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Leslie Van Houten Biography
Leslie Van Houten (Leslie Louise Van Houten) is an American convicted murderer and former member of the Manson Family. He was arrested and charged in relation to the 1969 killings of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca when she was 19 years old.
She was convicted and sentenced to death. In 1972 the California Supreme Court decision on People v. Anderson then ruled that the death penalty was unconstitutional. This resulted in her sentence being commuted to life in prison. Leslie conviction was then withdrawn in a 1976 appellate court decision which granted her a retrial.
Leslie’s second trial ended with a deadlocked jury and a mistrial. In 1978 at her third trial , she was convicted of two counts of murder and one count of conspiracy and sentenced to 7 years to life in prison. High courts, parole boards, and the state governor have said that an inexplicable or racial motive for murder could merit exemplary punishment and outweigh any evidence of subsequent reform in relation to her case.
Leslie was denied parole by panels of state commissioners 19 times before receiving a recommendation for parole in 2016 (denied by California governor Jerry Brown) and receiving a second panel recommendation for parole in 2017 (also denied by governor Brown).
Leslie Van Houten Age
Leslie was born on August 23, 1949 in the Los Angeles suburb of Altadena. She is 70 years old as of 2019.
Leslie Van Houten Parents | Leslie Van Houten Young
Leslie was born in the Los Angeles suburb of Altadena. Her parents divorced when she was 14 years old. Leslie grew up in a middle-class churchgoing family along with an older brother and two adopted siblings, a brother and a sister, who were Korean. Leslie at around the age of 15 she started taking LSD, Benzedrine, and hashish running away for a time but returning to complete high school.
When she was 17 years old, Leslie became pregnant and was forced by her mother to undergo an abortion. Sometime later her mother informed her that the procedure could not be referred to as an abortion as the fetus was too far along. She stated that after this event, she felt very removed and harbored intense anger toward her mother. Leslie had a period of interest in yoga and took a year-long secretarial course, but became a hippie, living at a commune.
Leslie Van Houten 2017
Leslie was again recommended for parole at her 21st parole hearing on September 6, 2017. The two-member panel found that she had radically changed her life in the more than 40 years she has been incarcerated. However, the panel’s decision must still be approved by the state parole board and Governor Jerry Brown, who reversed the panel’s decision in 2016.
Leslie Van Houten Now | Leslie Van Houten Today | Leslie Van Houten Released
On January 19, 2018 Governor Jerry Brown again denied her parole. Leslie’s legal team said that they would fight the decision. Leslie was once again vetoed on June 29, 2018 . “Unless the inmate can demonstrate that there is no evidence to support the governor’s conclusion that the inmate is a current danger to public safety, the petition fails to state a prima facie case for relief and may be summarily denied,” was cited by the same judge, William C. Ryan.
During her 22nd parole hearing on January 30, 2019, Leslie was, for the third time, recommended for parole. The board’s recommendation must be approved within 150 days by Governor Gavin Newsom’s advisors before he makes his final ruling.
Charles Manson Leslie Van Houten
Charles Manson had been a lawbreaker from an early age. During his late teens, Manson was released from an institution to live with relatives in a West Virginia town. When he was there he was generally regarded as a criminal braggart, though some law-abiding people found him very likeable and nice. He had a brief marriage to “a cute popular girl” before a stint as a pimp ended with a ten-year sentence. His IQ was slightly above average.
When he was in a prison he requested a transfer to Leavenworth (considered one of the harshest penitentiaries), because he said he would get fewer complaints about his guitar practicing there.
Manson completed the sentence in 1967,and protesting to prison staff that prison was his home, was released at age 32. Mansion aspired to success as a singer-songwriter. In Berkeley, Manson met and moved in with 23-year-old library assistant Mary Brunner.
Leslie Van Houten The Mansion Family
Manson and his followers were based at the Spahn Ranch since August 1968. Manson ostensibly ran his Family based on hippie-style principles of acceptance and free love. At the remote ranch, where they were isolated from any other influences, Manson’s was the only opinion heard. At every meal he would lecture repetitively. Van Houten said Manson’s attitude was that she “belonged to Bobby.”
According to Van Houten, she and other Manson followers looked to 14-year-old Family member Dianne Lake as the “empty vessel,” the epitome of what women were supposed to be in the Manson system of values. When Barbara Hoyt spoke at Van Houten’s parole hearing in 2013, she said that Van Houten was considered a “leader” in The Manson Family.
Manson was preoccupied with becoming a pop star. From June 1967 to August 8, 1968, he had a number of recording sessions but was not thought promising enough for a contract. Manson, however, saw himself as a musical genius who would transform mainstream society. He identified with the subject of the Beatles song “Piggies”, through a “world-shaking” pop album he would record.
Guided by the Bible, Manson taught the Family that they would be joined by the Beatles and escape to a bottomless pit, which they could enter through a “hole in the ground”. They would emerge and be acknowledged as the rightful rulers after 150 years at the center of the Earth, where the Family would have grown in number to 144,000 and their bodies taken on new forms.
Manson had involved followers in criminal activity such as auto theft and residential burglaries by April 1969, and Van Houten (who burglarized her father’s home twice) had been arrested and spent a few days in jail. In the same month, in a dispute over drugs, Manson confronted and shot a man named Bernard “Lotsapapa” Crowe.
Though Crowe survived, Manson believed that he had killed him. He also falsely believed that Crowe, an African American, was a member of the Black Panther Party. This incident led Manson to become increasingly paranoid, and to imagine that Black Panthers were intent on exacting vengeance against him. Preparations for what he saw as a coming attack by the Black Panthers included Tex Watson demonstrating how to kill with a knife.
Parole recommended for Leslie Van Houten
A California panel on January 30, 2019 recommended that Van Houten be paroled after serving more than four decades in prison.
After a hearing at the women’s prison in Corona, California, commissioners of the Board of Parole Hearings found for the third time that the Van Houten was suitable for release.