Susan Atkins has been imprisoned for 37 years – longer than any other female in state history. And it appears she’s going to die there.

The 60-year-old Charles Manson follower who was convicted in 1969 in the cult killings of seven people, including pregnant actress Sharon Tate, has spent nearly the last four decades at the California Institution for Women at Frontera in Corona, CA. Atkins, two other women and Manson were sentenced to death but had their sentences commuted to life in prison instead, when the U.S. Supreme Court temporarily ruled the death penalty unconstitutional. She is currently in a hospital near the prison.

But Atkins has recently been trying to convince the state parole board to grant her “compassionate release.” Dying of brain cancer, Atkins has had her left leg amputated and is paralyzed on her right side, and is so debilitated she can’t even sit up in bed, her husband told a parole hearing. Her doctors have given her three months to live.

At that hearing, Atkins’s supporters painted a picture of a remorseful, changed born-again Christian who should be released on compassionate grounds. They talked of her "incredibly superhuman" record in prison, about how the young woman who had killed with no apparent remorse so long ago had become a loving aunt and friend.

Pam Turner, a cousin of Sharon Tate, spoke about wanting to die after finding out that Tate and her unborn son had been stabbed to death.

"I was a child, but I was so sick with grief that I wished I too could die," Turner said, sobbing. She described how Tate’s mother, her aunt, "howled like a wounded animal."

The board apparently didn’t have any sympathy for Atkins. After a 90-minute hearing, it unanimously rejected Atkins’s pleas. The LA County DA argued against it, saying, "[Atkins] has failed to demonstrate genuine remorse and lacks insight and understanding of the gravity of her crimes."

Prosecutor Patrick Sequeira said the board made the right decision. He gave the news to Sharon Tate’s sister, Debra Tate, and two other family members of the victims. "They are both relieved and pleased with the decision," Sequeira said. "It obviously doesn’t take away the pain for them."

Atkins’s lawyer has filed a separate motion in Los Angeles County Superior Court seeking her release. 

Atkins was the most notorious of the three women charged with Manson in the killing of Tate and six other people in the summer of 1969. It was Atkins who disclosed that the Manson family was responsible for the murders, which led police to the clan’s Death Valley hideout. The women charged maintained their innocence but confessed in graphic detail during the penalty phase.

"I don’t know how many times I stabbed her and I don’t know why I stabbed her … She kept begging and pleading and begging and pleading and I got sick of listening to it, so I stabbed her,” Atkins said during the penalty phase of her trial, arguing she was on hallucinogenic drugs at the time.

Only years later during parole hearings did she apologize and even suggest she may have exaggerated her role in Tate’s killing. She has been denied parole 12 times.

Click here to read Manson Murderess Begs for Mercy.