Charles Manson, pictured at right below, was denied parole for the eleventh time on May 23, 2007. His next parole hearing is scheduled in 2012. Manson, now 74 years old, seemingly had the members of his "family" under his spell in 1969 when he orchestrated the mass murders of people he did not know and who had done nothing to harm him or any of the members of his blood thirsty gang of assassins. Their crimes were detailed in the book and TV movie "Helter Skelter" and all of them would have been executed, and justly so, many years ago if not for the California Supreme Court's People vs. Anderson decision that invalidated all death sentences imposed in California prior to 1972. Thus vicious killers like Charles Manson, Tex Watson and Robert F. Kennedy's assassin Sirhan Bishara Sirhan had their death sentences
changed to life imprisonment.
On the evening of August 8, 1969, Charles Manson gathered Atkins, Linda Kasabian and Patricia Krenwinkel in front of Spahn's Ranch and told them to go with Charles "Tex" Watson and do as they were told. In Atkins' grand jury testimony, she stated that while in the car, Watson told the group they were going to a home to get money from the people who lived there and to kill them. Five people were murdered at the Beverly Hills home where movie director Roman Polanski and his actress wife, Sharon Tate, lived. Tate, a sexy blond beauty (pictured at left) who starred in the movie "Valley Of The Dolls," was eight months pregnant with Polanski's child. Murdered that night by Manson's group of killers were Tate, Steven Parent, Jay Sebring, Wojciech Frykowski and Abigail Folger. Polanski was in Europe at the time of the killings, finishing work on a film project.
Forensic evidence indicated that the murders were extremely brutal. Just prior to leaving the Polanski-Tate residence, Atkins wrote "PIG" on the front door in Sharon Tate's blood. Watson, a Dallas native who claimed to have been high on speed the night of the killings, allegedly told Frykowski prior to killing him, "I am the devil, and I'm here to do the devil's business." In testimony at his murder trial, Watson denied having made that remark but later acknowledged saying it in his autobiography.
On the night after the pregnant Sharon Tate and her house guests were all murdered, Manson called Atkins, Krenwinkel, Watson, Kasabian, Leslie Van Houten and Steve Grogan to join him for another night of carnage. Manson and Watson entered the home of grocery store owner Leno LaBianca and his wife Rosemary in Los Feliz, a Los Angeles suburb, and tied them up at gunpoint. Manson then allegedly went outside the house and sent Krenwinkel and Van Houten inside to do as Watson told them. Manson instructed the women to leave messages in blood as they had done the night before at the Polanski mansion.
Another member of Manson's group at Spahn's Ranch implicated Atkins in the murders and she was arrested by Los Angeles police in October 1969. While in jail, Atkins confessed her participation in the Tate/LaBianca murders to two cellmates who later reported her statements to the authorities. Atkins agreed to testify for the prosecution in exchange for avoiding the death penalty, and she then testified before the grand jury as to what had transpired on the nights of August 8 and 9, 1969.
Atkins told the grand jury that she stabbed Frykowski in the legs and that she held Tate down while Watson stabbed her. She also testified that Tate had pleaded for her life and that of her unborn child, to which Atkins replied, "Woman, I have no mercy for you." Atkins later claimed her participation in the murders was passive and that she did not actually kill anyone. In his 1978 memoir, Watson declared himself solely responsible for all of Tate's injuries, characterizing Atkins' initial confessions as exaggeration, jail house bragging, and a bid for attention.
In 1977, Atkins published her autobiography, "Child of Satan, Child of God," in which she recounted the time she spent with the Manson family, her religious conversion, and her prison experiences. From 1974 onwards, Atkins stated she was a born-again Christian. Yet she was denied parole 18 times and died in prison on September 24 of this year.
Debra Tate, the sister of Sharon Tate, said her family was ripped apart by her famous sister's brutal and senseless 1969 murder. "If Susan Atkins is released to rejoin her family, where is the justice?"
Charles Denton "Tex" Watson, pictured below at right, was tried separately from the other members of Charles Manson's "Family" and was convicted of multiple murders and sentenced to death on October 21, 1971. Spared execution like his other Manson Family members when his death penalty was changed to life in prison, Watson remains incarcerated today in Mule Creek State Prison in Ione, California. He has been denied parole 13 times. His next scheduled parole hearing is in December, 2011. Tex Watson is now 63 years old.
Doris Tate, the mother of actress Sharon Tate, addressed Watson at his parole hearing in 1984. "What mercy, sir, did you show my daughter when she was begging for her life?" Doris Tate asked Watson when he was asking the California parole board to show him mercy and grant him parole. "What mercy did you show my daughter when she said give me two weeks to have my baby and then you can kill me? When will Sharon come up for parole? Will these seven victims and possibly more walk out of their graves if you get paroled?"
Doris Tate, who died in 1992 at the age of 68, confronted Watson again at his 1990 parole hearing. Her work as an advocate for victim's rights was taken over by her daughter, Patti, who was involved in the establishment of the Doris Tate Crime Victims Bureau, a non-profit organization with the aim of monitoring criminal legislation and raising public awareness. Patti represented the Tate family at parole hearings for Manson and the other killers until 2000, when she died from breast cancer. Her role was assumed by the middle Tate daughter, Debra, who carries on the tradition of her mother and sister by appearing at parole hearings of the Manson Family members to voice opposition to any of them ever being paroled from prison.
When television cameras focus on such celebrities as the Reverend Jesse Jackson, actor Danny Glover and Bianca Jagger, the ex-wife of Rolling Stones lead singer Mick Jagger, as they speak out at The Walls prison in Huntsville, Texas, in opposition of capital punishment, TV viewers seldom see a hint of the extreme anguish, suffering and intense grief the families and friends of those murderer's victims have had to endure. The media far too often give a platform to those crying out against the death penalty to seek forgiveness for the scum of society who are undeserving of such compassion.
