What to know about Leslie Van Houten, paroled Manson Family cult member

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A former member of Charles Manson’s cult has been released on parole after serving decades in prison for murder.

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Leslie Van Houten, who turns 74 next month, was part of the Manson Family, which killed a pregnant Hollywood actress and six others during a rampage that captured international attention in 1969. Van Houten is the first person convicted in the Manson Family murders to be released on parole, after showing what the California Board of Parole Hearings called “extraordinary rehabilitative efforts” and remorse.

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Here’s what to know.

Who is Leslie Van Houten?

Van Houten, like many of the cult members, was young and disillusioned when she joined the Manson Family.

As a child, Van Houten went to church camp every summer and sang in the choir, according to court documents. She began using drugs after her parents divorced when she was 14. The instability in her life continued until, traveling up and down the West Coast, she ended up on Manson’s ranch while still a teenager.

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The “family,” as they were called, lived together and followed his strict rules on communal life, including mandatory group sex and drug use. His group murdered seven people in two wealthy areas of Los Angeles over two nights in August 1969. Van Houten was 19 when the group carried out its killings.

Van Houten was not present when Sharon Tate — the 26-year-old actress and wife of director Roman Polanski — was murdered on Aug. 9, 1969. But she took part in the killings of a grocery store chain operator, Leno LaBianca, and his wife, Rosemary, the following night.

According to another member of the family, Van Houten claimed “she had stabbed a woman who was already dead, and that the more she did it the more fun it was.” A medical examiner found that Rosemary LaBianca had been stabbed 41 times.

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What was Leslie Van Houten charged with?

Van Houten was convicted on two counts of first-degree murder and one count of conspiracy to commit murder. Van Houten, along with Manson and three other followers, were sentenced to death in 1971. But their sentences were commuted to life in prison when California abolished the death penalty the following year.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) and his predecessor, Jerry Brown (D), both opposed Van Houten’s appeals for release, but a court overruled Newsom’s decision in May. A spokesperson for his office expressed the governor’s disappointment with Van Houten’s release from a correctional facility in Corona, Calif., but said he “will not pursue further action as efforts to further appeal are unlikely to succeed.”

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Van Houten has now been released to a transitional facility, where she will stay for a year as she adapts to her new life.

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What was the Manson Family?

Manson told his followers of his vision for a race war he referred to as “Helter Skelter,” named after a Beatles song. Investigators found he was also motivated by Hollywood agents’ rejection of his musical aspirations.

His group killed seven people in two wealthy areas of Los Angeles over two nights in August 1969. The killings were staged to make them appear as though they were carried out by Black militants – in an effort to bring about Manson’s predictions.

Van Houten and other followers have said Manson manipulated them and convinced them that he was the second coming of Jesus Christ. “I believe that the things that made me weak and lost were ultimately used as manipulations against me in my conversations with Manson and how Manson chose to relate to me,” Van Houten said during a parole hearing in 2020.

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Who was Charles Manson, and what was he charged with?

Manson’s followers said he planned but did not directly carry out any of the murders. But prosecutors said he masterminded the killings, and the jury found him guilty of seven counts of first-degree murder and one of conspiracy to commit murder. He was also convicted of the murders of two other men, in July and August 1969, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Manson died in 2017 at 83, having been denied parole 12 times.

He was born in Cincinnati in 1934. Manson never knew his father, while his mother spent time in and out of prison. He moved between relatives in small towns in West Virginia and Kentucky. He was caught committing petty theft and ended up in foster homes and reformatories. He left school in the seventh grade.

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Manson married twice, before moving to California’s hippie scene in the mid-1960s, where he began attracting followers.

What happened to Sharon Tate?

Tate was the most famous of the Manson Family’s victims. She was eight months pregnant when members of Manson’s group entered her home.

“Please don’t kill me. I just want to have my baby,” she begged, before a follower stabbed her 16 times and used her blood to daub the word “PIG” onto the front door of her house.

Tate wasn’t the Manson Family’s only victim that night. Four other people were also killed: Voytek Frykowski, Abigail Folger, Jay Sebring and Steven Parent. (Polanski, who later fled the United States before he could be sentenced for the statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl in a separate case, was not present at the time of the killings.)

Tate’s mother gave the first victim-impact statement in California’s history during a parole hearing for another Manson Family member convicted in the killings, paving the way for victims’ voices to be heard during criminal trials in the state.

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