Leslie Van Houten, Manson Family Cult Member, Tentatively OK'd for Parole

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/leslie-van-houten-manson-family-cult-member-seeks-parole-again-n555916?nbc=444&cid=sm_fb/ * Video 00:02:00 *

Leslie Van Houten, the youngest of member of the murderous Manson Family cult, finally took the first step toward parole Thursday after having been denied 19 previous times.

A two-person panel of the California Board of Parole Hearings found Van Houten, 66, who was convicted of the 1969 thrill killings of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, "suitable for parole" after a hearing at the California Institution for Women in Chino, authorities told NBC News.
Image: Leslie Van Houten is seen during a hearing before the California Board of Parole Hearings

Former Charles Manson follower Leslie Van Houten is seen during a hearing before the California Board of Parole Hearings at the California Institution for Women in Chino, Calif., on Thursday. Nick Ut / AP

The full parole board now has 120 days to review the finding. If it's upheld, Gov. Jerry Brown will have 30 further days to approve or deny parole or order the case sent back to the board for a rehearing.

A model prisoner who has used her time behind bars to edit a prison newspaper and counsel other inmates, Van Houten has previously apologized for her role in the brutal killings and said she was "deeply ashamed" of her crime.

That was not enough to spring Van Houten in 2002. And it remains to be seen whether the parole board will see fit to free her this time.

Van Houten was a 19-year-old hippie when she fell under the spell of Charles Manson.

Manson's minions struck on Aug. 9, 1969, killing actress Sharon Tate — the wife of Oscar-winning director Roman Polanski — and four others in a rented Benedict Canyon home.

The next day, Van Houten joined in the LaBianca murders. She later admitted she was on LSD when she stabbed Rosemary LaBianca 14 times.

At her last parole hearing in 2013, Van Houten admitted what she did was "unforgivable" and apologized again for the murders.

"I can create a world where I make amends," she said. "I'm trying to be someone who lives a life for healing rather than destruction."


Leslie Van Houten, 19, a member of Charles Manson's 'family,' in court in Los Angeles in December 1969. George Brich / AP — file

But LaBianca family members insisted that Van Houten was a remorseless killer who remains a danger to society — and the parole board agreed.

Manson, 81, is serving nine life sentences at Corcoran State Prison in California. Two years ago, he and 26-year-old Afton Elaine Burton, aka "Star," got a marriage license. But it expired before they could tie the knot.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/04/15/charles-manson-follower-killer-leslie-van-houten-approved-for-parole/
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Feb 2 2015,

Charles Manson Marriage License to Expire Without a Wedding

FRESNO, Calif. — A 26-year-old woman with the nickname Star who says she is going to marry 80-year-old mass murderer Charles Manson will have to wait a while longer.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/charles-manson-marriage-license-expire-without-wedding-n298936/ * Embedded links *

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/02/03/cult-leader-charles-manson-may-have-left-his-bride-at-the-altar/?postshare=3791460699138253&tid=ss_tw/


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Roman Polanski

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Polanski/

Roman Polanski: Fighting extradition in Poland, wanted in the U.S.

Roman Polanski was in Europe when his wife, Sharon Tate, and several friends were murdered by Manson’s followers in the summer of 1969. Tate was 8 1/2 months pregnant at the time.

Polanski went on to direct such movies as "Chinatown" and "The Pianist." Polanski fled Los Angeles for Paris in 1978 after being convicted of having sex with a 13-year-old.

U.S. officials attempted to have Polish authorities arrest Polanski, who now lives in France, as he attended the opening of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw last year. U.S. official

Roman Polanski: What Did He Really Do?

http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/roman-polanski/story?id=8705958/ * Video & Embedded Links *
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Where are they now? Charles Manson's family, four decades after horrific murder spree

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/daywatch/la-me-charles-manson-murders-where-they-are-now-snap-htmlstory.html/

These 2 murder sprees were 47 yrs ago.
Technically, some perps have done their time. Good behavior.. Blah blah blah...

My opinion has not changed in 1/2 a century. Shame on you California, for stopping the death penalty. Look at what it cost you.

Let Manson and his slags rot in prison.

* Wow, has it been that long. Not too many countries have the death penalty anymore. But 47 years is barbaric, death would be peace for this human. Forty seven years and Justice could not reform this person. California is an progressive State... and they failed?

And that is something new Cali.. failed at something...


I honestly think Death would have been too easy for what these people did and had no remorse...It is one thing to do something as horrible as this and have remorse and show it in their actions...

Totally different for someone or several people to do something like this and show nothing...So IMHO the slow torture of being imprisoned like an animal is no more punishment than what the loved ones of the victims feel each and everyday

I endorse your sentiments Rains.The time served gives them ample opportunity to show that they had some human sentiment.Sometimes it takes years to acknowledge ones mistakes.It would appear they have never openly acknowledged their remorse.Whilst the death penalty is in itself barbaric at times it is too good for some people and possibly deprives them of the opportunity to express remorse.Incarceration costs the community but as the saying goes sometimes you have to pay for what you want.Quite often what we get free we don't value.

The technical term for her is a Serial Killer, she got off on the killings and killed and dismembered multiple people. They also said they don't believe she has ever told the whole truth of her involvement.

What do you want to bet that idiot Brown will approve it and let her out on Parole. This woman is a SERIAL KILLER who was sentenced to DEATH who giggled and laughed through the trial. Because of a technicality of the Death Penalty being abolished for a couple months then brought back Manson, Watson and these three twits got off easy and they have been getting Parole hearings for decades now and now one of them is possibly getting out?!?!?!?!?

When in American history have we ever paroled a KNOWN SERIAL KILLER?

