The parole board has 120 days to review the decision before forwarding the matter to California Gov. Jerry Brown, who has the final say on whether she gets sprung.
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Her lawyer Rich Pfeiffer said she the release was long overdue.
As the Times reports, Van Houten’s attorneys have “characterized her as a model inmate, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees from prison while running self-help groups for incarcerated women”. In fact, the parole board highlighted that she hasn’t had a serious rule violation in almost 50 years. “I don’t find parts in any of this that makes me feel the slightest bit good about myself”, Van Houten told the panel Thursday, according to The Associated Press.
George Brich/AP Charles Manson followers, from left: Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten, shown walking to court to appear for their roles in the 1969 cult killings of seven people. She has already been denied parole multiple times. “Everyone’s was. But they don’t know what she’s done since then and all of the good she’s done”, Pfeiffer said.
The blood of the victims was used to scrawl messages on the walls, as had been done at the Benedict Canyon home where, on the previous day, Manson family members killed actress Sharon Tate and four others.
Van Houten also has spoken to several interviewers throughout the decades she has been locked up, expressing remorse for her actions and saying she understood that she deserved to be imprisoned for her actions. You know, before that, it had always been an abstract kind of thing. “I can create a world where I make amends”, she said during her most recent hearing in 2013.
“I very much disagree with the ruling”. “I went in, and Mrs. Labianca was laying on the floor, and I stabbed her, in the lower back, round 16 times”, Van Houten told King in an interview. However, despite the family’s desire to keep Leno and Rosemary LaBianca’s murderer behind bars and their success at doing just that for so many years, after 19 prior parole denials, Leslie Van Houten was recommended for parole on April 14. After Watson stabbed LaBianca in her bedroom, he handed Van Houten a knife.
The California District Attorney opposes parole for Van Houten, and Leno La Bianca’s daughter Cory has argued vociferously against it, the newspaper adds.
In 1971, Van Houten spoke in chilling detail about the killings during her trial. Should Leslie Van Houten be granted her freedom, or should she die in prison? My father will never be paroled.Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme – She was a member of the cult but never charged with the murders.
Last summer, a review board recommended parole for Manson associate Bruce Davis, who was convicted in the 1969 slayings of Gary Hinman and Donald “Shorty” Shea.
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She said LaBianca kept promising not to call the police and pleaded for her life.