The Ernest Willis's of the world are by far the exception and not the rule. It is true that the execution of a single innocent man or woman is one too many. I agree that such an incident would be an unforgivable travesty. But to repeal the death penalty in the State of Texas due to the revelation that one innocent man might have been executed by mistake would be exactly that, a huge mistake.
"Most of the people on death row are guilty," Willis was quoted as saying in a recent Houston Chronicle article. "But there's a small percentage who are not. Willingham told me he was innocent. His case was almost identical to mine. I believed him."
Willingham's ex-wife does not agree with Willis's statements. "I believe he was guilty," said Stacy Kuykendall of her ex-husband. She told a Fort Worth Star-Telegram reporter that Willingham told her before his execution that he had set fire to the house and killed their children because he knew that she was going to leave him. "He was sorry for what he did," Kuykendall said. "But he did confess."
"He started the fire and killed the kids," said Waco lawyer David Martin, Willingham's court-appointed attorney during his murder trial. "His conduct was really incriminating, and his statements were irreconcilably inconsistent."
As Willingham's legal representative, Martin said he unsuccessfully tried to raise reasonable doubt in the minds of the jurors and believes that Willingham should have accepted a plea-bargain offer for life in prison to avoid his ultimate date in the Texas death chamber. Martin has claimed recently that he felt compelled to speak out in recent interviews, even though he has come under intense criticism from his former client's defenders for asserting that Willingham was guilty.
"When it began to be expressed that an innocent man had been executed, I took an interest in responding to that because that's just not the case," Martin said in a recent interview at his ranch near Corsicana.
The cornerstone of the state's case against Willingham was the arson investigation. An accelerant was splashed on the floor and near the threshold of the door of the home Willingham had shared with Kuykendall in 1991, arson investigators ruled.
"I was completely convinced that it was both a murder and an arson fire," said John H. Jackson, a retired judge and the former assistant district attorney who led the prosecution of Willingham. "I think the death penalty opponents really do themselves a disservice by identifying this guy as a poster child. There are a lot of good arguments against the death penalty, but this is not one of them."
"I don't know what he did," Willis says of Willingham, his fellow Texas death row inmate. But the West Texas man who spent 17 years on death row for an arson-murder he supposedly did not commit, says he is convinced the former Corsicana auto mechanic was innocent, based on his conversations with Willingham.
The recently freed death row inmate is requesting that Texas Governor Rick Perry publicly admit the Lone Star State may have erred when Texas executed Willingham for intentionally killing his three children in 1991. "I think (Perry) should step up to the plate, call for a death penalty moratorium, listen to the experts and see what kind of situation we've got," Willis said in a telephone conversation with a Houston Chronicle reporter from his Midland home.
Former Texas Governor Mark White, who was governor from 1983-87, agrees it is time the state reconsiders its use of capital punishment, basing his opinion on the risk being too great that innocent people could be put to death. White, a Democrat, said the death penalty no longer deters murder, long delays between convictions and executions show there is no swift justice, and he's increasingly concerned it isn't administered fairly.
"There's a very strong case to be made for a review of our death penalty statutes and even look at the possibility of having life without parole so we don't look up one day and determine that we, as the state of Texas, have executed someone who in fact was innocent," White said.
Twenty death row inmates were executed during the period Mark White was Texas's attorney general and governor between 1979 and 1987.
Perry, Texas's longest-serving governor, has vigorously defended his actions in connection with Willingham's 2004 execution and depicts Willingham as "a monster."
Unfortunately for all of us Texans and our fellow inhabitants of the rest of the world, far too many "monsters' lurk among us. In my little corner of the world in West Columbia, Texas, I have been appalled and shocked by the many heartless murders that have occurred in recent years in West Columbia, Brazoria, Sweeny, Old Ocean, Surfside and the Brazosport area. Life is a fragile commodity and I would definitely be opposed to any innocent life being taken, but I remain fully committed to throwing my support behind the continuation of capital punishment in my home state. I disagree with former Governor White, who I once interviewed at John Gayle's lake house near West Columbia when he was running for governor and I was the editor of The Brazoria County News. I think the death penalty remains a deterrant to murder to some degree.
And I believe in the Biblical declaration that the taking of a human life must be subjected to the ultimate punishment of giving one's own life in return. Matthew, Chapter 5, Verse 21, in the Bible I was given as a child states, "Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment."
Pictured in the photos above are my son Blake Gupton when his mother Peggy sent him out trick-or-treating as Peewee Herman. My niece Natalie Kuban is shown in the second photo with one of her new Aggie friends as they create a jack-o-lantern from a pumpkin at Texas A&M in a recent photo. Natalie and her boyfriend Taylor Lane are freshmen in Aggieland and my son Bret, shown in the next photo, is a senior at Texas A&M now. I photographed Bret and his buddy Adrian "Wimpy" Pipkins several years ago with the pumpkin and floral display at one of my company barbecues in Old Ocean. Cody Smith, the son of our longtime best buddy Theresa Smith and the late Junior Smith, is pictured holding an enormous pumpkin below at right in a photo I took many years ago. And the newlyweds, my son Brian Gupton and his new bride Tiffanie, are shown below at left in a recent photograph.
The photo above is of my youngest son, Blake Gupton, the year he dressed up as a clown. A multi-colored Afro wig topped off the ensemble, but Blake hated it and kept taking it off. The other Halloween photo above is of my sister Kelli's youngest children, Natalie (the wicked witch) and Tommy (the Army man) Kuban, when Kelli and Chris and their kids lived in Needville.
