Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties

by Tom O'Neill

The state had a strong case against Atkins. She had probation officers in both L.A. and Mendocino, and neither was happy with her. According to their reports, she’d brazenly defied all attempts at supervision since her sentence was imposed. Since she’d received a courtesy transfer of her probation from Mendocino to Los Angeles County, she’d changed her address more than six times without permission. She hadn’t sought employment. She’d failed to check in for almost every monthly appointment. And most recently, she’d told the probation office that, although she knew it was forbidden, she was moving to the Mojave Desert with her friends, with no plan to return to L.A. Describing Atkins’s whereabouts as “totally unknown,” the probation office’s report advised, “The best thing is to revoke the defendant’s probation as it appears she has no intentions of abiding by it.” Despite that recommendation, at a hearing that month, Judge Wayne Burke of Mendocino County Superior Court decided that “the defendant has not violated probation. She has complied with the terms. Probation is reinstated and modified to terminate forthwith. She is released.” Not only did the ruling defy the probation office—it seemed to reward Atkins’s bad behavior, “terminating” her probation more than two years before it was scheduled to conclude. And off she went, soon to participate in the murders of at least eight people.