Tate Murderers Sentenced to Die

From Wire Dispatches

Ignoring defense pleas for a "gift of life," a California jury yesterday returned a sentence of death in San Qentin's gas chamber for Charles Manson and three women accomplices-Patricia Krenwinkel, Susan Atkins, and Leslie Van Houten-convicted of the Sharon Tate murders.

The same seven men and five women who convicted the four of first-degree murder and conspiracy Jan. 25 chose the death penalty over the only alternative, life imprisonment.

Judge Charles H. Older, who has power under California law to reduce a death penalty to life imprisonment, thanked the jurors and said he wishedhe could give each of them a medal of honor for what he called "a trying ordeal."

If the sentence is carried out, it will mark the first time a woman under the age of 23 has been executed by the state of California.