I HATE CALIFORNIA!

Serial Killers, Sociopaths and Psychopaths are incapable of remorse, empathy, sympathy etc.

They murdered on three known occasions (others are suspected to be victims of the Manson Family, Van Hauten has not cooperated in any of those investigations BTW) and tried to cut a baby out of a pregnant woman's stomach. They should have been fried years ago.

The point I was trying to make was that some people change.Frying people does not allow this to happen although it does prevent them from re offending.Executing them is also too soft on them,I don't believe that the anguish and pain involved in execution ( unless it was a botched effort) is anywhere close to what they deserve.I acknowledge that a criminal expressing remorse does not right the wrong but it is surprising how often the family of victims take comfort in hearing remorse expressed.There is no simple or universally acceptable way of dealing with these matters.

It is a well documented FACT that a psychopath and a sociopath cant not change. They can't feel remorse, empathy or even sympathy.

We can word play virtually anything. We can call prison 'rehabilitation', but it is not. We can call a political party, 'progressive', as if all progress is a good thing.
Geez. Diseases are progressive.
So are societies on a downward spiral.

Justice however is justice. And victims of crime & their families & society as a whole deserve that.
And prevention of future crimes is our/ societies obligation.

I have as much compassion, empathy, sympathy for the perp as they had for their victim. I don't want or need to hear ' I am sorry, I changed'. And neither does the family of the victim.. they want and are entitled to swift justice.

Swift "justice" has resulted in many cases of wrongful conviction and execution.

We're discussing two things here, as is usually the case in this subject area.

1) this particular criminal;

2) the overall idea of legal punishments.

As to this particular person, I was surprised that it was HER who was being considered for parole, but I don't know enough of the millions of details involved which would have to be a part of making a logical decision about her.

But I know from having spent much of my life pondering and reading about the overall idea of legal system actions, that the overall ideas about what we are deciding to do when criminals do what they do, is way more complicated than too many people admit.


WHY we take action is actually MORE important than what action we take. More so than ever, when it comes to establishing legal procedures against people we are upset with.

The questions involved with this part of the law, include:

* should legal retribution be based on our emotions? Should punishments really be decided by how angry, or grossed out we are about what happened?

* should the imprisonment and other actions be based on the concept of PUNISHING the criminal, or on the idea of REPAIRING the criminal, or both, or neither?

Secondary questions exist as well:

* should we judge the concept of rehabilitation blindly? As in, does the fact that some people are inherently defective (measurable physiological brain defects), OR the fact that most prisons actually DON'T invest in real rehabilitation, be ignored in deciding whether we should or should not try to return anyone to freedom?

I have myself, concluded a few basic things.

* I am OPPOSED to having our emotions be decisive in setting punishments. This is based on logic alone, which is always my preference. The problem with having our emotions be decisive, is that crimes such as murder would be punished by how much we liked the victim, or how much we disliked the killer. That's not acceptable, because it would undermine the entire legal system altogether.

* This goes both ways. I am also OPPOSED to having compassion, be a decisive factor in who we let go.

I believe that the primary job of the legal system, should be to see to the best health of the law abiding citizenry as a whole. That means both that it should not pander to the loudest voices of the moment, or to the greatest number of voters at the moment, AND that it should not overrule real practical concerns, for the sake of catering to a purely philosophical concept.

In practical means, that translates to that when a criminal has been shown to be incapable of behaving themselves, they should not be allowed to reenter free society. The fact that we imagine permanent incarceration to be very oppressive and unpleasant, has no bearing on keeping the bulk of our society safe.

I am generally opposed to the death penalty, but not out of any emotional sense of compassion or of the idea of the "sanctity of life. " I oppose it for purely practical reasons.

1) because it IS usually more expensive to the tax payers than life in prison. When we handle death penalty cases CORRECTLY, as in making sure that we have done everything possible to insure that we both have the right person, AND that their death is what is best for us as a society, it costs a LOT more than incarceration. Especially when we figure in the tremendous,albeit immeasurable cost to us of wrongly executing someone.

2) Add to that, that we have benefited tremendously from keeping even some of the most vile criminals alive for study (the reason we are catching more serial killers than ever before, is directly due to our NOT having executed the ones we caught before). I am willing to dispassionately pay to keep vile people in boxes, so that we can use them to catch their brethren.

I have nothing against seeing to the death of some people. If someone went after my family, I would probably try to kill them outright myself. But once the government takes over, since I want the government to treat ME as an equal citizen under the law to everyone else, I oppose allowing them to treat people I hate as anything but equal under the law.

But again, I'm not coming down on one side or the other about this particular woman. I don't know if she has ever changed from the person who behaved so insanely in the 1960's. I just oppose deciding about her, based on how angry I or anyone else still is, about what she did back then.

The whole Gang came within a Hair's Breath of taking a Deep Breath or three of Almond-Flavored Air,and it might have been better that way!
The whole sordid Affair would have been laid to rest Decades ago!

I think there's talk of a new reality show...
"Manson Family Values"

Oh here we go now. Manson and his nut jobs were wrongly convicted eh?

Wow, I need to really rethink Darwinism now. There really are people so stupid out there that should be extinct by now.

Where was this skanks compassion as Sharon Tate begged and pleaded to just give her two weeks to live so she could deliver her baby then they could do whatever they wanted to her. Where was the compassion as they tried to cut the baby from Tate's body?

People this sick are the reason we have the death penalty and life imprisonment.

Charles Manson and his so called family have committed so much evil. There are the 7 victims that are definitely victims of his plus the attempted assassination of President Ford. Not to mention all of the other murders and crimes they haven't proven yet.

Last I read they are still finding bodies every so often out at one of the ranches.......