Patricia Krenwinkle trains 'Prison Pups' for disabled

Former Family member trains 'Prison Pups' for disabled

CHINO,California

Nov. 5, 2007

- We all know about the great work done by service dogs assisting the disabled. You might be surprised to know that some of those dogs are trained by inmates in a California prison -- including a former member of the Manson family.

You can find unconditional love in the most unlikely of places -- the California Institution for Women. "I've seen a change in ev More..erybody," said Prison Pup program sponsor Carmen Mewes. "Everybody that comes into the prison and sees a dog. It's kind of like, 'Oh, these are people, too,'"

In August 2002, four puppies were sent to prison to be trained by inmates as service dogs for the disabled. "It gives you a reason to wake every morning, and keep moving on," said inmate trainer Pat Krenwinkel.

Pat has been with the Prison Pup program from the beginning. Since the initial four, over 100 dogs have been trained to do the simple tasks many people take for granted, like getting mail or turning on and off the lights. After training, the dogs leave the prison to be with their new family, never to be seen again by the inmates.

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But on the night Eyewitness News was there, a slideshow allowed Pat to see her dog, Allison, at a home in New Jersey with Liam, a young boy with cerebral palsy. The images moved her to tears. "I can't change my past. I can't change anything that happened yesterday," said Pat. "But doing what I do with this little dog, or with Allison -- that dog can carry, and maybe make somebody's future different and better and wonderful."

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Her past is how many people know Patricia Krenwinkel. As part of the Manson family, she was convicted of seven counts of murder and is serving a life sentence.

She's now training her seventh dog, and says the program allows her to know what she's doing in life has some worth.

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She also knows the impact these dogs can have on other inmates. "My god, they come up to you, and they just say, 'May I pet your dog?' And then what transpires from there immediately is a story of home," said Pat. "You're transported to a world where there's just a little bit of laughter.

Susan Atkin finally dies in U.S. prison

National Post

September 25, 2009

LOS ANGELES - Susan Atkins, one of the leading members of Charles Manson's notorious violent cult who carried out brutal murders at his behest in 1969, has died in a California prison, her husband said on Friday. She was 61.

Atkins, imprisoned since 1971 for her part in eight Manson-related murders, had been suffering from a brain tumor. Earlier this month, state corrections officials rejected her request [for compassionate release.]

"Susan passed away peacefully surrounded by friends and loved ones and the incredible staff at the Skilled Nursing Facility at the Central California Women's Facility," her husband, James Whitehouse, said by e-mail. A much better death than those afforded her victims.

"... Her last whispered word was 'Amen.' No one (on) the face of the Earth worked as hard as Susan did to right an unrightable wrong," Whitehouse said. In exactly what way? Did I miss some Susan Atkins Campaign for Victims?

...At a 1993 parole hearing, Atkins described her time with Manson by saying, "It is almost impossible to understand insanity and that's what I was living with - insanity."

Atkins was 21 years old when the career criminal Manson dispatched her and other followers to the Beverly Hills home of actress Sharon Tate and film director Roman Polanski on Aug. 9, 1969, with orders to kill. Polanski was out of town but the heavily pregnant Tate and four friends were brutally stabbed, beaten and shot to death. Atkins later said she personally stabbed Tate after ignoring her pleas for mercy...

MACABRE TRIAL

The brutality and seemingly random nature of the murders terrorized much of Southern California and stunned the nation.

Atkins was convicted in 1970...

...[Atkins] disrupted court proceedings with laughter, shaved her head, carved and X on her forehead and sang Manson-penned songs.

...In 1967, she fell under Manson's spell ...she became known within the cult by nicknames Manson gave her: Sadie Mae Glutz and Sexy Sadie.

Atkins' talkative nature implicated the Manson cult. She was being held as a suspect in another slaying and bragged about the Tate-LaBianca case to jailhouse acquaintances, even claiming she had tasted Tate's blood.

Atkins agreed to testify against Manson and confessed to a grand jury but recanted before going to trial. She later pleaded guilty in the torture-murder of a musician who Manson said had cheated him on a drug deal...

Read more here

'Squeaky' Fromme moving to upstate NY

Tuesday, September 15, 2009
The Associated Press

via sacbee.com

MARCY, N.Y. -- Local officials are being told that Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, the Charles Manson follower convicted in 1975 of pointing a gun at then-President Gerald Ford, is moving to upstate New York.

Oneida County District Attorney Scott McNamara says he was notified by state police that the 60-year-old Fromme is moving to Marcy following her release last month after serving 34 years in federal prison.

McNamara said Tuesday he's heard nothing more and didn't know whether Fromme had moved there yet. He did not know why Fromme was moving to Marcy and said she didn't have any family there as far as he knew.

The news came as a surprise to local residents and officials. The town of Marcy is 55 miles east of Syracuse and includes four hamlets with about 9,000 people.

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read article here

Manson Follower Susan Atkins Denied Release

Life's a bitch, huh Sadie?

foxnews.com
CHOWCHILLA, Calif. — Susan Atkins, the terminally ill Charles Manson follower who admitted stabbing actress Sharon Tate 40 years ago, lost what was likely to be her last bid for freedom.

