Susan Atkins

American convicted mass murderer who was a member of Charles Manson's "Family". Manson's followers committed a series of nine murders at four locations in California, over a period of five weeks in the summer of 1969. Known within the Manson family as Sadie Mae Glutz or Sexy Sadie, Atkins was convicted for her participation in eight of these killings, including the most notorious, the Tate murders in 1969. She was sentenced to death, which was subsequently commuted to life imprisonment when the California Supreme Court invalidated all death sentences issued prior to 1972. Atkins was later incarcerated until her death in 2009. Between 1976 and 2009, she was denied parole a total of 13 times. At the time of her death, she was California's longest-serving female inmate.

A hippie dropout product of the drug culture, she met and loved Charles Manson, joining his camp on the old Spahn ranch in Death Valley. She had a child, Zee Zo Zeze Zedfrack, father unknown, in 1968. On 8-9 August 1969, she joined in the ritualistic killing of five people, holding eight-month pregnant Sharon Tate while Tex Watson stabbed her to death. While in prison, she later had a "religious conversion" (1974), which she described in her 1977 memoir. She later began a prison ministry. In 1981 she was married for a few months to a Texan named Donald Lee Laisure who claimed he was a millionaire. He also claimed that she was his 29th wife, later saying that she was his 36th. She married again in 1987, this time to James Whitehouse, who subsequently became a lawyer.

While in prison her health deteriorated. In 2008 she was diagnosed with brain cancer and underwent a leg amputation as well. Atkins died at age 61 on 24 September 2009 at a women's prison in Chowchilla, California.