Leslie Van Houten was freed from a California prison on Tuesday, a stunning development after she had served more than a half-century for one of the infamous murders carried about by Charles Manson followers.
Here are some things to know about her release, part of one of the most notorious murder cases in modern American history.
She’s been out before, though not free
Even by the standards of the Manson Family, the 73-year-old Van Houten has experienced a legal odyssey, with multiple trials.
She was originally sentenced to death for helping Manson’s followers carry out the August 1969 killings of Leno LaBianca, a grocer in Los Angeles, and his wife, Rosemary. Those murders came one night after the shocking killings of actress Sharon Tate and four others.
Van Houten, then 19, stabbed Rosemary LaBianca, though arguments have persisted whether that act was pre- or post-mortem. Her sentence was later commuted to life in prison when the California Supreme Court overturned the state’s death penalty law in 1972.
But that first conviction was then thrown out on appeal, as her attorney died during trial and she wasn’t granted a delay.
A subsequent court proceeding resulted in a mistrial, with seven jurors voting for a murder conviction and five believing she was guilty of manslaughter.
The district attorney’s office wouldn’t consider a manslaughter plea deal, and she was then convicted of murder at a mid-1978 trial. But for about six months before that trial, she was out on bail and attended classes to become a legal secretary.
What was different this time
California is one of only two U.S. states in which a governor can reverse a parole board decision. That authority has been exercised by multiple governors over the years with respect to Manson associates convicted of murder, including on five occasions after the state board recommended parole for Van Houten.
Those governor decisions have been approved by the courts, but California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office erred after a 2020 reversal and Van Houten legal’s team successfully took up the matter with the state’s appellate court.
The judges took issue with Newsom’s claim that Van Houten did not adequately explain how she fell under Manson’s influence. At her parole hearings, she has discussed at length how her parents’ divorce, her drug and alcohol abuse, and a forced illegal abortion led her down a path that left her vulnerable to him.
Hadar Aviram, author of 2020’s Yesterday’s Monsters: The Manson Family Cases and the Illusion of Parole, wrote in a recent blog entry on her website that, “what paved the way to Van Houten’s release was the re-emergence of adolescence as a relevant factor for parole.”
There’s been much discussion in recent years involving neuroscience and the teen brain and what is an appropriate sentence for young persons convicted of violent crimes.
Van Houten was a drug-consuming teenage runaway who had experienced a traumatic abortion when she met Manson, in his mid-30s at the time. Manson then plied his followers with drugs and used sex to manipulate them, when not subjecting them to his violent prophecies.
She’s had supporters for her release
Relatives of the victims are appalled by the prospect of Van Houten being released.
“My family and I are heartbroken because we’re once again reminded of all the years that we have not had my father and my stepmother with us,” Cory LaBianca, Leno LaBianca’s daughter, told The Associated Press last week. “My children and my grandchildren never got an opportunity to get to know either of them, which has been a huge void for my family.”
B.C.-based Karlene Faith, who died in 2017, was among those who supported Van Houten’s release. The Simon Fraser University professor met Van Housen in the early 1970s while teaching in California prisons, and in 2001 wrote The Long Prison Journey of Leslie Van Houten.
The most famous Van Houten supporter is likely filmmaker John Waters, who has visited Van Houten in prison since the 1980s and wrote about her in one of the essays in the 2010 book Role Models.
“Somebody has to stick up for the worst people in the world. They weren’t born bad,” Waters said in a New York Times profile.
Waters has argued it is believable that a hardened criminal like Manson, who had spent much of his teens and 20s in prison, could influence an LSD-addled young person.
Not the 1st convicted of murder to be released
Van Houten spent about 53 years in custody. According to a 2018 Justice Department report, the median time served in state prison for murder across the U.S. is 18 years. Aviram, in an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times in May, said her data indicated that the median time for murder convictions in California has risen to 28 years in recent times, with the prison population getting older and the state last carrying out executions in 2006.
Van Houten is the first member of the cult involved in either of the Tate or LaBianca murders to be released, but not the first with a murder conviction to be released.
Steve (Clem) Grogan was sentenced to death in 1971 for the killing of elderly ranch hand Donald Shea, a murder that took place two weeks after the grisly Tate-LaBianca weekend but was little known for a time. The judge in the case re-sentenced him to life imprisonment, stating that Grogan was “too stupid and too hopped on drugs to decide anything on his own.”
Despite that life sentence, Grogan has been out of prison since the 1980s, likely earning credit for telling authorities in 1977 where Shea was buried.
Other Manson followers convicted of crimes other than homicides have been out for years, including Lynette (Squeaky) Fromme, who once attempted to shoot then-president Gerald Ford.
Which Manson Family members are still behind bars?
Bruce Davis, Bobby Beausoleil and Patricia Krenwinkel, all between 75 and 80, have all been recommended for parole at various times, but in each case where that has happened, the governor in power has reversed the decision.
Charles (Tex) Watson, 77, helped carry out the murders at the Tate gathering and at the residence of the LaBiancas. He is generally considered the least likely candidate to be released and in late 2021 was denied parole for an 18th time.
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