When Leslie Van Houten was first jailed in 1969, Richard Nixon was president, the Beatles and Marvin Gaye were topping the US charts and computers were still in their infancy.
“If you think about it, she’s never used an ATM, never had a cell phone,” her attorney said last week.
Just days later, Van Houten finally got a chance to try out such technological advances — and much more — when she was paroled from a California prison on Tuesday.
For five decades, the former hippie, drug-addicted, high school “homecoming princess” had served time in prison for her involvement in crimes so appalling that many Americans, including successive California governors, insisted none of the main perpetrators were ever released should be.
Van Houten, now 73, was a lonely and mentally handicapped 19-year-old from suburban Los Angeles when she met insane cult leader Charles Manson and, she always claimed, fell completely under his malicious spell.
Leslie van Houten (right) was initially imprisoned along with Susan Atkins (left) and Patricia Krenwinkel (center) for their role in the Manson murders
A member of the notorious Manson family, she was implicated in a series of bloody and senseless murders in 1960s Los Angeles that slaughtered nine victims, including Hollywood actress Sharon Tate.
Van Houten later said she really believed that Manson, a petty criminal, was Jesus Christ and that secret messages about an impending race war in the United States had been sent to him in Beatles songs, and that she told the psychopath and his lunatics so was revealed to her worldview that she was willing to kill on his orders.
Even at her trial, which focused horrified worldwide attention on her and two other “Manson girls,” Susan Atkins and Patricia Krenwinkel, who smiled coolly and held hands while wearing crosses carved on their foreheads , she refused to abandon her manipulative master.
Van Houten opposed efforts by her attorneys, who might have saved her from prison had she undergone psychiatric testing and been tried separately from other members of the Manson family. She was convicted in 1971 for her role in the murder of supermarket manager Leno LaBianca and his wife Rosemary at their LA home. She stabbed Ms. LaBianca, a random stranger, 16 times in the stomach with a carving knife.
She was initially sentenced to death, but was saved from the San Quentin gas chamber when California outlawed the death penalty the following year.
Cult leader Charles Manson (pictured) died in prison in 2017 at the age of 83 after being convicted of seven counts of first-degree murder in 1971
Aside from six months, during which she was released from prison while awaiting a new trial in the late 1970s and—amazingly—even attended the 1978 Oscars, she has been behind bars ever since.
Her supporters have long argued that Van Houten, an uprooted and damaged child from a dysfunctional home who was described by one of her original lawyers as “crazy as a fruitcake”, was fully rehabilitated and was being held behind bars merely in retaliation.
She became eligible for parole in 1977, and a panel of the California Parole Board first recommended her release in 2016 after appearing before the board 22 times.
However, that decision has been overturned five times by successive state governors with the support of victims’ families.
However, California Gov. Gavin Newsom was overruled earlier this year by an appeals court that said Van Houten no longer posed a threat to society. Newsom said he would not file any further appeals because an appeal was unlikely to succeed .
And with four other Manson killers still in prison, families of the victims have expressed fears that Van Houten’s release will be followed by others.
Anthony DiMaria is the nephew of famed hairstylist Jay Sebring, who was killed by the Manson family while rampaging through the LA home that his ex-girlfriend Sharon Tate shared with her husband, film director Roman Polanski. DiMaria called Van Houten a “cold-blooded killer” and said her release set a “dangerous, damaging precedent.”
Leslie van Houten (pictured) was released on parole on July 11, having first been imprisoned in 1969
Kay Hinman Martley, whose cousin Gary Hinman was stabbed by a member of the Manson family, said, “This opens the door for the other four.” . They are all psychopaths who have manipulated the systems.”
However, the judges who approved Van Houten’s release said Governor Newsom failed to consider her efforts to redeem herself. She earned two degrees in prison, helping fellow inmates learn to read and even studying for her own degree. According to Van Houten’s attorney, Nancy Tetreault, her client is considering various job offers and trying to “find her way around”.
She added without irony, “I think she wants to move into a field where she can make a difference.”
Van Houten has long since renounced Manson (who died in prison in 2017 aged 83), regretted her involvement in the murders and insisted she had a mental illness and that her condition was made worse by LSD use have.