Atkins, who suffers from brain cancer, slept through most of the four-hour hearing Wednesday during which her husband-lawyer pleaded for her release and families of victims of the Sharon Tate-Labianca killings urged that she be kept behind bars until she dies.

In a dramatic moment — one of the few in which Atkins opened her eyes — Atkins' husband, James Whitehouse, led her through a recitation of the 23rd Psalm, with Atkins concluding in a strong voice, "My God is an amazing God."

"I have no compassion for you, bitch." Susan Atkins, August 1969, to Sharon Tate as she and her baby were murdered.

...Atkins, 61, had been expected to die of brain cancer over a year ago but miraculously continues to cling to life. She was denied compassionate release in July 2008 after she was diagnosed and given only months to live...

read article here

Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme released from prison

August 14, 2009

(CNN) -- Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme was released from federal custody Friday, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Bureau of Prisons said.

Fromme was convicted in 1975 of pointing a gun at then-President Gerald Ford in Sacramento, California.

She was released Friday morning from Federal Medical Center Carswell in Fort Worth, Texas, said Felicia Ponce, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Bureau of Prisons in Washington.

After 34 years, Lynette 'Squeaky' Fromme to be released

This is interesting. I never thought she'd see the light of day.

By Ashley Hayes

CNN
August 5, 2009

(CNN) -- The president she once pointed a gun at has been dead for nearly three years, and her longtime idol and leader, Charles Manson, remains in prison.

However, Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme is about to get her first taste of real freedom in more than three decades.

According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Fromme, now 60, is set to be released on parole August 16. Fromme is housed at the Federal Medical Center at Carswell, Texas.

For years, she was one of Manson's few remaining followers, as many other "Manson Family" members have shunned him. A prison spokeswoman would not say whether Fromme continues to correspond with Manson.

Fromme was convicted in 1975 of pointing a gun at then-President Gerald Ford in Sacramento, California. Secret Service agents prevented her from firing, but the gun was later found to have no bullet in the chamber, although it contained a clip of ammunition.

In a 1987 interview with CNN affiliate WCHS, Fromme, then housed in West Virginia, recalled the president "had his hands out and was waving ... and he looked like cardboard to me. But at the same time, I had ejected the bullet in my apartment and I used the gun as it was."

Check these out:
TIME.com: The girl who almost killed Ford
TIME.com: The memoirs of Squeaky Fromme
In Depth: Manson Murders and the Summer of 1969

Right: the day of the incident, 1975

She said she knew Ford was in town and near her, "and I said, 'I gotta go and talk to him,' and then I thought, 'That's foolish. He's not going to stop and talk to you.' People have already shown you can lay blood in front of them and they're not, you know, they don't think anything of it. I said, 'Maybe I'll take the gun,' and I thought, 'I have to do this. This is the time.' "

She said it never occurred to her that she could wind up in prison. Asked whether she had any regrets, Fromme said, "No. No, I don't. I feel it was fate." However, she said she thought that her incarceration was "unnecessary" and that she couldn't see herself repeating her offense.

"My argument to the jury was, if she wanted to kill him, she would have shot him," John Virga, a Sacramento attorney appointed to defend Fromme, told CNN on Tuesday. "She'd been around guns. And let's be realistic: We know the Manson family, at least some of them, are killers."

Fromme was sentenced to life in prison, but parole was an option at the time, although the federal system later abolished it, said Felicia Ponce, spokeswoman for the Bureau of Prisons. Inmates do receive "good time" -- for every year and one day they serve, Ponce said, 54 days are lopped off their sentence.

Read the entire article here

Ford died in 2006 at age 93. The Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation did not respond to CNN requests for comment on Fromme's release...

And this from msnbc.com:

Manson follower ‘Squeaky’ Fromme to go free
60-year-old woman tried to assassinate President Gerald Ford in 1975

40 years after Manson murders, Susan Atkins makes a bid for parole

Carey Bodenheimer

CNN.com
June 5, 2009

LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- The woman who stabbed pregnant actress Sharon Tate to death will be considered for parole from prison a month after the 40th anniversary of the killings that cast a shadow of fear over southern California.

Susan Atkins, 61, has been denied parole in 17 previous hearings, but the former "Manson Family" member now is terminally ill with brain cancer and is paralyzed.

Charles Manson used his hypnotic powers to direct Atkins and other "family" members to kill seven people, including the pregnant Tate, in a two-night rampage that terrorized the city of Los Angeles, California, in August 1969.

Atkins -- who was initially sentenced to death along with Manson and three others -- will have her 18th parole hearing on September 2, according to a spokesman with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

In July of last year, Atkins -- California's longest-serving female inmate -- was denied a compassionate release in a unanimous decision by the California Board of Parole Hearings.
She has repeatedly been described as a model prisoner who has accepted responsibility for her role in the slayings, and she now shuns Manson.

By her own admission, Atkins held Tate down as she pleaded for mercy and stabbed the pregnant woman 16 times. In a 1993 parole board hearing, Atkins said Tate "asked me to let her baby live. ... I told her I didn't have any mercy on her."

