One of Accused In Killings Claims ‘Victims Unknown’
December 15, 1969
LOS ANGELES - One of the five persons charged with murdering Sharon Tate and
four others says the killings were planned to "instill fear in man" - and that
the victims’ identity was unknown to the slayers.
Susan Atkins, 21, made the statement in a 6,000-word story under her byline
in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times.
Lawrence Schiller, a free-lance writer whose byline appears on the copyright
story with hers, told newsmen he and another journalist whom he didn’t identify
produced the story by editing tape recordings of jail conversations with Miss
Atkins.
The article says the group killed the pregnant 26-year-old actress and four
of her friends at her estate Aug. 9 without knowing who they were.
They learned the victims’ names the next day in a newscast. Miss Atkins’
account says:
"We watched the newscast and it kind of - it really helped me to know that
the people were as important as they were. It blew my mind."
"There was a comment made by one of us that what had happened had served its
purpose. That was to instill fear in man himself, man, the establishment."
"That’s what it was done for... To also show the black man how to go about
taking over the white man."
Miss Atkins says that after the group shot and stabbed the five, she soaked a
towel in blood and smeared the word "Pig" on a door as one of the others asked
her to. As approached the actress’ body she says, she thought of Miss Tates’
baby, who would have been born in a few weeks.
"And I flashed. Wow, there’s a living being in there... I knew it was
living... I knew it wouldn’t live..."
The baby, a boy, might have lived if delivered soon after Miss Tate died, the
coroner has said.
During recent grand jury hearings Miss Atkins said through her lawyer that
the hypnotic power of Charles M. Manson persuaded her to join his wandering,
hippie-style group. Manson, 35, also has been indicted on murder charges.
Miss Atkins’ attorney, Richard Caballero could not be reached for comment on
the story. However he said earlier she was under Manson’s "hypnotic spell" and
"had nothing to do with the murders."
In her story Miss Atkins says:
"This whole world and everybody and everything in it has been God’s game, and
that game is about to come to an end."
"Judgment Day for every human being on the earth is coming."
After the killings, the group drove on a mountainous road and heaved their
weapons and the black clothes they had worn into a ravine, Miss Atkins says.
On Sunday, police temporarily took Miss Atkins from jail. Later, detectives
and 80 Boy Scouts combed rugged hillsides a few miles from the Tate house.
Officers wouldn’t say what they were looking for, what they found, or whether
Miss Atkins helped in the search. But newsmen at the scene said searchers
recovered a pistol, a locked box and a hypodermic syringe.