As prisoner W-I3378 at the California Institution for Women in Chino, she told a parole board in 2002 that she held Ms. LaBianca while another family member, Patricia Krenwinkel, stabbed her in the collarbone. She was then stabbed eight times with a bayonet by cult member Charles Watson before Van Houten repeatedly rammed her knife into the victim.
Despite this ferocity, she would then coolly wipe surfaces to detect fingerprints, change her clothes, and even retrieve chocolate milk from her victims’ refrigerators to drink.
Generations of Americans have struggled to understand how the pretty daughter of a suburban Southern California teacher and used-car auctioneer could be so despicable. Van Houten was devastated by her parents’ split when she was 14, and the former church choir member quickly became addicted to drugs, particularly the hallucinogen LSD.
The impressionable teenager joined the “free love” hippie movement and became pregnant at 17 — her mother forced her to have an abortion at home — before dropping out of college and moving to a commune in San Francisco.
Manson, who was always searching for “lost souls,” met Van Houten in 1969. His influence on his female followers has been largely sexual, and he reportedly managed to get her to bed within half an hour of taking her to Meet him at his base, the seedy Spahn Ranch — a Western film set outside from LA plays.
Robert “Bobby” Beausoleil (pictured) was imprisoned for the 1969 murder of music teacher Gary Hinman after first meeting Charles Manson in 1968
Van Houten and about 17 other women became not only Manson’s harem but also his criminal lackeys – sleeping with men he wanted to influence, selling drugs, and stealing. He made sure his herd was more vulnerable to his will by doling out daily rations of LSD.
Manson, a vicious racist who later carved a swastika on his forehead, hoped to start a race war with a series of murders of wealthy whites that could be blamed on black radicals.
In August 1969, he sent his followers on a two-day killing spree, initially targeting what he mistakenly believed to be the home of a successful record producer who had spurned Manson’s music.
Instead, they found heavily pregnant actress Sharon Tate and a trio of her guests, including Abigail Folger, a coffee heiress, and hairstylist Jay Sebring. They were all stabbed and shot. Another man who visited the janitor was also murdered.
For more bloodletting, Manson targeted the home of a randomly chosen wealthy couple, the LaBiancas, the following night. Manson had instructed male acolyte Charles “Tex” Watson to ensure that Van Houten – who had not gone to Tate’s house – was directly involved in the killings that night.
Van Houten actually stood trial three times. The first case, in 1971, was overturned on appeal largely due to the disappearance of her attorney, Ronald Hughes. His body was later found in a forest and it was widely believed that members of the Manson family killed him.
Van Houten’s second trial in 1977 ended with an empty jury and was declared a mistrial.
After being released on bail, she worked as a legal secretary for six months and obtained an invitation to the Oscars through an acquaintance. Smartly dressed and attractive, Van Houten was not recognized by anyone except cult film director John Waters, with whom she became good friends.
Van Houten’s third trial in 1978 ended in a conviction on two counts of murder and one count of conspiracy.
Although other members of the Manson family have already been released, Van Houten is the first of the actual killers to be released.
Bruce Davis (left), described as Charles Manson’s “right hand man”, remains in prison despite being recommended parole, while Steve “Clem” Grogan (right) was released in 1985
Among those remaining behind bars is Charles Watson, arguably the most vicious member of the family – he shot two of the victims and helped kill most of the others. While in prison, he was ordained a Christian minister in 1981 and has fathered four children conceived during conjugal visits.
Patricia Krenwinkel, also still in prison, testified that she stabbed Sharon Tate’s friend Abigail Folger to death. She later reportedly said she felt nothing when she killed her.
‘Nothing, I mean what is there to describe?’ It was just there and it was right.’
Krenwinkel, the daughter of an insurance salesman, also admitted to stabbing Ms. LaBianca and writing “DEATH TO PIGS” on the wall of her home in the couple’s blood.
Bobby Beausoleil, a member of the Manson family, was convicted of fatally stabbing musician friend Gary Hinman in a botched robbery just weeks before the other murders.
The last former cult member still behind bars is Bruce Davis, who has also reportedly turned to God. Manson’s “right hand man” was convicted of murdering Hinman and Donald Shea, who worked on the ranch where the family lived – Manson despised him for marrying a black woman.
Legal experts say it was once widely believed that no one in the Manson family would ever get out of prison alive — and some doubt the others will follow suit.
That Van Houten was considered the most sympathetic case speaks volumes about the depravity of this twisted “family’s” heinous crimes.