LOS ANGELES (AP) — The governor of California said on Friday that he won’t ask the state Supreme Court to block parole for Charles Manson follower Leslie Van Houten. This means that she will be able to get out of jail after 53 years for two of the most notorious killings in American history.
In a short statement, the governor’s office said it was unlikely that the state’s highest court would hear an appeal of a lower court’s decision that Van Houten should be freed.
The message said that Gov. Gavin Newsom is sad.
“Even though it’s been more than 50 years since the Manson cult killed these people in a brutal way, the victims’ families still feel the effects,” said the statement.
Van Houten, who is now in her 70s, is serving a life term for helping Manson and his followers kill a Los Angeles grocer and his wife, Rosemary and Leno LaBianca, in 1969.
Van Houten could be released from the California Institution for Women in Corona in about two weeks, after the parole board looks at her record and handles the paperwork for her release. Her lawyer, Nancy Tetreault, said this.
Since 2016, she was suggested for release five times, but Newsom and the former governor, Jerry Brown, turned them all down.
But in May, a state appeals court said that Van Houten should be freed, citing her “extraordinary rehabilitative efforts, insight, remorse, realistic parole plans, support from family and friends, and good behavior reports while in prison.”
“She’s thrilled and overwhelmed,” Tetreault said.
She said, “She’s just glad that people see that she’s not the same person she was when she killed those people.”
Tetreault said that Van Houten will spend about a year in a halfway house after she gets out of jail. There, she will learn basic life skills like how to go to the food store and get a bank card.
“She has been locked up for 53 years…. “All she needs to do is figure out how to use an ATM, let alone a cell phone or a computer,” her lawyer said.
In August 1969, Van Houten and other followers of Charles Manson killed the LaBiancas in their home and smeared their blood on the walls. Van Houten later said that she put a pillowcase over Rosemary LaBianca’s head and held her down while others stabbed her. Then she stabbed the woman more than a dozen times herself.
In a phone chat with The Associated Press on Friday, Cory LaBianca, Leno LaBianca’s daughter, said, “My family and I are heartbroken because we’re reminded of all the years we haven’t had my father and my stepmother with us.”
Cory La Bianca, who is 75, said, “My children and grandchildren never got to know either of them, which has been a huge loss for my family.”
The killings of LaBianca happened the day after Sharon Tate and four other people were killed by people who followed Charles Manson. Van Houten did not take part in the killings of the Tate family.
Manson died in jail in 2017 of natural causes. He was 83 years old and had been locked up for almost 50 years.
