Susan Denise Atkins was a member of the Manson family who killed pregnant actress Sharon Tate in a home she shared with her husband, director Roman Polanski during a two-day killing spree in 1969 in Los Angeles.
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All of those involved -Manson, Atkins, Leslie Van Houten, Patricia Krenwinkel and Charles “Tex” Watson – were convicted in connection with the five deaths that night and the killings of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca the following night.
They were all sentenced to death. But their sentences were automatically commuted to life in prison when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the nation’s death penalty laws in 1972.
Since she entered prison in 1971, she became a born-again Christian who worked to help at-risk youth, victims of violent crimes and homeless children, among others, according to a Web site maintained by her attorney and husband, James Whitehouse.
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By her own admission, Atkins held Tate, who was then eight months pregnant down, stabbing her 16 times. In a 1993 parole board hearing, Atkins said Tate “asked me to let her baby live. … I told her I didn’t have any mercy on her.”
Susan Atkins Death: What happened to Susan Atkins?
on September 24, 2009, Susan Denise Atkins, died at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla at age 61 after battling brain cancer.
Atkins’ brain cancer was diagnosed in March 2008.
On May 15, 2008, doctors predicted she would live less than six months. But she passed that deadline.
Her husband, Whitehouse wrote on his website that, as of spring 2009, Atkins was paralyzed over 85 percent of her body and could not sit up in bed or even be moved into a wheelchair.
At the time of her death, she was California’s longest-serving female inmate.
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