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 69-year-old was
suitable for release.
If
her case withstands a 150-day review process, it will rest in the hands of
California's new governor Gavin Newsom. Van Houten was recommended for parole
twice previously, but then governor Jerry Brown blocked her release.
A
parole board panel has recommended that Charles Manson follower Leslie Van
Houten be released after more than four decades in prison.
Van
Houten was among the followers in Manson's murderous cult who stabbed to death
wealthy grocer Leno LaBianca and his wife Rosemary in 1969.
Van
Houten was 19 during the killings, which came a day after other Manson
followers killed pregnant actress Sharon Tate and four others in Los Angeles.
Tate's
sister attended Wednesday's proceedings and said afterwards that she vehemently
disagreed with the parole recommendation.
"I
just have to hope and pray that the governor comes to the right decision,"
Debra Tate said.
Van
Houten's lawyer, Rich Pfeiffer, said he was pleased with how the commissioners
focused on making sure that she took "full responsibility" for her
role in the killings.
"She
chose to go with Manson. She chose to listen to him. And she acknowledges
that," Mr Pfeiffer said. He predicted that it "will be much more difficult"
for Mr Newsom to block parole than it was for his predecessor.
In
his decision last year, Mr Brown acknowledged Van Houten's youth at the time of
the crime, her more than four decades of good behaviour as a prisoner and her
abuse at the hands of Manson, but he said she still laid too much blame on
Manson for the murders.
At
her last hearing, Van Houten described a troubled childhood. She said she was
devastated when her parents divorced when she was 14, and soon after she began
hanging out with her school's outcast crowd and using drugs.
When
she was 17, she and her boyfriend ran away to San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury
District during the city's Summer of Love.
She
was travelling up and down the California coast when acquaintances led her to
Manson, holed up at an abandoned movie ranch on the outskirts of Los Angeles
where he had recruited what he called a "family" to survive what he
insisted would be a race war he would launch by committing a series of random,
horrifying murders.
Van
Houten said she joined several other members of the group in killing the
LaBiancas, carving up Mr LaBianca's body and smearing the couple's blood on the
walls.
No
one who took part in the Tate-LaBianca murders has been released from prison.
Manson
died in 2017 of natural causes at a California hospital while serving a life
sentence.
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