Manson Family Member Leslie Van Houten Gets Parole Reinstated
A California appeals court reversed Gov. Gavin Newsom’s decision to deny parole for Leslie Van Houten, above, a follower of cult leader Charles Manson who has spent more than 50 years behind bars.(Stan Lim / Los Angeles Daily News)
After over 50yrs in a California federal prison, Manson Family member, Leslie Van Houten has been granted the possibility of parole. This overturning an earlier decision by Gov. Gavin Newsom to block her release.
Tuesday’s decision does not automatically mean Van Houten will be released. The state could still appeal the ruling to the California Supreme Court. Neither the governor’s office nor the state Attorney General’s Office immediately returned a message seeking comment.
Van Houten, now 73, is serving a potential life prison sentence for taking part in the killings of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca in their Los Feliz home more than 50 years ago.
The Manson killings shook the nation for their brutality and ultimately brought an end to the hippie movement and the summer of love that so many in the nation wanted to continue.
Some of Van Houten’s parole hearings aired on Court TV and attracted nationwide media attention. Director John Waters has advocated for Van Houten’s parole and visited her in prison. In 2009, he wrote a first-person, five-part series titled “Leslie Van Houten: A Friendship” for Huffington Post.
In the 2-1 ruling by the panel from California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal, Associate Justice Helen I. Bendix wrote, “Van Houten has shown extraordinary rehabilitative efforts, insight, remorse, realistic parole plans, support from family and friends, favorable institutional reports, and, at the time of the governor’s decision, had received four successive grants of parole.
“… Under these circumstances Van Houten’s unchanging historical risk factors do not provide some evidence that she is currently dangerous and unsuitable for parole,” Bendix wrote, with Associate Justice Victoria Gerrard Chaney concurring in the 58-page ruling that reversed the governor’s 2022 decision and reinstated the grant of parole for Van Houten.
In a dissenting opinion, Presiding Justice Frances Rothschild concluded that “the record contains some evidence Van Houten lacked insight into the commitment offense” and found that was sufficient when “coupled with the heinous nature of that crime” to “provide some evidence of current dangerousness and support the governor’s decision.”
Four earlier parole recommendations for Van Houten were rejected by governors, including Newsom.
Van Houten was convicted of murder and conspiracy for participating with fellow Manson family members Charles “Tex” Watson and Patricia Krenwinkel in the August 1969 killings of grocer Leno LaBianca, 44, and his 38-year-old wife, Rosemary, who were each stabbed multiple times in their Los Feliz home.
The former Monrovia High School cheerleader — who was 19 at the time — did not participate in the Manson family’s killings of pregnant actress Sharon Tate and four others in a Benedict Canyon mansion the night before.
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