A former Manson Family member is out on parole after 53 years. So
how did the convicted murderer meet the cult leader in the first place?
On the second night of the Manson Family's rampage across Los Angeles, Charles Manson and
five of his followers, including a teenager named Leslie Van Houten, were looking for more victims.
Van Houten had met Manson in the fall of 1968 through two of his followers,
who called him "Christlike." On the first night of the rampage, Susan Atkins, Tex Watson,
Patricia Krenwinkel, and Linda Kasabian — all in their teens or 20s — broke into a
Beverly Hills home and massacred five people. One of the victims was actress Sharon Tate,
eight months pregnant with the baby of the film director Roman Polanski.
On night two, August 9, 1969, Van Houten, a 19-year-old former homecoming queen born
and raised in Southern California, took part in the brutal murders of
Leno and Rosemary Labianca in their home in Los Feliz, an LA suburb.
Like so many others, she had fallen under Manson's sway, so when he asked her if she would kill for
him, she agreed. Later that night Van Houten stabbed Rosemary Labianca multiple times.
Leslie Van Houten was born in Altadena, California in 1949,
and had what seemed like a perfect middle-class upbringing. She participated in sports and was
popular in high school. According to "The Manson Women and Me," Van Houten recalled,
"When I was in high school, one of my teachers said I was in so many
extracurricular activities, my photo was on every page of the yearbook."
But Van Housen's light-hearted early life came crashing down around her
when her parents divorced, after which the model student began to rebel. Van Houten
experimented with drugs and briefly ran away to San Francisco with her boyfriend when she was 17.
"I seemed to want more living out of life than what was expected of young girls at the time."
When she returned pregnant, her mother forced her to have an illegal abortion.
The turbulence she had experienced undoubtedly took its toll on Van Houten's mental health
and left her vulnerable to coercion by a dangerous manipulator such as Manson.
"I was an empty shell of a person, that was filled up with Manson rhetoric."
According to Ed Sanders' "The Family," in the summer of 1968,
Van Houten began traveling around California, ensconcing herself in the hippie counterculture
that had begun to bloom in the mid-1960s and reached its apex with 1967's "Summer of Love."
It was during this time that Van Houten grew close with Bobby Beausoleil and Catherine "Gypsy" Share,
two of Manson's followers. Soon, the pair would introduce her to the man himself,
who would direct her to commit murder for which she would spend half a century behind bars.
Manson was a petty criminal and con man, who used his charisma and romantic hippie
image — as well as mind-altering drugs such as LSD — to convince young disaffected people
like Van Houten to become his sexual partners, followers, and servants.
Van Houten was enraptured by Manson on their first meeting and was especially
charmed by his guitar playing. Like other members of the so-called Manson Family,
Van Houten became convinced that Manson was a reincarnation of Jesus Christ,
capable of miracles. She was soon living with the cult at an abandoned movie set called Spahn Ranch.
At the ranch, Manson's preaching began to take on violent overtones,
including his visions of a coming race war. According to "Charles Manson:
The Man Who Murdered the Sixties," Van Houten later recalled,
"All we did was listen to The Beatles' 'White Album' and read Revelations."
It was from that 1968 classic that Manson took the
name "Helter Skelter" for the upcoming race war he supposedly prophesied.
"That next summer there would be this big revolution and that
the chosen people would live in a hole in the middle of the desert."
While she didn't participate in the first night of the Manson murders,
Van Houten was more than willing to go out on August 9th to target the LaBiancas. The
couple was reportedly unknown to Manson's cult,
and their home was targeted at random after some of its members had attended a nearby party.
After Manson and Tex Watson tied up the LaBiancas, Manson ordered the women to kill them. Van Houten
stabbed Rosemary 14 to 16 times saying she "felt" but "didn't know for sure" that she had
already died from bayonet wounds inflicted by Watson, according to court documents.
After her arrest, she showed no remorse and told the police about her love for the Manson Family.
According to "Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders," she said at the time,
"You couldn't meet a nicer group of people."
However, decades on, Van Houten revealed herself to be a model prisoner. On Tuesday,
June 11, 2023, she was finally granted parole after serving 53 years in prison.