Manson Follower Denied Parole

Former Charles Manson disciple Leslie Van Houten was rejected Tuesday in her 19th bid for parole in the 1969 murders of a Los Feliz couple.
 
Van Houten, 60, appeared before a parole board panel at the California Institution for Women in Corona. She had been most recently denied parole in
August 2007, and she will not be up for parole again until 2013.
 
Van Houten was convicted of murder and conspiracy for participating with fellow Manson family members Charles ``Tex'' Watson and Patricia Krenwinkel
in the Aug. 9, 1969, slayings of grocers Leno and Rosemary La Bianca at their Los Feliz home.
 
Van Houten was sentenced to death, but resentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1972 that
the death penalty was unconstitutional.
 
Van Houten has acknowledged her role in the La Bianca murders, admitting at an August 2004 parole hearing that she stabbed Rosemary La Bianca 14 to 16
times after the woman had been stabbed by Watson and Krenwinkel.
 
At earlier hearings, Van Houten said she believed La Bianca already was dead at the time, and said it was ``very hard'' for a woman now in her 50s to
``look back on the behavior of who I was at 19.''
 
The former Monrovia High School cheerleader and homecoming princess did not participate in the Manson family's slayings of pregnant actress Sharon Tate
and four others in a Benedict Canyon mansion the night before.
  
Manson and many of his other former followers, who have repeatedly been denied parole, remain behind bars.
  
Onetime Manson family member Susan Atkins died last September, about three weeks after a state parole board panel rejected her plea for a
``compassionate release'' from prison because of brain cancer.