MANSON KILLER COULD WALK
Charles Manson follower Leslie Van Houten, 70, could get out on parole 51 years after infamous brutal murders
CULT leader Charles Manson's youngest follower, Leslie Van Houten, has been recommended for parole after serving nearly five decades in prison.
The hearing marks the fourth time the Board of Parole Hearings found Van Houten suitable for release, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
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Leslie Van Houten is serving life for her role in the Charles Manson-directed murders of Los Angeles grocer Leno LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary, in August 1969.
After a 120-day review process, Van Houten's case will again rest with California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who could deny parole, although that move could be challenged in court.
Previously, Newsom has blocked her release once and his predecessor, Jerry Brown, did it twice.
Van Houten attorney Rich Pfeiffer revealed to in an email that the parole hearing “went really well.”
Pfeiffer expects Newsom to reverse the decision again, however, "the courts will have a harder time denying a writ than they did in the past.”
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In May, an appeals court denied Pfeiffer's request to release Van Houten on bail or her own recognizance.
His motion argued that her age put her at high risk of contracting COVID-19 and noted that another prisoner in her housing unit had been infected.
At Van Houten's 2017 parole hearing, she blamed her troubled childhood on her parents' divorce,
She said that she became devastated and began hanging out with her school’s outcast crowd and using drugs at the age of 14.
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 traveling up and down the California coast when acquaintances led her to Manson.
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Van Houten was only 19 when she and other cult members fatally stabbed the LaBiancas, carved up Leno LaBianca’s body and smeared the couple’s blood on the walls.
The slayings came the day after other Manson followers, not including Van Houten, killed pregnant actress Sharon Tate and four others.
Charles Manson, who ordered his twisted followers to commit the gruesome killings with the aim of sparking a race war, died of natural causes in 2017.
Manson told them they were a reincarnation of the early Christians fighting the Roman establishment — and that they had to follow his bidding.
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The Manson Family was a semi-commune that lived in disused buildings, dilapidated houses and toured the west coast of America during the 1967 "Summer of Love" hippie phenomenon.
They moved as a large fluid group, with some fleeting members joining in with Manson's acid ramblings for days or weeks before moving on.
But a core group were devoted to Manson and hung on his every word, believing as he had told them that he was Christ.
He told them they were a reincarnation of the early Christians fighting the Roman establishment — and that they had to follow his bidding.
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Even prominent Hollywood celebs and music figures fell under Manson's spell, with Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson meeting him by chance and quickly allowing him and his followers to move into his Sunset Boulevard home.
Through Wilson, Manson met a showbiz manager Rudi Altobelli, who was renting a house to director Roman Polanski and his wife, Sharon Tate – who he would later murder.
In November 1968 Manson and his followers listened to The Beatles' White Album, which they became obsessed with and which somehow sparked their warped plan to spark a race war and prepare for the apocalypse.
The following year, Manson directed his mostly young, female followers to murder seven people.
They started with the murders of model/actress Tate, the wife of director Roman Polanski, and others on August 8, 1969
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Archive footage of Charles Manson and Leslie Van Houten attending court in 1978
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