LOS ANGELES (AP) — Charles Manson follower Leslie Van Houten, a former homecoming princess who at 19 helped carry out the shocking killings of a wealthy Los Angeles couple at the direction of the violent and manipulative cult leader, walked out of a California prison Tuesday after serving more than 50 years of a life sentence.
Van Houten, now 73, “was released to parole supervision,” the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said in a statement.
She left the California Institution for Women in Corona, east of Los Angeles, in the early morning hours and was driven to transitional housing, her attorney Nancy Tetreault said.
“She’s still trying to get used to the idea that this real,” Tetreault told The Associated Press.
Days earlier Gov. Gavin Newsom announced he would not fight a state appeals court ruling that Van Houten should be granted parole. He said it was unlikely the state Supreme Court would consider an appeal.
The 1969 slayings and subsequent trials captivated the nation during an era of strife marked by the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement and the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy.
At a parole hearing in 2016, Van Houten said the murders were the start of what Manson believed was a coming race war he called “Helter Skelter,” after the Beatles song. He had his followers prepare to fight and learn to can food so they could go underground and live in a hole in the desert, she added.
Van Houten was sentenced to death in 1971 for helping Manson’s group carry out the killings of Leno LaBianca, a grocer in Los Angeles, and his wife, Rosemary. Her sentence was later commuted to life in prison when the California Supreme Court overturned the state’s death penalty law in 1972. Voters and state lawmakers eventually reinstated the death penalty, but it did not apply retroactively.
The LaBiancas were killed in their home, and their blood was smeared on the walls afterward. Van Houten later…
Read the full article here
Leave a Reply