201901.30
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Manson follower Leslie Van Houten again seeks parole

by in News

CHINO — The youngest follower of murderous cult leader Charles Manson will again ask a state panel to recommend her for parole.

  • Three female defendants in the Manson court case are shown, from left to right: Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, Leslie Van Houten, March 29 , 1971 as they return to court to hear the penalty ending a nine-month trial in the Tate-LaBianca murders of August 1969. All three, plus Charles Manson, were decreed the death sentence in the gas chamber. (AP Photo)

  • A scowling Charles Manson goes to lunch after an outbreak in court that resulted in his ejection, along with three women co-defendants, from the Tate murder trial, Dec. 21, 1970. The outburst started after Leslie Van Houten said she wanted to fire her new lawyer, a replacement for missing Ronald Hughes, and hire a woman attorney. Before she was ejected to an adjoining room with the others, Ms. Van Houten slapped a bailiff and told the judge “I’d strike you if I could.” (AP Photo/George Brich)

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  • File – Leslie Van Houten, 19, a member of Charles Manson’s “family” who is charged with the murders of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, is escorted by two deputy sheriffs as she leaves the courtroom in Los Angeles, Dec. 19, 1969 after a brief hearing at which time she was appointed a new attorney. The court appointed Marvin Part to represented Ms. Van Houten after her previous attorney said she and her family could not pay his fees. (AP Photo/George Brich)

  • Leslie Van Houten waits for the start of her parole board hearing on Wednesday, Sept. 6, 2017, at the California Institution for Women. Leslie Van Houten was the youngest of Charles Manson’s followers to take part in one of the nation’s most notorious killings
    (Stan Lim, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)

  • In this April 14, 2016 file photo, former Charles Manson follower Leslie Van Houten is shown during a break from her hearing before the California Board of Parole Hearings at the California Institution for Women in Chino, Calif. (AP Photo/Nick Ut, File)

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Leslie Van Houten, 69 and serving a life term, is scheduled for a parole hearing Wednesday at the California Institute for Women. She was twice recommended for parole by a state panel, the last time in 2017, and her lawyer expects a similar decision this time.

“It is very unlikely that she would be denied parole,” Rich Pfeiffer said.

In prison, Van Houten has been a model inmate, earned a master’s degree in counseling and mentored inmates.

If she gets a parole recommendation then it will be Gov. Gavin Newsom’s first chance to decide on her freedom. His predecessor, Jerry Brown, twice blocked Van Houten’s release, saying she still laid too much blame on Manson for the 1969 stabbing deaths of wealthy grocer Leno LaBianca and his wife Rosemary.

Van Houten, then 19, was among those who murdered the couple a day after other Manson followers killed pregnant actress Sharon Tate and four others in Los Angeles.

In his decision last January, Brown acknowledged Van Houten’s youth at the time of the crime, her more than four decades of good behavior as a prisoner and her abuse at the hands of Manson.

“However,” he wrote, “these factors are outweighed by negative factors that demonstrate she remains unsuitable for parole.”

Debra Tate, sister of the murdered actress, will attend Wednesday’s hearing and opposes Van Houten’s release. She believes Van Houten remains a danger.

“The profile of any of these individuals in a free society is totally different from them in a controlled environment,” Tate said. “When the pressures of regular life and a free society take place, that is when it is likely to recur.”

At her last hearing, Van Houten described a troubled childhood. She said she was devastated when her parents divorced when she was 14. Soon after, she said, she began hanging out with her school’s outcast crowd and using drugs. When she was 17, she and her boyfriend ran away to San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury District during the city’ Summer of Love.

She was traveling up and down the California coast when acquaintances led her to Manson. He was holed up at an abandoned movie ranch on the outskirts of Los Angeles where he had recruited what he called a “family” to survive what he insisted would be a race war he would launch by committing a series of random, horrifying murders.

Van Houten said she joined several other members of the group in killing the LaBiancas, carving up Leno LaBianca’s body and smearing the couple’s blood on the walls.

No one who took part in the Tate-LaBianca murders has been released from prison.

Manson died in 2017 of natural causes at a California hospital while serving a life sentence.

Earlier this month, a California parole panel recommended for the first time that Manson follower Robert Beausoleil be freed.

Beausoleil was convicted of killing musician Gary Hinman.