Sharon Tate was dead, and the south of it California, hysterical. Police and the media searched the actress’ home, where her killers painted the word “pig” in her blood on the 26yearold pregnant woman. And Sharon wasn’t the only victim. She was killed along with four others: Voitcek Frykowski, Abigail Folger, Jay Sebring, and Steven Parent.
From miles away, Leslie Van Houten was delighted to hear the news murders. But unlike many other Californians, his interest in the suit wasn’t born out of fear. “She was not shocked or repelled, but felt left out,” court documents later said.
Before she met Charlie everyone called him that except Charlie Leslie’s life seemed almost typical. According to court records, she attended church camps every summer and sang in the choir. She was involved with the Camp Fire Girls. She was the prom queen. Still, there were signs of instability.
She started using at the age of 14 when her parents divorced marijuana, methedrine, mescaline and amphetamine. When she was 17, her mother urged her to have an abortion. By the time she was 19, she said she had taken LSD 150 times. After a trip along the west coast of the USA US That year, she dated a friend for five months, eventually ending up on the ranch of a man named Charles Manson. A common, harmless name back then.
After 53 years in prison, Leslie could now be paroled. Pictured, commissioners of the Prison Terms Board listen to her after she was denied parole in 2002. PHOTO: DAMIAN DOVARGANES/POOL/AFP
Life in the Manson community was happy at first. His entourage was mostly women and youngsters, so of course Leslie fit in. And by the time things got weird, she had already clearly met Manson’s vision: a race war would escalate into revolution and end with the rule of the Manson “family.”
As police scoured the state for the maniacs who murdered a young actress in what appeared to be a sadistic ritual, Leslie waited for family members to return to the ranch. She knew that “Helter Skelter,” the name Manson had given to the race war, had begun.
That same day, when Manson asked Leslie “if she was crazy enough to believe him and what he did,” she replied, “Yes,” according to court documents. The horrific crime that followed earned her over 52 years in prison. Now, at 73, she could face parole.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom repeatedly blocked Leslie’s parole efforts but gave up his fight to keep her in jail on Friday. According to her, Manson didn’t like how “messy” the Tate murders were.
The day after these murders, the notorious cult leader told the family he would show them how it was done. So on August 10, 1969, Manson asked Leslie to change her clothes and get in her car. She recalls that six or seven family members were in the vehicle and stayed there for a while. Los Angelescoincidentally.
If parole is granted, Leslie will be the first member of the Manson “family” to leave prison. The group committed several murders in California in the 1960s. Photo: Stan Lim/Los Angeles Daily News via AP, Pool, File
After a few false starts with potential victims a family with children, a pastor the car pulled up in front of the home where grocer Leno LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary, lived. Manson and “Tex” Watson, another family member, entered the home and tied up the couple. So Manson left the house again leaving his followers to do the dirty work and ordered Leslie and Patricia Krenwinkel to go in there and do whatever Tex said.
Using a bayonet, Tex ordered Leslie and Patricia to get knives from the kitchen. They took Rosemary into the bedroom and left Tex with her husband. A coroner later testified that Rosemary was stabbed 41 times.
Dianne Lake, a member of the “Manson Family” who was not present at the murder, later said that Leslie explained that “she stabbed a woman who was already dead, and the more she did it, the more fun.” did it”. In a nod to messages from Tate’s house the night before, the words “Death to Pigs” and “Healter Skelter” a false reference to the Beatles song after which Manson named his invented race war were found in the blood of the victims. , on the walls and on the refrigerator of the LaBianca house.
Nearly two years later, a jury convicted Leslie of two counts of firstdegree murder and one count of conspiracy to commit murder. She was initially sentenced to death, but California abolished the death penalty the following year. She was sentenced to life imprisonment with the possibility of parole.
Manson was convicted of seven counts of firstdegree murder and one count of conspiracy to murder. He died in 2017 at the age of 83 after serving decades in prison and being denied parole 12 times.
Charles Manson, the leader of the cult, believed in a race war that would end with the rule of the “family” Manson. He died in 2017. Photo: Courtesy of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation/Handout via Portal
Leslie and other “family members” said Manson used their vulnerabilities to convince them that he was the second coming of Jesus Christ and that they should follow him. “I believe the things that made me weak and lost were used as manipulations against me in my conversations with Manson and the way he treated me,” Leslie said during a 2020 parole hearing.
“I didn’t know that at the time.” The parole board noted that Leslie had demonstrated “extraordinary efforts at rehabilitation, insight, remorse, realistic probation plans, support from family and friends,” and “positive institutional reports.”
Her attorney told NBC News that she would be paroled in the coming weeks. Although Governor Newson has stopped fighting Leslie’s freedom, he is not happy with the solution reached by the council.
“The governor is disappointed by the appeals court’s decision to release her but will not take any further action because efforts to reappeal are unlikely to succeed,” Erin Mellon, spokeswoman for the governor’s office, said in a statement.
And he’s not alone in his frustration. Surviving family members of the victims, including Sharon Tate’s sister Debra, have spoken out against the decision. “I knew that one day we would get here,” Debra Tate said in a May interview with NewsNation. “Unfortunately, it’s appalling to me as a society that we allow predatory murderers to be paroled at all, but that’s the law as it stands.”
Debra said she doesn’t think Leslie is sorry and will continue to fight for the Manson family member’s release. “The California Board wants rehab to work, of course we all want it,” Debra said. “But there’s a certain type of person who probably won’t.”/Washington Post