Chowchilla, CA—She was the dean of California’s incarcerated women having been locked up longer than any other woman in the Golden State’s prison system. Yesterday Susan Atkins finally died of brain cancer. Her 1969 crimes were an orgy of nasty killings that left at least seven dead. Susan Atkins seemed to have eventually come to her senses and embraced remorse, regret and resignation for the horror she so willingly helped unleash in Los Angeles.
Atkins not only participated in the destruction of the victim’s lives but she destroyed her own along the way. She and her co-killers beat a well deserved death sentence but living the rest of their lives as a caged wild animals may have been much worse than a quick death in San Quentin’s gas chamber.
Atkins death has not ended the suffering or sense of loss of the Manson family victim’s loved ones. Closure by punishment is not the victim’s Nirvana that prosecutors claim. There may be a tiny measure of satisfaction at the idea of justice being done but nothing really can make the wrongs somehow right.
I don’t know what anyone gained by not letting Atkins die in some private hospice rather than a prison medical facility. That was indeed a hollow exercise.
It’s is too bad that Atkins never got an opportunity to make a contribution to the society that had disposed and condemned her.
There are still several other Manson followers waiting their turn to die in prison for things they did as drugged up, confused kids in another lifetime. It’s too bad that these fools could not somehow go back and reverse the horror they unleashed so long ago.
