Charles Manson

Susan Atkins, who committed one of modern history's most notorious crimes when she joined Charles Manson and his gang for a 1969 killing spree that terrorized Los Angeles and put her in prison for the rest of her life, has died. She was 61. Atkins was diagnosed in 2008 with brain cancer, which caused paralysis and the loss of one leg. She was receiving medical treatment at the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla and entered hospice care in recent days. She died there at 11:46 p.m. Thursday of natural causes, said Terry Thornton, spokeswoman for the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

California corrections officials released a photograph taken Wednesday of aging convicted mass murderer Charles Manson, replete with receding hairline, fading forehead swastika carving and a thick, heavily graying beard.

Patti Tate is thinking back. It's the summer of '69, and she's got her hands on her sister's stomach, feeling the baby inside kick. She was 11 years old then and her 26-year-old sister, actress Sharon Tate, was two weeks away from having her first baby. But on a hot August night, followers of Charles Manson killed seven people, including Sharon Tate, who was repeatedly stabbed as she pleaded for her life and that of her unborn child. "My sister was everything to me," said Tate, 36.

Her closet may have been full of designer dresses, but Sharon Tate was a flower child all the way down to her toes. Most comfortable barefoot, she used to skirt the "shoes required" laws in snooty late '60s Beverly Hills by looping leather string around her toes and across the tops of her feet, and then tying the ends around her ankles. Voila: sandals. Even the Malibu Barbie doll, said to be inspired by the actress and her bikini-clad character, Malibu, from the 1967 beach comedy "Don't Make Waves," was barefoot in her box. Details like these seem trivial when held up against the events of Aug. 9, 1969, when Tate, 26 years old and eight months pregnant with her husband Roman Polanski's child, was murdered by Charles Manson's followers in her Benedict Canyon home.

In the credits of his just-released album, rock star Axl Rose thanks two Newport Beach entrepreneurs for their help--and that has landed all three of them in the bull's-eye of controversy. Through their surf-wear company, Zooport Riot Gear, brothers Dan and Richard Lemmons sell T-shirts bearing the icy glare of Charles Manson. Rose discovered the shirts in a Hollywood shop earlier this year and made them part of his uniform at Guns N' Roses concerts.

It didn't take long Tuesday for a posse of Inyo County sheriff's deputies and forensics experts to mark their first find while searching for buried human remains at a remote, sun-scorched ranch once used as a hangout by the notorious Charles Manson family. Just 2 inches beneath the surface of a 3-by-6-foot plot lay a .38-caliber bullet casing. A forensic investigator stuck a little yellow flag with the word "evidence" on it, then photographed the corroded metal shell labeled "No. 1."

Professors Tom Nash and Michael Gonzales get asked the same question all the time: What's their nice evangelical Christian college doing making a movie--a sympathetic movie--about a mass murderer? And not just any mass murderer, but Charles (Tex) Watson, a participant in some of the most grisly and shocking crimes in Los Angeles history, the 1969 Tate-La Bianca murders committed by the "Manson Family."

A state parole panel Friday refused to free former Charles Manson follower Leslie Van Houten from prison, deciding that she has not served enough time for two "cruel and calculated" 1969 murders in Los Angeles. It marked the 14th time Van Houten, now 52, has been denied parole for killing Leno and Rosemary LaBianca in their Los Feliz home, murders that capped a two-day, Manson-led crime rampage that terrified Southern California.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Charles Herman Older had been on the bench only a few years when the trial of accused mass murderer Charles Manson landed in his courtroom. By the time the 10-month, highly publicized trial ended, he was a veteran.

Vincent Bugliosi has moved on, but the world hasn't. Forty years after the impossibly grisly Tate-LaBianca murders, he is still "the Manson prosecutor." This, in spite of his many books since, arguing with magisterial fury about the JFK assassination, the O.J. Simpson trial, the Bush vs. Gore case and now the Iraq war. His book about the murders masterminded by Charles Manson, "Helter Skelter," written with coauthor Curt Gentry, hasn't been out of print since it appeared in 1974.

