Van Houten has been in prison for nearly five decades now
Gavin Newsom, the governor of California has denied parole for Charles Manson follower Leslie Van Houten, making it the fourth time a governor rejected her release.
The parole was recommended by a California panel in July, as Van Houten’s prison sentence was nearing five decades. Newsom had reversed it on a previous occasion and his successor, Jerry Brown, blocked it twice.
Van Houten’s trial
Rich Pfeiffer, Van Houten’s attorney, stated that they will be appealing the governor’s decision. He said that there will be no way of getting Newsom to grant her parole, so they will need to appeal to the courts.
Van Houten’s is serving a life sentence after helping Charles Manson and his group in killing Los Angeles grocer Leno LaBianca and his wife Rosemary in August 2019. Van Houten brutally stabbed the couple and smeared the walls with their blood. She was 19 at that time.
On the previous day, other followers of Manson killed pregnant actress Sharon Tate and four others.
Newsom’s reason for not granting her parole was that evidence showed that she currently poses an unreasonable danger to society if she gets released.
During a parole hearing held in 2017, Van Houten spoke about her rough childhood, including her parents’ divorce when she was 14, drug usage, and running away with her boyfriend when she was 17. While travelling through the coast, she came across Manson.
Manson had been staying at the edge of Los Angeles with his “family” that he recruited to survive the race war, that would start by random, and horrifying murders. He died in 2017 of natural causes at a hospital in California. He was also given a life sentence after getting arrested.
(Cover: Daily Mail)