The American Nightmare (Susan Atkins Thread)

[SidneyCarton]

This week saw the denial of parole of one Susan Atkins, by the California State Parole Board. Ms. Atkins, an amputee with terminal Brain Cancer had petitioned to be released on the grounds of compassion, to say the least this decision was controversial. Ms. Atkins is a former member of "the Family," the group of disaffected youths who followed Charles Manson's murderous directives in the interests of starting a nationwide race war. Her part in these notorious murders is particularly gruesome, for she confessed to killing Sharon Tate, who was nine months pregnant at that time. In her testimony Atkins stated that she was "sick of listening to her, pleading and begging, begging and pleading." Such callousness gained Atkins the death penalty, which was commuted to life in prison when the U. S. Supreme Court abolished that punishment in 1972.

The Tate/LaBianca Murders, represent a vivid depiction of the American Nightmare. That an absolute stranger, with whom you neither know, nor have any relation good or bad, enters into your home, torments you, tortures you, and finally brutally murders you. How many directors of horror films have played on that exact fear in the last four decades? There have been numerous other notorious murders, and murderers, but the exploits of Manson and his followers seem to still captivate after all this time. They remind us that we are not truly safe, even in the place where we expect to be the safest, and hence we deadbolt our doors, lock our windows, and buy firearms that we are probably more likely to use accidentally on our family members than on any crazed group of cultists. Perhaps this explains the ongoing lack of compassion for Ms. Atkins and her confederates, its not so much the heinousness of her actual crime, but the added crime of making us afraid that makes us hate her.

Now in honesty, I could care less either way on this issue. With certainty, the woman is no threat to anyone, sending her to a hospice to pass her final days is as final as leaving her in prison, either way she will only leave by way of the morgue. But on the other hand, unlike her victims, particularly Sharon Tate, Ms. Atkins will have time to prepare for death, to ready her mind and spirit for the awful passing ahead, this was an option she never gave Sharon, or her unborn child. That said, when Ms. Atkins passes I will see no reason to celebrate. Indeed I will pray to God, that he shows her mercy, for I too will someday face his judgment bar as well. Her life is an awful parable on just how lost one can become.