Just as it had on 11 prior occasions during the last 37 years, a California prison board rejected Susan Atkins' request for parole today. There probably won't be a 13th rejection. The 60-year-old ex-Manson family member has a brain tumor and just months to live, according to doctors who had launched a “compassionate parole” procedure for the convicted killer in March. Her plight earned the sympathy of famed Charles Manson family prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi. For the first time he voiced support for Atkins' release, in part, because she no longer poses a threat to society. (Her left leg also was amputated and she's reportedly bedridden.) But, according to a reporter who attended the Sacramento hearing, relatives of the victims forcefully opposed her return to freedom. They asked the 12-member panel to let Atkins die in prison. Without offering an explanation, the politically appointed panel agreed.
— R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.