After stabbing Tate to death, according to historical accounts of the murders, Atkins scrawled the word "pig" in blood on the door of the home Tate shared with her husband, director Roman Polanski. Polanski was not home at the time, but three of Tate's house guests were also slain by the killers, as was a teenager who was visiting the home's caretaker in his nearby cottage.

A Web site maintained by her husband and attorney, James Whitehouse, says Atkins is now paralyzed over 85 percent of her body and cannot sit up in bed or even be moved into a wheelchair.

However, despite her declining condition and her impressive prison record, the site says, "there is still a very real chance the Parole Board will nonetheless insist her release would be a danger to society."

Atkins' compassionate release was opposed by Tate's sister, Debra, Los Angeles County prosecutors and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, among others. However, the former prosecutor who won her conviction, Vincent Bugliosi, said he supports Atkins' request for release.

"She has paid substantially, though not completely, for her horrendous crimes," Bugliosi told the Los Angeles Times last year. "Paying completely would mean imposing the death penalty."
Bugliosi is the author of several books on the Manson case, including "Helter Skelter."

Debra Tate told CNN in an e-mail in March that she does not believe any Manson family member convicted of murder should ever be set free, saying the slayings were "so vicious, so inhumane, so depraved, that there is no turning back."

"The 'Manson Family' murderers are sociopaths, and from that, they can never be rehabilitated," Debra Tate said. "They should all stay right where they are -- in prison -- until they die. There will never be true justice for my sister Sharon and the other victims of the 'Manson Family.' Keeping the murderers in prison is the least we, as a society who values justice, can do."

In a manuscript posted on her Web site, Atkins, who was known within the Manson family as Sadie Mae Glutz, wrote that "this is the past I have to live with, and I have to live with it every day."

"Unlike the reader, or the people who seem to think Charles Manson was cool, I can't think about it for an hour or so and then go on with my life. Just like the families and friends of the victims, this is with me every day. I have to wake up every day with this and no matter what I do for the rest of my life and no matter how much I give back to the community I will never be able to replace what my crime took away. And that's not 'neat,' and that's not 'cool.'"

Atkins was housed in the California Institution for Women at Frontera until May 2008, when her declining health caused her to be moved to Central California Women's Facility at Chowchilla.
Manson and those convicted along with him in the murders -- Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, Leslie Van Houten and Charles "Tex" Watson -- have been in California prisons for more than three decades.

All were initially sentenced to death, only to have their sentences commuted to life in prison when the Supreme Court struck down death penalty laws in 1972, establishing a four-year moratorium on executions. Van Houten was released for six months after her conviction was overturned, but was reconvicted.

Dying Manson Follower To Stay In Prison

As Susan Atkins kneeled beside Sharon Tate, 8.5 pregnant and pleading for the life of her child, she slit Sharon's throat and said "I don't care anything about you, bitch." She took a moment to contemplate cutting the baby out of the womb when she saw the child moving. Then she tasted the mothers blood, and dipped a cloth in it to write the word "Pig" on the front door of the home. It doesn't bother me in the least to let her die a prisoner.

CORONA (CBS/AP) ― The state director of adult prisons is recommending that former Charles Manson follower and convicted murderer Susan Atkins be denied a compassionate release because of terminal illness.

A prison spokeswoman says director Suzan Hubbard made the decision Wednesday.

Officials at the California Institution for Women where the 60-year-old Atkins was held for decades before a recent move to the hospital to treat her brain cancer had recommended that she be released to die in the care of her family. Hubbard's recommendation is only advisory. The Board of Parole Hearings must decide whether to take up Atkins' case, and her original sentencing court in Los Angeles County would make the final decision on her release.

Atkins confessed to killing pregnant actress Sharon Tate during a murderous rampage with other Manson followers in 1969. Fascination with serial killers like Charles Manson is driving a market that some call sick and twisted -- a place where buying and selling serial killer merchandise is all the rage.

There are hundreds of auctions taking place on the internet for things like serial killer trading cards and merchandise from a little old lady in Sacramento.

Congress is thinking about trying to make it harder for "murderabilia" to hit the market. There's a proposal that would make it a felony for inmates to mail items for interstate commerce, but there would be no penalty for those who buy and sell the stuff.

There is also a law in California that prevents inmates from profiting off of their crimes called the "Son of Sam" law. However, not every state has similar laws.

New evidence suggests Manson victims may be at Calif. ranch

They're baaack...

FRESNO, Calif. (AP) -
As investigators consider digging for bodies at a remote ranch where Charles Manson and his followers once hid out, authorities say new information is emerging to bolster reports of possible clandestine grave sites in the California desert.

A team of detectives and forensic investigators -- accompanied by an Associated Press reporter -- visited Barker Ranch outside of Death Valley last month to probe the soil for evidence of decomposed bodies.

After follow-up laboratory testing revealed that at least two sites could be unmarked graves, the group is now urging local investigators to begin excavating.

Former Inyo County Detective John Little told the AP yesterday that he was sent into the desert in 1974 by his former boss to investigate possible human remains buried at Barker Ranch.