Digital Dying By: Justin Nobel

Susan Atkins, part of the murderous Manson Family, was sentenced to life in prison. She was denied parole 18 times and after being diagnosed with terminal brain cancer she was denied a compassionate release. “She will be set free when judged by God,” said a family member of one of her victims.

Diane McCloud was freed from jail earlier this week, but only so she could die. McCloud, 48, was in Nassau County jail for shoplifting more than $3,500 worth of goods from Target. “She's terminal,” said her lawyer. “It's just so she can die easier and pain-free.” McCloud's case was unusual, usually dying prisoners end up dying in prison. Many large correctional facilities have nursing homes, and some, like Louisiana State Penitentiary, in Angola, the largest maximum security prison in the United States, even offer hospice care—the program was recently highlighted in a documentary shown on the Oprah Winfrey Network. According to a 2005 New York Times article, the number of lifers has almost doubled in the last decade. In 2005, some 132,000 prisoners were serving life sentences, according to the article; for murder, burglary, drugs and other crimes. Many prisoners will die without anyone noticing. But not all. Here are a few of the nation's most famous prison deaths..

Susan Atkins, member of the Manson Family – Manson and his followers murdered nine people in California during the summer of 1969. Atkins, known within the family as Sadie Mae Glutz, later said that she believed Manson to be Jesus. She bore a son by one of the group's members that Manson named Zezozose Zadfrack Glutz. Atkins was convicted for her participation in eight of the killings, including the murder of Sharon Tate, the wife of famous French-Polish film director, Roman Polanski. Tate was eight months pregnant at the time. Atkins received the death sentence but it was commuted to life in prison. She became a born-again Christian, taught prison classes and received a commendation for assisting officials in a suicide attempt.  Yet she was denied parole 18 times, becoming the longest-incarcerated female inmate in the California penal system.

Other Great Reads: The sad slow death of female serial killers, from “Monster” to Mary Ann Cotton

In April 2008, it was revealed Atkins had terminal brain cancer. One leg had already been amputated and she was given less than six months to live. Her lawyer said she could barely speak and that she couldn't sit up in bed without assistance. He requested a “compassionate release”, something that many in the prison reform community, who regarded keeping Atkins in prison as akin to torture, supported. But the victim's family members reacted strongly. “She will be set free when judged by God,” said Debra Tate, a relative of Sharon. “It's important that she die in incarceration.” And she did, on September 24, 2009, at a nursing center in the Central California Women's Facility, in Chowchilla, California.

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Planking is a trending internet craze where people take photos of themselves in Superman-like poses, lying flat on surfaces like railings, rooftops and police cars. A 20 year old Australian man recently fell to his death from an apartment balcony while planking.

It was a strange year for weather and perhaps an even stranger one for dying, here are some of the weirdest deaths of 2011:

Stabbed to death at a cockfight - Jose Luis Ochoa was attending an illegal cockfight in Tulare County, California when he was stabbed in the leg by a cock that had a knife attached to one of its limbs. Ochoa was taken to the hospital where he was declared dead. He was reportedly a regular participant at organized cockfights and had previously been fined for owning or training animals for fighting.

Fell from a balcony while planking - Acton Beale, a 20 year old Australian, fell from the balcony of an apartment in Brisbane while trying to plank on the railing. Planking is a trending internet craze where people take photos of themselves in Superman-like poses, lying flat on some surface, with arms at their side. Plankers then post the photos to social media websites like facebook and YouTube. Just weeks before, in Brisbane, another 20 year old was arrested for planking on the roof of a police car. Other plankers have been photographed lying on railroad tracks, in the middle of the road, and in trees.

Other Great Reads: The world's dumbest deaths, now on TV

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A number of famous figures died last week, among the less well known famous that also died was a New Zealand drag queen named Carmen Rupe.

The past week saw the death of three very different famous figures: North Korean dictator, Kim Jong Il; Czech playwright and president, Vaclav Havel and Cesaria Evora, a musical sensation from the Cape Verde Islands known as the Barefoot Diva, because she never performed in shoes. Of course, many less well known famous people died as well. Among them was a New Zealand drag queen, an early Soviet rocket scientist, a Japanese professional wrestler, an American rapper and a legendary British serial killer:

Umanosuke Ueda, Japanese professional wrestler - Ueda was famous for his bleached blond hair and handlebar mustache. He was born Yuji Ueda, but changed his name to Umanosuke, inspired by a famous late Shogunate Period samurai of the same name. Ueda fought in the Japan Pro Wrestling Alliance through the 1960s. From June 11, 1976 to July 28, 1976 he was the International Wrestling Alliance World Heavyweight Champion. During the 1980s, he appeared as a henchman on a cult Japanese television show called Takeshi's Castle, about a count who owns a castle and sets up impossible challenges for players to get to him. Ueda died of respiratory failure on December 21, 2011.

