Lovely lady...
LINKA member of the infamous 'Manson Family', who murdered the actress Sharon Tate in August 1969, could soon be released from jail because she is dying of cancer. Susan Atkins, a follower of Sixties cult leader Charles Manson, has less than six months to live and is being considered for compassionate leave so that can she die outside prison. She is believed to be suffering from the final stages of brain cancer and is under constant medical treatment...
But the sheer infamy of the Manson case may hurt her cause, as it has derailed all her previous parole attempts. Manson, whose hippie cult preached free love and bloody revolution, is one of the seminal figures of the Sixties. He was a failed musician who drifted around the edge of the counter-culture scene in California until he collected a band of misfits and hippies into a cult. Atkins, a former topless dancer, was one of his most ardent followers. She was at the forefront of slaying Tate, who was married to the film director Roman Polanski and heavily pregnant with his child.
The Manson family attacked her home, killing her and four others.
Atkins herself stabbed Tate to death, ignoring Tate's pleas for mercy. At a parole hearing in 1993, Atkins told officials: 'She asked me to let her baby live. I told her I didn't have mercy for her.' After killing her,
Atkins tasted the dead woman's blood and used it to write the word 'Pig' on the wall. Manson's aim in sending his followers to kill Tate and others was to start a race war - Manson assumed that black power groups would be blamed.