Child of Satan, Child of God is the self-titled auto biography of Susan Atkins, AKA Sadie Mae Glutz, infamous member of the Manson Family. From a California women’s prison in the 1970s where she would spend the rest of her life for the Tate-La Bianca murders, she tells her story of growing up middle class post WWII in a suburb. Her father was the bread winner. She had siblings. But her mother was terminally ill, dying when Susan was a teen-ager. Her father took to drinking to numb his sorrow. He wasn’t interested in being a strong loving father and guiding his offspring through a difficult and unfair situation. Her family disintegrated.
Susan left home early to become a secretary, experimented with drugs, worked as a stripper—a dancing job she enjoyed as the center of attention. In the late 1960s, she met Charlie one day at a hippie party. He was playing a mesmerizing folk-jazz guitar and singing his soft version of a beautiful pop ballad of the day. Susan was enthralled, allowing herself to become seduced by this man, a decade older and a dangerous manipulative ex-con. She didn’t see that or even think of it, being barely out of high school. With groovy clothes, long hair, beard and moustache, he made a solid impression on Susan—and the looks and talent turned out to work on numerous girls the same age with similar back stories of uptight middle-class boredom and ’60s rebellion. Charlie was cool when parents were not. He got it. He had all the answers. He spoke the language of youth. In prison he had studied the Beatles, Eastern religion and mysticism, and the Dale Carnegie program of winning friends and influencing people.
Timing more than anything else brought Manson and the flower children together. Living with Manson meant lots of LSD trips. Drugs were more important than sustenance. Sex also was part of the deal. This was a commune that would not tolerate squares. But like all cults, the Manson Family had their charismatic leader, succumbed to total mind control, cut ties to family and former friends, literally had no money, and eventually lost track of time as was the intention by Manson who controlled the kids like puppets on a string. He broke down their will. They allowed him to break down their will. And like so many modern American cults, death and murder would be the ultimate sacrifice and offering to show total allegiance to Manson—no questions asked.
Society in the early 1970s got a daily televised dose of the girls on trial for murder and how they acted when arriving to court and even in the court room. They laughed, sang songs, did whatever Charlie wanted. They stood up one day and in unison proclaimed: “The judge is the lady.” When Charlie shaved his head and burnt an X on his forehead, so did the girls and all his followers outside the courthouse. Toward the end of the trial, as Charlie spoke in his defense about how he took in the kids nobody wanted (?), fed ’em (he taught them to steal and dumpster dive for food), he outstretched his arms as in the manner of Christ on the cross. The girls wept and cried and then went into hysterics shouting devotions of everlasting love to Charlie.
In her book, Susan pins the Tate murders on Tex Watson and doesn’t go into detail about her antics during the trial. However, sober and mature, she wondered why no one saw how sick they were. They were young people fed a steady diet of mind-altering drugs with little food, no vitamins, pale, thin, VD infected … Instead, society took them for the glaring angry counterculture image the Manson Family portrayed and judged them harshly.
The Family did commit murder—the most gruesome senseless brutal butchery in Hollywood history. The beautiful young actress Sharon Tate was eight months pregnant. What they did was unspeakable—unthinkable, until the Manson Family brought the scenario into our minds. They scared everybody to death.
Susan looked back at her wasted youth and wondered why no adults came to their aid or noticed these were sick kids, mentally and physically and spiritually. In prison Susan takes the teachings of Christ to heart and becomes Born Again.
If it looks like a cult and acts like a cult
What is it about Americans and cults? We’re both fascinated and repulsed by them: the idea of a single man controlling a number of people, usually idealistic youth. We all know the game: the charismatic man claims to have an ‘in’ with God or the ‘Truth’ which includes an end time or end game of sorts when the world will see the cult leader is right and everyone else foolishly ignorant and damned, more and more people start listening to his long-winded yet seemingly passionate speeches, donate to his cause, start hanging out with followers while dropping former friends and family unless they all get involved as well.
And always, always, cults end in death and murder. Jim Jones portrayed all of the characteristics of cult leader right down to the trademark shades to hide constant drug abuse necessary to stay ‘on’ all the time. When the world was closing in on breaking up his family of 900+ in Jonestown, he directed a shocking mass suicide, something followers had rehearsed often and certainly expected. Finally it was for real.
Cults are such a fascination in this country that there are TV series dedicated to the subject, profiling the leader and surviving followers, all the juicy sexy goings on, brutality in ‘other’ thought or action, and then murder. The difference in cults today is they are even easier to get into with the internet and most recently the economic downturn and human isolation.
Do you know that the rest of the world, countries much older and having survived centuries of wars, think Americans are the eternal optimists? America is about moving forward. It’s about living in the future not the past. It’s about making something of yourself. It’s rarely about hanging onto a proud thousand-year history that binds us together. That is because half of Americans are relatively newcomers, have no family heritage in this land dating back to the 17th century.
Cults provide a deep bond with a leader who ‘gets through’ to people whether a large or small group. Manson knew how to manipulate his followers and picked the few who would kill for him. After all, he was the only one who had an axe to grind with Terry Melcher, the record producer who snubbed Manson’s rock star dreams and who owned the house where the Tate murders occurred.
The DC Capitol mob attack was bound to happen. Like the Manson Family and the People’s Temple, timing brought all the elements together for a cult who would be groomed to murder for their leader. Tens of thousands of Americans today have allowed themselves to replace religion with politics. Along with the towering popularity of Fox News and their brand of fast & loose journalism and a slogan that boasted “you decide,” we’ve become a splintered society even more so with a plethora of alternative news internet sites promoting a revolution (another Manson/Jones/Trump spiel) and then there’s QAnon created by God only knows. [My guess is the Russians.] For thousands of disenfranchised, distrusting, disillusioned Americans, all the alt-right conspiracy theories just make sense. Please read the attached link below on the political cult that has definitely evolved in 21st century America. Susan Atkins was right: Cult members are sick. And society must intervene somehow some way … because cults always think alike and culminate in disaster.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/you-evolving/202011/can-trumps-followers-be-called-cult