News, "At what point compassion? Manson follower, dying of cancer, seeks release from prison"

Los Angeles Times, "No mercy for Tate murderer; Susan Atkins seeks release from prison because she is dying. But she deserves her sentence"; "Parole panel denies early release for Manson follower Susan Atkins"

San Francisco Chronicle, "Dying Manson follower Susan Atkins denied parole"