The details of the Tate-La Bianca slaughters are too gruesome to repeat here-for those who weren’t around and would like to know, there’s the condensed version from Wikipedia; the full account, Helter Skelter, by Vincent Bugliosi, the man who prosecuted Charles Manson and three of his ghouls for the slayings, is the best true-crime story ever written. In brief, on the night of August 9, 1969, and again the following night, Manson and six members of his “family,” Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkle, Leslie Van Houten, Linda Kasabian, Tex Watson, and Clem Grogan, set out to do murder in Los Angeles, which they successfully did (and, it would later emerge, had done more than a few times already), choosing seven victims basically at random and stabbing them repeatedly until they died, then reveling in the blood they’d shed. A year-and-a-half later Manson, Atkins, Van Houten, and Krenwinkle were sentenced to death for the two-night killing spree. When California abolished the death penalty the following year, their sentences were reduced to life imprisonment. I’ve seen several of Leslie Van Houten’s parole hearings (they’re televised)-she’s been denied 18 times; Patricia Krenwinkle may spend her days doing good works, but she’ll moulder in prison for the rest of her life; Manson has given countless incoherent jailhouse interviews over the years to Diane Sawyer and her ilk. But I’d lost track of Susan Atkins, the monster who listened to a very pregnant Sharon Tate begging her to spare the life of her unborn child and then killed them both. Apparently Miss Atkins has attracted the kind of freaks-usually they’re women-who live to marry unparolable inmates. She got hitched to her second husband, James Whitehouse, 21 years ago-which amounts to about half the age Sharon Tate’s child would be right now, had he been permitted to live-and Mr. Whitehouse has serviced her in conjugal visits and also as her legal counsel in her petitions for release. Several years ago she demanded to be paroled on the grounds that she was a “political prisoner.” Last year, with brain cancer threatening her life, he unsuccessfully sought “compassionate release” for her. But Miss Atkins, aided by medical intervention, clings tenaciously to this mortal coil, and on Wednesday her husband tried again. This time, according to the AP,
We won’t be there to witness her meeting with her Maker, but happily for the memory of the people she sent to theirs, she was denied parole once more-and, one may hope, for the last time. Those who are in despair over the corrupt politicization of Justice these days, take heart. There’s still some real justice to be had here.
