WHERE IN HELTER ARE THE SAVAGES
Updates on ailing Manson’s ‘Family’ of butchers behind 1969 massacres
SUSAN ATKINS, 61
Susan Atkins — nicknamed “Sadie Mae Glutz” and “Sexy Sadie” — was convicted of all seven murders.
Atkins was described by prosecutors as the most violent of the Manson women. The petite brunette met Manson in 1967, in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood.
Best known for fatally stabbing Tate, Atkins reveled in the slaughter, writing “pig” in Tate’s blood on the Tate-Polanski front door.
“You’d best lock your doors!” she taunted the courtroom at sentencing. “And watch your kids!”
Atkins eventually renounced Manson and became a model prisoner, although she was repeatedly denied parole due to the savageness of her crimes.
“She asked me to let the baby live,” Atkins sobbed to the parole board in 1993, according to the Los Angeles Times. “I told her I didn’t have mercy for her.” Atkins died in September 2009 at 61 from brain cancer while serving a life sentence at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla.
PATRICIA KRENWINKEL, 69
Krenwinkel eagerly took part in both bloodbaths.
She joined Charles Watson and Atkins at the Tate-Polanski home, chasing coffee heiress Abigail Folger from room to room, and then outside, as the screaming Folger struggled for her life.
She stabbed Folger so many times that the heiress begged her to stop, pleading, “I’m already dead.”
Later, Krenwinkel wrote “DEATH TO PIGS” in blood on the wall, and “HeaLter SkeLTter” (sic) on the refrigerator. Krenwinkel’s 14th parole bid, in which she insists she had been physically abused by Manson, is currently under review.
LESLIE VAN HOUTEN, 67
A former homecoming queen, Van Houten is serving a life term for holding down Rosemary LaBianca while the victim was stabbed more than a dozen times. “She mutilated one of her victims with a fork, and carved the word “war” into his stomach,” Tate’s sister, Debra, said in a Los Angeles Times column on Wednesday, a reference to Leno LaBianca’s corpse. “She wrote words all over the LaBianca house with blood. She claims she wanted to ignite a race war — ‘Helter Skelter’ — that she would ride out, living in a hole in the middle of the earth,” Debra said. Van Houten believed Manson was Jesus Christ. In 2016, a parole board recommended her for release after raising issues of whether she had been brainwashed. But California Gov. Jerry Brown rejected the request, citing the brutality of the crimes.
LYNETTE ‘SQUEAKY’ FROMME, 68
Widely considered one of Manson’s most ardent supporters, Fromme (right) never participated in the murders — though she did carve an “X” into her forehead, as did other Family members, during the murder trials.
Fromme’s crime was attempting to assassinate President Gerald Ford in 1975, for which she is serving a life sentence.
She was paroled from federal prison in 2009 and moved to Marcy, NY, to live with her ex-con boyfriend.
She hung up on a Post reporter when asked Wednesday about Manson’s health.
CHARLES MANSON, 82
On Aug. 9, 1969, Mansion unleashed his brainwashed “Family” on the home of pregnant actress Sharon Tate and her director-husband, Roman Polanski. The following night, they struck the home of supermarket magnate Leno LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary.
The two nights of carnage left a sea of blood and seven corpses.
Initially condemned to the gas chamber, Manson has been rotting in prison due to California’s revocation of the death penalty in 1972.
State corrections officials told the LA Times that Manson was a menace behind bars as well — once hiding a hacksaw in his cell and trying to light his mattress on fire. He has also gotten into trouble for assault, weapons possession, threatening the staff and having a cellphone, the report said. Nearly half a century after he launched a drug- and sex-drenched cult bent on a race war, he’s still attracting crazies.
Manson’s purported “son,” Matthew Roberts, told RadarOnline that he had rushed to the hospital in hopes of seeing his deadly “daddy” in person. “This could be it, that’s my greatest fear,” said Roberts, a devoted follower.
Self-pronounced Family member and frequent Manson visitor Craig Carlisle Hammond, 66, blathered in a press statement, “He’s as well as the air, he’s as sick as the waters,
“He’s doing as well as the tiger. As well as the elephant and the white rhino. Why don’t you call Africa and ask how well he is doing?”
STEVE ‘CLEM’ GROGAN, 65
Nicknamed “Scramblehead” by the Manson Family, Grogan (not pictured) did not participate in the Tate-LaBianca murders, but was convicted of assisting Manson, Watson and Bruce Davis in the Donald Shea murder.
He was paroled in 1985 and lives in California.
ROBERT BEAUSOLEIL, 69
Already in prison at the time of the Tate-LaBianca murders, Beausoleil is serving a life sentence in Oregon for the murder of Manson associate Gary Hinman.
He was known as “Cupid” for his good looks — and was one of Manson’s chief recruiters for the Family. He has been denied parole 17 times, most recently in 2016.
CHARLES ‘TEX’ WATSON, 71
Watson (above) proudly called himself Manson’s right-hand man.
“I am the devil,” he announced to the victims at the Tate-Polanski ranch, after first shimmying up their telephone pole and cutting the wires so that they could not summon the police. “I am here to do the devil’s business,” he told them. Manson himself was present during neither the Tate nor the LaBianca massacres; instead, he deputized Watson to lead the Manson women in committing the murders, a role Watson carried out with gusto.
He fatally stabbed and shot at least three of the five victims in the Tate-Polanski home. He tied the very pregnant Tate and her friend, celebrity hairstylist Jay Sebring, together at the necks with rope, then shot Sebring dead — leaving Tate to Family member Susan Atkins. The next night, Watson joined in the multiple stabbings of both LaBiancas.
Watson is serving a life sentence in a prison near Sacramento for all seven murders, but has realistically zero chance of being freed, despite his conversion to Christianity. He became an ordained prison minister in 1981.