Susan Atkins, the Manson Family and the Making of “Sadie”

By the time Susan Atkins appeared in a Los Angeles courtroom in 1970, the person the newspapers were describing seemed almost detached from Susan Denise Atkins, the young woman who had drifted into San Francisco only a few years earlier. Within Charles Manson's circle she had acquired another identity: Sadie Mae Glutz, usually shortened to Sadie and later widely rendered as “Sexy Sadie.” The invented name suited a group in which abandoning conventional identity was not merely encouraged but turned into something approaching doctrine.

Atkins was born in San Gabriel, California, in 1948 and spent much of her childhood in Northern California. After her mother's death and a turbulent adolescence, she left school and eventually arrived in San Francisco during the counterculture's most mythologised period. There she encountered Manson in 1967. What followed placed her at the centre of one of the events that permanently changed the popular image of the American 1960s.

The Manson group eventually settled at Spahn Ranch, an ageing former film location outside Los Angeles. Its mixture of communal living, drugs, improvised mysticism and Manson's increasingly dominant personality has subsequently become inseparable from accounts of the period. Names were changed, former lives discarded and individual identity increasingly subordinated to the group. Atkins later explained the origin of her own assumed identity while testifying before a Los Angeles grand jury:

"In any event, he gave me the name Sadie Mae Glutz."

During the summer of 1969, the mythology surrounding the group crossed into murder. Atkins was involved in the July killing of musician Gary Hinman and was among those sent to the Cielo Drive residence occupied by actress Sharon Tate and director Roman Polanski on the night of 8 August. Tate, Jay Sebring, Wojciech Frykowski, Abigail Folger and Steven Parent were killed. The following night brought the murders of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, although Atkins was not among those who entered the LaBianca house.

The investigation initially struggled to connect the crimes. Atkins became crucial after her arrest on an unrelated matter and conversations with fellow prisoners brought details of the Tate killings to investigators. Her accounts would prove complicated: statements, testimony and later versions of events did not always agree, and questions surrounding precisely what she personally did during the murders continued for decades. What was never in dispute was her presence, participation and subsequent conviction.

Atkins, Manson, Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten were tried together. In 1971 Atkins was convicted of murder and conspiracy and sentenced to death. California's death penalty was invalidated the following year, automatically converting her sentence to life imprisonment. She later broke publicly with Manson, embraced Christianity and repeatedly sought parole, while relatives of the victims consistently opposed her release.

She remained imprisoned until her death from brain cancer in September 2009. By then the name “Sadie” belonged not simply to an individual but to the enormous cultural afterlife of the Manson case: books, documentaries, films, songs, courtroom transcripts and competing interpretations of how a small group of Californian drifters became one of the darkest symbols of the decade.

The fascination endures partly because the case sits at an uncomfortable intersection of crime and mythology. The factual record is grim enough; what came afterwards turned Manson and his followers into cultural symbols whose notoriety often threatens to eclipse the people they killed. Susan Atkins' story remains one of the clearest examples of how completely a manufactured identity can outlive the person who once inhabited it.

💬 FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS (FAQs)

Q1: Why was Susan Atkins called Sadie Mae Glutz?

Charles Manson gave Atkins the name Sadie Mae Glutz as part of the group's practice of abandoning conventional identities. Atkins confirmed the name and its origin during her 1969 grand jury testimony.

Q2: Was Susan Atkins involved in the LaBianca murders?

Atkins travelled out with members of the group on the second night of killings but did not enter the LaBianca residence. Her convictions principally reflected her involvement in the Tate killings and the earlier murder of Gary Hinman.

Q3: What happened to Susan Atkins after the Manson trial?

Her original death sentence became life imprisonment after California invalidated its death penalty in 1972. She was repeatedly denied parole and remained in prison until her death in 2009.