Manson Follower Leslie Van Houten Recommended For Parole After More Than 50 Years In Prison

Leslie Van Houten, 73, who assisted Charles Manson in killing two people, was recommended for parole on Tuesday.

She has been recommended for parole many times since her imprisonment but was rejected each time by former California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) and current Gov. Gavin Newsom (D). 

Van Houten was a member of the cult called the Manson Family. They were convicted of killing nine people, most notably actress Sharon Tate.

Van Houten took part in the 1969 murders of Leno LaBianca, who was a supermarket manager, and his wife, Rosemary. She was 19 years old at the time of the murders. 

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The now 73-year-old was convicted in 1971 and again in 1978, leading to her life imprisonment sentence. 

Van Houten is still a danger to society, Newsom maintained. When he rejected her parole, he explained that her explanations for her participation in the LaBianca killings were “inconsistent” and “inadequate.”

At her parole hearings, she talked about her parent’s divorce, her drug and alcohol abuse and her forced illegal abortion—all of which led to her mental and emotional vulnerability. Manson was said to take advantage of emotionally insecure individuals to use them as “empty vessels that would accept anything he poured.”

In an attempt to overturn Newsom’s decision to reject Van Houten’s parole, the Second District Court of Appeal in Los Angeles stated that there is “no evidence to support the Governor’s conclusions.”

In the past, some criminals who asked for parole in the state of California were only kept in prison because of the seriousness of their crimes.