SUSAN ATKINS: THE INDEPENDENT OBITUARY

My obituary of Susan Atkins, the Manson Family member known as Sadie Mae Glutz, who died in prison, is in today's Independent, you can link to it here. It was eerie that she would die just at the time Roman Polanski was arrested in Switzerland for extradiction to the US. I once likened Manson's entry into the world of peace & love to that of a piranha into a fish farm full of fat slow-swimming sea bass, and it is very easy to conclude that the Sixties, as a phenomenon, actually began in 1963, with the assassination of JFK, and began to end in 1969, with the Manson killings. The celebrity angle, Manson's links with the Beach Boys and Terry Melcher, was played up, but you could also look at the the Family's bizarre life at the Spahn ranch, which was, after all, a movie set, as a bizarre parody of Hollywood, the apotheosis of the American wandering west looking for success...