Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday announced he would give up trying to deny parole to one of Charles Manson’s murderous “family” of followers.
The decision clears the way to set Leslie Van Houten free after more than 50 years in prison for the murders of a Southern California couple. They died a day after actress Sharon Tate and three friends were found dead in a killing spree that terrorized Los Angeles in the summer of 1969.
In May a California appeals court overruled Newsom and found that Van Houten, 73, was entitled to parole from her life sentence. The governor could have appealed the decision to the California Supreme Court.
“The governor is disappointed by the Court of Appeal’s decision to release Ms. Van Houten, but will not pursue further action as efforts to further appeal are unlikely to succeed,” Erin Mellon, the governor’s communications director, said in a statement.
Van Houten’s attorney, Nancy Tetreault, said she would be paroled in weeks, NBC News reported.
Van Houten was 19 when the murders were committed, making her the youngest of Manson’s devotees. The parole board had recommended her for early release five times since 2016, but she was denied three times by Newsom and twice by his predecessor, fellow Democrat Jerry Brown.
Manson died in prison in 2017 at age 83, having become one of the 20th century’s most notorious criminals for a killing spree in which he directed his mostly young and female followers to murder seven people. Prosecutors said the violence was part of a plan to incite a race war.
Van Houten was convicted of fatally stabbing grocery owner Leno LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary, in their Los Angeles home on Aug. 10, 1969.
The words “Death to Pigs” and “Healter Skelter” – a misspelled reference to a Beatles song – were found scrawled in the victims’ blood on the walls and refrigerator.
The previous night, members of Manson’s cult broke into the Los Angeles hillside home that Tate shared with her husband, filmmaker Roman Polanski, who was away in Europe at the time.
Tate, who was 26 and eight months pregnant, was slain along with three friends, coffee heiress Abigail Folger and her boyfriend Voytek Frykowski and hairstylist Jay Sebring. Another man, Steven Parent, 18, was the first to die that night, as he tried to leave the Polanski property after visiting a caretaker.
Van Houten was charged with conspiracy in the Tate killings, but was not present during the murders.
(Reporting Daniel Trotta; editing by Kim Coghill)
