Former 'Manson family' member denied parole

CNN) -- Former "Manson Family" member Susan Atkins, who stabbed actress Sharon Tate to death more than 40 years ago and now is terminally ill, was denied parole Wednesday, prison officials said..

The panel set another hearing for Atkins in three years, said Michele Kane, spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Atkins was 21 when she and other followers of Charles Manson participated in a two-night rampage that left seven people dead and terrorized the city of Los Angeles in August 1969. She and the others -- Manson, Leslie Van Houten, Patricia Krenwinkel and Charles "Tex" Watson -- were initially sentenced to death in the slayings of five people, including Tate, and two additional deaths the following night.

Their sentences were automatically commuted to life in prison when the Supreme Court struck down the nation's death penalty laws in 1972.



By her own admission, Atkins, known as Sadie Mae Glutz within the Manson family, held Tate down as she pleaded for mercy, and stabbed the actress 16 times. Tate was eight months pregnant. 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."

And yet we are supposed to have mercy on her and let her out of prison. It's too bad she's terminally ill. But, that's the way it goes. Life in prison means just that. When she dies she will burn in hell. Eventually she will be reunited with all of her friends.
As a teenager, this is the first true crime I read about. The attrocities these social rejects commited are almost beyond belife.

As of earlier this year, Atkins was paralyzed over 85 percent of her body and could not sit up in bed or be moved into a wheelchair, according to a Web site maintained by her husband and attorney, James Whitehouse. She has been described as a model prisoner who has accepted responsibility for her role in the slayings and now shuns Manson.


But Tate's sister, Debra Tate, told CNN in an e-mail in March that she does not think any Manson family member convicted of murder should ever be set free, saying the slayings were "so vicious, so inhumane, so depraved, that there is no turning back."

"The 'Manson Family' murderers are sociopaths, and from that, they can never be rehabilitated," Tate said. "They should all stay right where they are -- in prison -- until they die. There will never be true justice for my sister Sharon and the other victims of the 'Manson Family.' Keeping the murderers in prison is the least we, as a society who values justice, can do."

I agree Ms. Tate. These people cannot and should not ever be released from prison. She was allowed to get married while in prison, what more does she want. She has a web site that he husband maintains. It spouts all the good she has done while in prison. Does that make up for 7 murders? I don't think so.