Aaron Stovitz, the original prosecutor of mass murderer Charles Manson and three female followers who was removed from the trial for comments he made about the case, has died. He was 85. Stovitz died Monday at a Tarzana hospital after a long battle with leukemia, said his daughter, Rhonda Steinberg. Stovitz, who was removed in September 1970 by then-Dist. Atty. Evelle Younger, later said he wasn't bitter over the decision but thought his remark was "innocuous." A 1970 Times story speculated that Stovitz got into trouble for an off-hand remark he made after defendant Susan Atkins testified that she was too ill to continue with the trial.

Re "Polanski, Seen Through His Own Lens," by Reed Johnson, Oct. 5: This was so long overdue. Thank you for addressing the real issue here. This is so much more than "Hollywood versus Middle America, liberals versus feminists, hardliners versus apologists." At issue is a fundamental perception of the artist and his role in society. Artists must by definition redefine their own moral universe, and this can be a terrible, ugly and devastating process. But what they "pay back" to us, what they contribute to society are enduring legacies we would barely fathom in our quotidian lives.

Susan Atkins, who committed one of modern history's most notorious crimes when she joined Charles Manson and his gang for a 1969 killing spree that terrorized Los Angeles and put her in prison for the rest of her life, has died. She was 61. Atkins was diagnosed in 2008 with brain cancer, which caused paralysis and the loss of one leg. She was receiving medical treatment at the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla and entered hospice care in recent days. She died there at 11:46 p.m. Thursday of natural causes, said Terry Thornton, spokeswoman for the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

The term "crime of the century" has been worn thin by overuse, but the slaughter of seven people in two days by members of the Manson family in August 1969 still requires its hyperbolic ring. The Tate-LaBianca murders scared Los Angeles witless and horrified an already deeply unsettled nation. Forty years later, Charles Manson remains our homegrown image of Satan and, as the recent denial of the dying Susan Atkins' request for early release proves, the senselessly brutal deaths, particularly that of the pregnant Sharon Tate, are a still vivid American nightmare.

For the second time in as many years, a state parole board voted unanimously Wednesday to deny one of Charles Manson's fiercest followers her request for a "compassionate release" so that she can die at home. Convicted murderer Susan Atkins, 61, is terminally ill with cancer and has only months to live, doctors say. The issue of mercy has long haunted Atkins. Nearly 40 years ago, actress Sharon Tate begged the knife-wielding Atkins to spare her life and that of her unborn child.

Re "After Manson," Opinion, Aug. 8 I would love to see the "war president," George W. Bush, prosecuted for murder, especially by Vincent Bugliosi, who prosecuted Charles Manson. But we would have to prosecute as accomplices the pro-war legislators and the American people, who are as guilty as any murderous lynch mob and confirmed their remorseless guilt by reelecting Bush. Even if the lies Bush told to stir up our ignorant masses had been true, they were no justification for our rabid conduct.

Three decades after basking in the national spotlight as "Squeaky" the infamous Charles Manson disciple who tried to assassinate President Ford in 1975, the now 60-year-old woman slipped quietly out of a federal prison after being released on parole. Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme eluded the media as she left Fort Worth's Federal Medical Center Carswell. Prison officials would not say where she planned to live or what she planned to do after more than 30 years behind bars.

Her closet may have been full of designer dresses, but Sharon Tate was a flower child all the way down to her toes. Most comfortable barefoot, she used to skirt the "shoes required" laws in snooty late '60s Beverly Hills by looping leather string around her toes and across the tops of her feet, and then tying the ends around her ankles. Voila: sandals. Even the Malibu Barbie doll, said to be inspired by the actress and her bikini-clad character, Malibu, from the 1967 beach comedy "Don't Make Waves," was barefoot in her box. Details like these seem trivial when held up against the events of Aug. 9, 1969, when Tate, 26 years old and eight months pregnant with her husband Roman Polanski's child, was murdered by Charles Manson's followers in her Benedict Canyon home.

Vincent Bugliosi has moved on, but the world hasn't. Forty years after the impossibly grisly Tate-LaBianca murders, he is still "the Manson prosecutor." This, in spite of his many books since, arguing with magisterial fury about the JFK assassination, the O.J. Simpson trial, the Bush vs. Gore case and now the Iraq war. His book about the murders masterminded by Charles Manson, "Helter Skelter," written with coauthor Curt Gentry, hasn't been out of print since it appeared in 1974.

California corrections officials released a photograph taken Wednesday of aging convicted mass murderer Charles Manson, replete with receding hairline, fading forehead swastika carving and a thick, heavily graying beard.