Leslie van Houten: Manson death cult murderer deemed suitable for release by parole board

California governer Gavin Newsom has final say over potential release

Leslie Van Houten at a parole hearing at the California Institution for Women in Corona (AP)

A member of Charles Manson’s death cult has been deemed suitable for parole after serving more than four decades in prison.

Leslie Van Houten was 19 when she formed part of the group who stabbed to death wealthy grocer Leno LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary, in 1969.

The killing came a day after other followers of Manson murdered Sharon Tate, an actress who was pregnant, and four more people in Los Angeles.

California’s board of parole ruled Van Houten could be released following a meeting at a women’s prison in Corona. It is the third time the killer has been deemed ready to leave prison.

After a 150-day review process California’s new Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, will make the final decision on whether the 69-year-old should be released.

Former governor Jerry Brown blocked Van Houten’s release twice previously.

Tate’s sister, Debra Tate, attended the parole hearing on Wednesday and said that “I just have to hope and pray that the governor comes to the right decision” – keeping Van Houten behind bars.

In his decision last year, Mr Brown acknowledged Van Houten’s youth at the time of the crime, her abuse at the hands of Manson and that she had been well-behaved as a prisoner. He said she still put too much blame on her former mentor for the crimes, however.

Nonetheless, the killer’s lawyer Rich Pfeiffer predicted it would be “much more difficult” for Mr Newsom to block his client’s release this time around. ”She chose to go with Manson. She chose to listen to him. And she acknowledges that,” he added.

Van Houten was first convicted of murder in 1971, then again in 1978 following two retrials.

At her last hearing, Van Houten said she had had a troubled childhood. She was devastated when her parents divorced when she was 14, she said, and soon after she began spending time with her school’s outcast crowd and using drugs.

When she was 17, she and her boyfriend ran away to San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury District during the city’s Summer of Love.

She was travelling up and down the California coast when acquaintances led her to Manson. He was holed up at an abandoned movie ranch on the outskirts of Los Angeles where he had recruited what he called a “family” to survive what he insisted would be a race war he would launch by committing a series of random, horrifying murders.

Van Houten said she joined several other members of the group in killing the LaBiancas, carving up Leno LaBianca’s body and smearing the couple’s blood on the walls.

Manson died in 2017 of natural causes at a California hospital while serving a life sentence.

Earlier this month, a California parole panel recommended for the first time that Manson follower Robert Beausoleil be freed. Beausoleil was convicted of killing musician Gary Hinman.

No one who took part in the Tate-LaBianca murders has been released from prison.

Additional reporting by AP