Letter From Paul Tate to the Parole Board At Susan Atkins 2000 Hearing.

 

The last time I saw my daughter Sharon, I left the house that evening and life was good. Then woke up another day and life had changed, very dramatically. Never to be the same again. The next time I went to the house was the morning after the murders. I don’t believe that there is anyone at this hearing that saw Sharon’s house, the crime scene, as I did. The way Miss Atkins left it.

 

I saw everything that has been described here today and I personally saw what she did to my child. I was there the day before they removed the bodies and I could never find the words to describe the horror that I saw. There is not a day that passes by that all of this doesn’t come to me because of Susan Atkins. In my mind there will always be the vivid scene of blood all over the home. Blood that I personally had to clean up. So I am totally aware of everything that is, and always will be, deeply edged in my mind.

 

31 years ago I sat in the courtroom along with the jury for 9 months, 8 hours and a day, which watched Miss Atkins. I saw a young woman who giggled, snickered and screamed out insults whenever the urge struck her. As the rest of us listened at how she stabbed and beat her victims. Even while testifying about Sharon’s last breath, Miss Atkins laughed.

 

You might ask yourself why a jury of inmate peers would have voted for the death penalty for such a young woman, with an entire lifetime ahead of her to redeem and rehabilitate herself. The answer is obvious. They would not find one mitigating circumstance to support even the remote possibility that she could be rehabilitated. If anyone could pass judgment, the jury would be the one.

 

Even though 31 years have passed, their thoughts and reasoning should not be discarded. The wisdom of their decision must still be upheld, to the fullest that our law will now allow. And that is with life in prison. I don’t care how many women have been incarcerated and released since these murders.

 

When my daughter was murdered I lost a very precious person in my life. I watched my family ripped apart and it was irreversible to relieve their pain. If Susan Atkins is released to rejoin with her family. Where is our justice?

 

Vincent Bugliosi who once prosecuted this case once said: “Susan Atkins has been married, she has conjugal visits, she co-authored a book, she says she’s very happy. But when you stop to thin k about what she did. It says something about justice in America.” “If we define justice as giving a person his or her due, be it praise for a good deed or punishment for a crime. Justice has been frustrated in this case. Susan Atkins has beaten the rap.” Please don’t  frustrate the justice any further by giving her a release date.

 

Susan Atkins says she has changed. The only thing about her that has changed is her story about who she killed or didn’t kill. A writer that spent a lot of time with Miss Atkins in 1969 wrote the best analogy of her that still holds true today, “Susan loosened her tongue and let it fly. She hasn’t stopped talking yet.  But always tells you as much as has to be told and whatever version suits her passing. She’s a facial chameleon who’s features can shift almost imperceptibly from coldness to glowing innocence.” If  Atkins ever goes free. It just might be by the recitation of so many divergent, unlikely stories that are only within the fabric of truth.

 

In the time period of August 1969 and to her sentencing in January of 1971. Miss Atkins changed her story six times of whether she killed Sharon or not. At her last parole hearing, she said to the Board, “…I ask that the Panel members try to differentiate between fact and fiction. I said and spoke several different stories between the Grand Jury and the trial. There were several things at the penalty phase of the trial which were not true. What I said at the Grand Jury was the truth. I by my own hand did not kill anybody.”

 

If you are to believe her Grand Jury testimony, then the Board must ask the following questions from her testimony:

 

Did Miss Atkins go into my daughters house with a knife with the intent that everybody there be dead before she left? Yes.

 

Did she hold my daughter in a choke hold to keep her from escaping as she testified to? Yes.

 

Did she hold my daughters hand behind her while her crime partner, Tex Watson stabbed her? Yes.

 

Did she dip a towel to my daughters wounds and write “PIG” on the door? Yes.

 

Did she have three separate occasions to stop these murders from continuing? Yes.

Is she just as guilty as if she personally inflicted each and every one of the 169 stab wounds? Yes.

 

It doesn’t matter what spin she wants to put on her participation. She is 100% responsible for the deaths of each and every one of her victims. Miss Atkins says she is now remorseful for these crimes. But in 31 years she never said she is sorry to any one of us. In her last television interview, Miss Atkins was asked, “Could you get out the words that you are sorry to Sharon Tate’s parents for what you did to them?” Miss Atkins reply was, “You ask hard questions. There are no words to describe what I feel.”

 

If she were truly remorseful, I don’t think this would have been a hard question to answer..

 

At her last parole hearing Miss Atkins was asked, whom she had made amends to. And her reply was, “To God, to myself, to my family.” What about Sharon and the other victims? What about my family? When is she going to be remorseful enough to make amends to all of us?

 

Miss Atkins has said that through religion she has found love. First I would like to point out that religion has nothing to do with release. Because if it did, we would be opening the doors to half of the prison population.

 

Secondly, Miss Atkins talked about love in 1969. She said of killing Sharon, “You have to have real love in your heart to do what I did. I loved her, and in order for me to kill her, I was killing a part of myself when I killed her.” Is this her idea of love?

 

Susan Atkins would have been a good and loving person only if she would have thought of this 31 years ago. Before she made the choice to kill. But she didn’t. She killed eight people. If we took 8 lives and divided them by 31 years she has been in prison. She has only served roughly 4 years for each victim. And that’s not enough.

 

What I am asking here is: That there is a consequence to be paid here by Miss Atkins. I believe even though she may or may not be a changed person, and from her point of view it sounds to me like she’s doing very well in prison and that her work in there is very needed and she can accomplish all of her goals, helping others, right there. And I believe that right there she should stay for the rest of her life.

 

I would like to leave you with a quote from Miss Atkins. “We are each a different person every day of our lives. In fact we were 3, 4, 5 different people. We changed clothing, changed expression, just changes. You know, changes are changes. Period. They are not progress. They are not regression. They are just changes.”

 

Thank you.

 

Paul Tate.

 

Next of kin, father of Sharon Tate.