Manson family killer Leslie Van Houten granted parole

Almost 50 years after the shocking Manson Family murders one of the killers, Leslie Van Houten, has been granted parole in California.

Somewhat lost, deservedly, in the news about the progress of the already deadly Hurricane Irma, and the furor over the proposed repeal of DACA and the potential eventual deportation of 800,000 young people who have always considered the USA home is a story that would in the past have grabbed all of the headlines; the fact that Manson Family member Leslie Van Houten has been granted parole.

This week Van Houten, who was 19 when she participated in the Manson killings, met with the California parole board governing her incarceration for the 21st time, and, as was the case last year, was granted her request. Now it remains to be seen if Governor Jerry Brown will once again overtown the decision, as he did in 2016.

On several occasions, including at all of her parole hearings, Van Houten has admitted to her part in the killings of Leno and Rosemary La Bianca, well known Los Angeles grocers, in their home on August 9, 1969. She held down Mrs, La Bianca so that someone else could stab her and then also made use of the knife on the dying woman herself. She denies having been present a night earlier when Manson’s followers murdered pregnant actress Sharon Tate and several of her friends.

In the over forty years she has been in prison, Van Houten has gained several degrees and claims to be both remorseful and reformed. The surviving members of the Tate and La Bianca families however, especially Sharon Tate’s sister Debra, have continued to lobby against her release.

None of those convicted for their parts in Manson killings has ever been released from prison, although Susan Atkins died in prison in 2009. Manson himself, who is now 82 years old, remains incarcerated as well.

Van Houten bases her appeal for release primarily on the fact that she was so young and impressionable in 1969 and was fearful that if she did not do as Manson wished she would be killed, which she and other members of the ‘Manson Family’ have claimed he threatened to do often.

In overturning her parole last year Governor Brown told the board he did not feel that Van Houten had adequately explained how a wealthy, very privileged ‘model student’ had been turned so quickly into a savage, self-admitted killer. To try and address this issue this time around Van Houten’s lawyers called in Catherine Share, an admitted former Manson family member who was not a part of the killings and has never been convicted of a crime.

She testified that, like her, the 19 year old Van Houten had simply been too scared to leave, or even to go against Manson’s wishes. Her words seem to have swung the parole board, but it remains to be seen if Jerry Brown will agree.