Leslie Van Houten, a supporter of Charles Manson, was given a life sentence for her involvement in two notorious murders and was released from a California prison on Tuesday after serving 53 years of it.

In accordance with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Van Houten, who is now 73 years old, “was released to parole supervision.” Her release follows the governor’s declaration that he would not oppose a state appeals court decision that Van Houten should be granted parole.

Van Houten was given a life sentence for assisting Charles Manson’s followers in the murders of Los Angeles grocery store owner Leno LaBianca and his wife Rosemary in 1969.Charles Manson admirer Leslie Van Houten was released from prison after spent 53 years behind bars for two murders.

In 2017, Leslie Van Houten Appeared At A Parole Hearing

For her involvement in the killings, Van Houten was first given the death penalty. After the California Supreme Court abolished the state’s death penalty law in 1972, her sentence was later commuted to life in prison. The death sentence was eventually reestablished by voters and state lawmakers, but not retroactively.

The LaBiancas were murdered there, and their blood was then daubed all over the walls. Later, Van Houten recalled pinning Rosemary LaBianca down and covering her head with a pillowcase as others stabbed her. When Charles “Tex” Watson, a Manson supporter, told her to “do something,” according to Van Houten, she grabbed up a knife and stabbed the woman more than a dozen times.

Suspects In The Manson Family Murder

Source: daily Mail

Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkle, and Leslie van Houton were members of the Manson family and murder suspects on August 11, 1970.

Van Houten will spend around a year at a halfway house getting used to a world that has been profoundly altered by technology over the past fifty years. She needs to learn how to navigate the internet. She must learn to make purchases without using currency, according to Tetreault. The world is significantly different from when she first entered it.

The justices disagreed with Newsom’s assertion that Van Houten did not sufficiently explain how she came into contact with Manson. She went into great detail throughout her parole hearings about how her parents’ divorce, her drug and alcohol misuse, and an unlawful abortion that was forced upon her made her vulnerable.

They also rejected Newsom’s assertion that if she were released, her prior violent crimes would be a matter for concern in the future.

At an abandoned movie ranch outside of Los Angeles, where Manson had built his purported family of followers, Van Houten first met the man.

Manson spent nearly fifty years in jail until passing away in prison in 2017 at the age of 83 from natural causes. Watson and fellow Manson supporter Patricia Krenwinkel have both received many denials of parole, and Susan Atkins passed away in prison in 2009.