LOS ANGELES, Feb. 12 – Susan Atkins declared Thursday that she told outsiders about her part in eight murders, but not Charles Manson, because “it was no big thing.”

“Killing eight people is just business as usual, right Sadie” prosecutor Vincent T. Bugliosi asked on cross-examination “…Eight bodies are no big thing to you?”

“Well, are they?” asked the pale, dark-haired young woman. “Are one million dead because of napalm, because of your justice a big thing? It doesn’t seem to be to you all.”

The 22-year-old convicted murderess, nicknamed “Sadie Glutz” and “Sexy Sadie,” confessed Tuesday before the jury that will decide whether she lives or dies that she killed musician Gary Hinman and actress Sharon Tate.

She testified that for the first time since the Hinman killing and the seven Tate-LaBianca murders in July-August, 1969, she was telling the truth.

The truth, she said, is that Manson had nothing to do with the murders. It is all her fault because she killed Hinman to protect “her love” — Manson, and Bobby Beausoleil was convicted for her crime.

And, she and Linda Kasabian, the state’s key witness, thought up the idea of “copycat killings” to free Beausoleil and Linda picked out the victims.

According to her testimony Thursday, she lied when she told the Los Angeles County Grand Jury that Manson had directed his followers to kill those seven people.

And, that she lied when she said:
– None of killers were on drugs on the nights of Aug. 9 and 10, 1969, the nights of the murders.

– Linda Kasabian did not go into the Tate house.

– Manson came along the second night and directed Charles (Tex) Watson, Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten into the house of the murdered couple, Leno and Rosemary LaBianca.

It was her reality at the time, Miss Atkins said, but it really was not true, and she lied to grand jurors because she wanted attention from Manson but he wouldn’t give her all she wanted.

Sweeping her hand to encompass an imaginary headline, she said, “Flash: Susan Denise Atkins – Charles Manson – All Over the World.”

Attention. That was why she told the grand jury Manson was Jesus Christ returned to earth, why she had called the 36-year-old convict the “devil,” and “The Soul,” she said.

Manson was not at Spahn ranch the night she and the others left for the Tate killings, Miss Atkins claimed.

“Do you think Charles Manson is a second coming of Jesus Christ?” Bugliosi asked.

“Maybe yes,” she said. “Maybe no.”

When the prosecutor pressed her on the question again, however, the witness responded:

“To me, in my head he (Manson) was God.”

And, Bugliosi said, she would kill for her God, wouldn’t she?

“I would commit anything for my God,” she cried.

She talked about what she had done to Sharon Tate without a hint of remorse.

“I didn’t relate to Sharon Tate as being anything but a store mannequin,” she said. “She sounded like an IBM machine.

“She kept begging and pleading and begging and pleading and I got sick of listening to it, so I stabbed her.”

Why had she murdered?

“Seemed like a good idea at the time,” she said in response to Bugliosi’s question. “It was right. My brother (Bobby Beausoleil) was in jail.

“It would have worked if I had not talked to Virginia Graham and Ronni Howard (Sybil Brand Institute dormitory mates). Bobby would be free.”

Once again, she insisted that she had killed Hinman because he was going to shoot Manson.

As Manson cut Hinman across the left ear and turned to flee, Miss Atkins said, she stabbed the musician, got his gun and eventually killed the 34-year-old victim when he threatened to get Manson.

But, she said, she never told Manson about Hinman’s death until the Tate-LaBianca trial began, nor did she tell him about the seven Tate-LaBianca murders during the weeks the “family” lived in Death Valley after the killings. And, Manson never asked.

Why, Bugliosi asked, had she waited until Tuesday to relate the supposedly true account of Linda Kasablan’s role the murders?

“I didn’t because I didn’t,” she said.

If she loved her “brother,” Bobby Beausoleil, and wanted to free him for a crime she had committed, the prosecutor asked, why did she wait until this week when Beausoleil has been convicted and is on Death Row?

“Because I didn’t see no wrong in what I did,” Miss Atkins said.

Bugliosi asked again why she had done it.

“That’s what I did,” she responded.

“And you did it because you did it because you did it?” Bugliosi said and sat down, ending his cross-examination.

By JOHN KENDALL