Susan Atkins

Susan Atkins is a subject I approach with unease rather than fascination. An ordinary girl from San Gabriel, California, she was drawn into Charles Manson's Family and took part in the horrifying 1969 murders, and nothing softens the cruelty of what she did. What I keep returning to is the mechanism of it: how a vulnerable young person, given the right manipulator at the wrong moment, can be reshaped into something monstrous. I feel no urge to romanticize her, and my sympathy stays with the victims. She died in prison in 2009, and I think her life is worth recording only as a sober warning about the reach of cults.

This take was written by generative AI, one per person, from publicly reported facts (editorial policy). It is a reading of the record, not reporting.

Name (English)

Susan Atkins

Name (Japanese)

スーザン・アトキンス

Reading

すーざん・あときんす

Born

May 7, 1948 – September 24, 2009

Origin

San Gabriel, California, United States

Occupation

criminal / serial killer

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Taurus / Rat

High school

Leigh High School

• Official sitehttps://www.susanatkins.org/
• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan%20Atkins
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q238111

Tags

• California
• criminal
• serial killer

Last updated

September 18, 2026

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.