Devotees

Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten were all sentenced to death for their roles in the carnage that claimed the lives of actress Sharon Tate, the heavily pregnant wife of director Roman Polanski, and six others in Los Angeles on the nights of August 8 and 9, 1969. The penalties were commuted to life.

Atkins initially admitted stabbing Tate 16 times. She then scrawled "pig" at the scene with the dead woman's blood. Another Family member has since said she did not actually stab the actress. She died in September 2009, in prison, at the time the longest-incarcerated female inmate in the California penal system. Following her death, Krenwinkel is now the longest serving.

Another female Manson devotee, Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, who was not implicated in the 1969 slayings but was jailed in 1975 after pointing a loaded pistol at President Gerald Ford from two feet away, was released on parole in 2009. Fromme, who was a dominant figure among Manson's female followers, would have been released the previous July but had to serve additional time for a 1987 jailbreak. She escaped after she heard that Manson had testicular cancer, and planned to go to his aid in jail.