Credit:

elizabeth orr : [ Ссылка ]
NBCLA: [ Ссылка ]
60 Minutes Australia : [ Ссылка ]
Center for Sacramento History: [ Ссылка ]

Background music:
ESN Productions: [ Ссылка ]


Introduction:
Susan Denise Atkins was an American convicted murderer and a member of Charles Manson's "Family" whos followers committed a series of nine murders at four locations in California over a period of five weeks in the summer of 1969. She participated in several crimes including the most notorious, the Tate murders. she showed neither remorse nor a willingness to accept responsibility for her part in the crimes.
The story of her life and how she leet the mansons:
Susan denise Atkins was born on May 7, 1948, in San Gabriel, California. She was of English, Irish, Scottish, and German descent. The second of three children, she grew up in northern California. According to Atkins, her parents, Jeanne and Edward John Atkins, were alcoholics, and she was sexually abused by a male relative. 
Until she was 13 years old, Atkins and her family lived in a middle-class home in the Cambrian Park area of San Jose, California. She was described by those who knew her as a quiet, self-conscious girl who belonged to her school's glee club, a musical club and the local church choir.
When she was 15, her mother was diagnosed with cancer. Two weeks before her mother was hospitalized for the final time, Susan arranged for members of the church choir to sing Christmas carols under her bedroom window, Her mother died of cancer in 1964. After her mother’s death, when she was almost 16 years-old, relatives were asked to help look after her and her two brothers. Over the next three years, Susan's life was disrupted by the gradual breakup of her family, frequent relocations, and her leaving home to live independently.
Edward Atkins, her father, eventually moved to Los Banos, California, with Susan and her younger brother Steven. When he found work on the San Luis Dam construction project, Edward left the two children behind to fend for themselves. Susan took a job during her junior year in school to support herself and Steven. she had been an average student in Leigh High School in San Jose, but her grades deteriorated when she entered Los Banos High School. During this time, she lived with various relatives.
After her declined grades, She decided to drop out of high school and move to San Francisco. Out on her own, Susan Atkins fell in with two escaped convicts and participated in several robberies, When caught, Susan spent three months in jail and then returned to San Francisco. In early 1967 she worked as a stripper in Los Angeles, she had bounced from place to place and from job to job, living at a house with dope dealers.
  Later in 1967, Atkins met Manson when he played guitar at that house. When the house was raided several weeks later by the police and Atkins was left homeless, Manson invited her to join his group and introduced Susan Atkins to other women in his orbit: Lynette Fromme, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Mary Brunner, who were embarking on a summer road trip in a converted school bus painted completely black. She was nicknamed "Sadie Mae Glutz" by Manson and a man who was creating a fake ID for her at the time. Atkins later claimed to have believed Manson was Jesus. The growing "Manson Family" settled at the Spahn Ranch in the San Fernando Valley in southern California, where, on October 7, 1968, Atkins bore a son by Bruce White, Manson, helped deliver the baby and instructed Atkins to name him Zezozose Zadfrack Glutz.
Susan’s parental rights were terminated once she was convicted of the murders she committed later, and no one in her family would assume responsibility for the child. Her son was adopted and renamed from the time of her incarceration in 1969 and She had no further contact with him. while in prison, susan got married twice, Her first marriage was to Donald Lee Laisure in 1981.Atkins became Laisure's 36th wife, but the two divorced after he sought to marry yet again.
Then Atkins went on to marry James W. Whitehouse, a graduate of Harvard Law School, in 1987. He represented Atkins at her 2000 and 2005 parole hearings and maintained a website dedicated to her legal representation.

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