MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Former Manson Family member released from prison on parole after 53 years

Van Houten was 19 at the time of her crimes

Former Manson Family member Leslie Van Houten was released Tuesday on parole from a California prison after serving 53 years of a life sentence for murder, the State's Department of Corrections reported.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has announced he would not contest the court's decision despite being “disappointed” at it. Van Houten was eligible for parole after a July 2020 hearing, but her release was blocked by Newsom, who argued that she remained a threat to society. Van Houten filed an appeal in a lower court, which rejected it. She subsequently appealed and the upper court reversed Newsom's 2020 decision. Since 2016, five recommendations for Van Houten to be placed on probation were rejected by Newsom or former Gov. Jerry Brown.

A follower of the dreaded killer Charles Manson, Van Houten was 19 years old at the time of her crimes. She has now been placed under “parole supervision” at a halfway house, her attorney Nancy Tetreault said. “She's still trying to get used to the idea that this is real,” Tetreault told The Associated Press. The woman is to spend a year learning basic skills such as going to the grocery store and using a debit card. “She has to learn how to use the Internet,” Tetreault also said. Originally from Monrovia, a town east of Los Angeles, only completed high school while in freedom. Her parents' divorce meant misfortune for her, which opened the door to the world of drugs.

Van Houten, 73, was sentenced to life in prison for helping Manson's followers kill Leno LaBianca, a Los Angeles businessman, and his wife, Rosemary, in 1969. The LaBiancas were murdered at their home, and their blood was smeared on the walls. Van Houten later recounted how she held Rosemary LaBianca down with a pillowcase over her head while others stabbed her, and later stabbed the woman between 14 and 16 times. Van Houten had initially been sentenced to death but when the death penalty was suspended her sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.

The murders came a day after Manson's followers killed eight-month-pregnant actress Sharon Tate, wife of film director Roman Polanski, and four others. Van Houten was not involved in Tate's murder.

A frustrated actor and singer, Charles Manson, who died in 2017 at the age of 83, rocked Hollywood and the United States that August 1969 with a bloody spiral of violence in which he and his followers, known as the “Manson Family,” killed seven people to provoke a race war. The killers used the blood of their victims to write messages on walls while following instructions they believed they heard in The Beatles' song “Helter Skelter.” Manson was active in only two of them.