Leslie Van Houten, former Manson family member, released from prison after 5 decades
LOS ANGELES — Former Manson family member Leslie Van Houten was released from prison Tuesday after more than five decades behind bars, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said.
Van Houten, 73, was serving a life sentence for her role in the murders of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca in Los Angeles in 1969.
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Gov. Gavin Newsom denied Van Houten’s parole three times, and Gov. Jerry Brown also had denied Van Houten’s parole when he was in office.
But Newsom was overruled by a California appeals court earlier this year, and on Friday, he said he would not challenge the appellate court’s decision to allow parole for Van Houten.
Newsom was “disappointed by the Court of Appeal’s decision to release Ms. Van Houten,” Erin Mellon, communications director for the Office of the Governor, said Tuesday in a statement.
A former homecoming queen from Monrovia, Van Houten became involved with the Manson family in the 1960s. Supporters described her as a misguided teen under the influence of LSD on the night of the killings.
She was involved in the second of the Manson family murders — the killings of Los Feliz grocer Leno LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary, at their home in 1969.
Van Houten and another woman held down Rosemary LaBianca as Charles “Tex” Watson stabbed Leno LaBianca. After Watson stabbed Rosemary LaBianca, he handed Van Houten a knife. She testified to stabbing the woman at least 14 more times.
“And I took one of the knives, and Patricia had one — a knife — and we started stabbing and cutting up the lady,” Van Houten testified in 1971. (Patricia Krenwinkle was a co-defendant and family member.)
The day before the LaBianca murders, Charles Manson followers had killed Sharon Tate and her friends Jay Sebring, Abigail Folger and Steven Parent in a brutal attack at a home on Cielo Drive in Benedict Canyon.
