Susan Atkins,a follower of cult leader Charles Manson whose remorseless witness stand confession to killing pregnant actress Sharon Tate in 1969 shocked the world,has died. She was 61 and had been suffering from brain cancer. Atkins death comes less than a month after a parole board turned down the terminally ill womans last chance at freedom on September 2. California Department of Corrections spokeswoman Terry Thornton said that Atkins died late on Thursday night. She had been diagnosed with brain cancer in 2008,had a leg amputated and was given only a few months to live. She underwent brain surgery,and was paralysed and had difficulty speaking. But she managed to speak briefly at the September 2 hearing,reciting religious verse with the help of her husband,attorney James Whitehouse. She had been transferred to a nursing facility at the California Central Womens Facility at Chowchilla a year before she died. Tate,the 26-year-old actress and wife of famed director Roman Polanski,was one of seven murdered in two Los Angeles homes during the Manson cults bloody rampage in August 1969. Atkins is the first of the convicted killers to die. Manson and three others Patricia Krenwinkel,Leslie Van Houten and Charles Tex Watson remain imprisoned under life sentences. The crime One night in August 1969,Manson dispatched Atkins and others to a wealthy residential section of Los Angeles,telling them,as they recalled,to do something witchy. They went to the home of Tate and her husband. He was not home,but Tate,who was eight-and-a-half months pregnant,and four others were killed. Pigs was scrawled on a door in blood. The next night,a wealthy grocer and his wife were stabbed to death in their home across town. Helter Skelter was written in blood on the refrigerator. the testimony I was stoned,man,stoned on acid, Atkins testified during the trials penalty phase. I dont know how many times I stabbed (Tate) and I dont know why I stabbed her, she said. She kept begging and pleading and begging and pleading and I got sick of listening to it,so I stabbed her. She said she felt no guilt for what Ive done. It was right then and I still believe it was right. How can it not be right when its done with love?
