A little over 52 years ago, Leslie Van Houten entered the home of Los Angeles grocer Leno LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary. Along with other members of the Manson Family cult she viciously murdered the couple, smearing their blood on the walls of their home.
In recent years, California parole panels have recommended five times that Van Houten be released from prison, most recently this Tuesday, according to CBS News.
Van Houten, now 72, received a life sentence for her participation in the murders and is housed at the California Institute for Women, located in Riverside County outside of Los Angeles. She was 19 when she entered the LaBianca’s home in August 1969.
In court, Van Houten admitted to stabbing Rosemary LaBianca 14 times. Though she has been described as a “model prisoner” at least some members of the LaBianca family have spoken in opposition to her potential release.
A day before the LaBianca murders, other members of the cult led by Charles Manson killed pregnant actress Sharon Tate, celebrity hairstylist Jay Sebring and two others. Van Houten did not participate in those murders.
In April 2016, decades into Van Houten’s sentence, a two-person panel of parole commissioners first recommended she be freed. By 2019, Van Houten had already made a dozen attempts to be freed from prison.
Previous parole board recommendations for release were rejected twice by former Gov. Jerry Brown, “who cited the horrific nature of the murders and Van Houten's eager participation,” according to CNN. Current Gov. Gavin Newsom also rejected two recommendations.
Van Houten is still challenging Newson’s rejection from last year in two courts, said her attorney Rich Pfeiffer. At the time of that rejection, Newsom said Van Houten still “poses an unreasonable danger to society.”
Pfeiffer said the commissioners on Tuesday addressed every reason Brown and Newsom have used to reject her pleas for release. He said this will make it more difficult for the governor to do it again.
However, “he [Newsom] wants votes so I predict he will reverse this grant as well,” said Pfeiffer, according to CBS.
Newsom won a recall election this year and is running again in the 2022 gubernatorial election. Tuesday’s recommendation will likely be headed back to his desk after a 120-day procedural review.
Before joining the “Manson Family” cult Van Houten, a former homecoming princess, ran away from her home to San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury District at age 17. While traveling along the California coast, she was introduced to Manson, who was then living at an abandoned movie ranch on the outskirts of Los Angeles.
She was recruited to be part of Manson’s cult, which was built on his prediction of a race war “he planned to start by committing a series of random, terrifying murders,” said CBS.
Although Manson did not personally participate in the 1969 murders, he also received a life sentence for orchestrating the crimes. He died of natural causes in 2017, when he was 83, at a California hospital while serving his sentence.
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