Charles Manson Up For Parole, New Photos Released

The District Attorney's office says it will aggressively oppose Manson's release from prison

A week before Charles Manson’s next parole hearing, the California Department of Corrections released the first photos of the convicted murderer in three years.

The Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office said it would oppose the release of Manson as it has at each prior hearing.

"We will continue to do so until Charlie dies in prison," said Sandi Gibbons, spokeswoman for the DA's office and former reporter who covered Manson’s trial.

The latest photo was one of two provided at the request of CNN and taken in June 2011 at the state prison in Corcoran, where Manson has been periodically since 1989.

In the photos, the 77-year-old Manson looked older with long, gray, disheveled hair, a long gray beard and mustache.

His next and 12th parole hearing is scheduled for April 11. He has been denied parole 11 times before.

During his last hearing in 2007, a parole board concluded that he had progressed very little and failed to follow recommendations given by the previous panel.

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Manson refused to participate in the 2007 parole hearing, but a decade earlier his behavior was erratic.

In 1997, the last parole hearing he attended, he told officials that he didn't sign documents given to him because someone told him his signature was worth money.

At that time, Manson was "not suitable for parole and would pose an unreasonable risk and danger to society and a threat to public safety, if released from prison," the board decided.

Since his arrest in 1969 and incarceration in 1971, Manson has maintained his innocence and continues to deny any wrong doing in the deaths of actress Sharon Tate and six other people during a two-day killing spree in August 1969.

Prosecutors said Manson, along with the convicted members of his so-called family, were trying to incite a race war.

His original death sentence was automatically reduced to life in prison in 1972 after the California Supreme Court outlawed capital punishment.

"I knew I wasn't going to the gas chamber because I hadn't done anything wrong," Manson said in a 1981 interview with Dateline NBC's Tom Snyder (below).

The DA’s spokeswoman sat behind Manson while she covered the trial for the City News Service.

"He was like 5 feet 2 inches, a little redneck Southerner,” Gibbons said in a 2010 interview with

NBC LA. “I did not find him charismatic, or fascinating or interesting. He was a little creep.”
She maintains that he is still a creep today.

"He has conned a whole new generation of kids that think he's something special and he's not," Gibbons said. "He's a conman."

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