Donald Neilson, British serial killer – Neilson was born Donald Nappey but changed the family name after his daughter was repeatedly bullied at school because her last name sounded like the word nappy. He worked as a builder but turned to crime when his business failed, committing house burglaries by the hundreds. He went by a variety of nicknames, including The Phantom and Handy Andy, but the most popular was The Black Panther. By the 1970s he was robbing small post offices and in 1974, he committed his first murders, shooting dead two sub-postmasters and the husband of a sub-postmistress. He became the most wanted man in Britain. In 1975, he kidnapped the heiress to a large bus transport company fortune and demanded a 50,000 pound ransom. Due to a series of police bungles he never got the money. The girl was later found hanging from a wire at the bottom of a drainage shaft. Neilson was finally arrested in 1975, convicted of murder and sent to prison to serve five consecutive life sentences. He died on December 18, 2011, after suffering from breathing difficulties.

Other Great Reads: Famous death row last words and the weird art they inspired

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People come to Paris to shop and eat but also for the cemeteries, such as the Montparnasse Cemetery in the south of the city. Cemetery visitors may not know it but they are part of a growing movement known as grief tourism. (Photo by Justin Nobel)

People come to Paris for the food, the museums and the shops but also for the cemeteries. There is the Pere-Lachaise Cemetery, which opened in 1804 and receives more than a million and a half visitors a year, many of them coming to see the grave of legendary rock singer Jim Morrison. At Montparnasse Cemetery, a grid of mossy tombs and stark stone crosses, are literary luminaries such as Susan Sontag, Guy de Maupassant, Charles Baudelaire and Jean-Paul Sartre. And in Saint-Denis, on the northern outskirts of the city, are buried many of the most famous kings and queens of France, including Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, who were reinterred here after being removed from their mass grave near the Madeleine. Few people would admit to having come to Paris to see cemeteries but dark tourism, also known as grief tourism, is a very real phenomenon. Each year people travel far and wide to see sights linked to some of the world's greatest massacres. Here are just a few.

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In 1854, Balthasar Gerard assassinated the popular Dutch independence leader, William the Silent. City magistrates decreed his flesh be torn from his bones with pincers in six different places and his heart ripped from his chest while he was still alive.

Last week marked the 38th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, an event that only grows more epic with time. Several new books address the assassination, including one by horror guru Stephen King, entitled, 11/22/63, about a Maine school teacher who travels back in time in an attempt to stop Lee Harvey Oswald from killing Kennedy. While JFK's death still burns bright in the mind of Americans it is only one in a long list of historic assassinations. Some of them are even more complex and vicious than the simple case of a “lone gunman.”

Other Great Reads: The history of manhunts, from Sabbah the Assassin to Yahya the Engineer

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Ned Kelly, a famous Australian cop killer from the 1870s, will finally receive a proper burial. Some people are rejoicing, others are mighty pissed.

Ned Kelly murdered three police officers in Australia during the 1870s and was hung in 1880, sometime this month he'll finally be properly buried, but not everyone is happy. “He was an outlaw, a thief and, unfortunately for my family, a murderer,” said Mick Kennedy, a police officer near Melbourne whose great grandfather, Sergeant Michael Kennedy, was shot dead by Kelly in 1878. “My great grandmother was left a widow with six children and there was no public service for her.”

Ned's remains were found in a mass grave in Melbourne's Pentridge Prison, in 2009. Most Americans have never heard of Ned Kelly but in Australia the man is a legend. And just who was he?

Other Great Reads: The history of manhunts, from Sabbah the Assassin to Yahya the Engineer

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Gary Gilmore was the first person executed in the U.S. after the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. His last words—“Let's do it”—have inspired art and advertising.

“You're not about to witness an execution; you're about to witness a murder,” said Stephen Woods, just over a month ago, from the execution chamber at Texas State Penitentiary, in Huntsville, Texas. The prison, nicknamed the Walls Unit, is the oldest state prison in Texas, opened in 1849. It is also the most active execution chamber in the country, it has carried out more than 450 executions since 1982. Woods, a drug dealer, was sentenced to death for a double murder that occurred in May 2001. He claimed he was high on LSD the night of the killings and that he was lighting a cigarette for one of the victims when an accomplice, now serving life in prison, shot the man in the head then killed the other victim. “I've never killed anybody, never,” Wood's final statement continues. “This whole thing is wrong…Warden, if you're going to murder someone, go ahead and do it. Pull that trigger…Goodbye.” At 6:22 p.m., on September 13, Woods was executed.

Other Great Reads: Inside the Execution Chamber with Director Werner Herzog

Along with the last meal, last words are one of the few rights granted prisoners in the moments before they die. No matter what a prisoner says in their final statement, they will die. But that doesn't mean their words can't live on. Some final statements are remembered for their brazenness—“Kiss my ass” said John Wayne Gacy, a Chicago-born serial killer who murdered more than 30 teenage boys between 1972 and 1978, burying many victims in the crawlspace of his home—while others for their hokiness: “I'd rather be fishing,” said Jimmy Glass, put to death in Louisiana in 1987 for robbing and murdering an elderly couple. Some are witty, as is the case with George Appel. Scant information is available regarding his life and crime but his last words pop up across the internet: “Well, gentlemen, you are about to see a baked Appel.”

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