A woman who was a follower of infamous cult leader Charles Manson and assisted him in killing two people has been released from prison after 53 years.
Leslie Van Houten was put behind bars in 1971 for her role in the Manson cult murders of Leno LaBianca, a grocer in Los Angeles, and his wife Rosemary.
She was initially sentenced to death, but it was later commuted to life imprisonment after California abolished the death penalty.
On Tuesday, Van Houten was “released to parole supervision“, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitations said.
Lawyer Nancy Tetreault said her client left the women’s prison in Corona, east of Los Angeles, in the early hours of Tuesday morning and taken to transitional housing, where is she expected to spend the next year.
While there, she will learn basic skills such as going to the grocery store, getting a bank card, using the internet and buying items without cash.
“It’s a very different world than when she went in,” Ms Tetreault said, adding Van Houten wanted to get a job as soon as possible.
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Van Houten will be on parole for around three years.
Days earlier, Governor Gavin Newsom said he would not oppose the state appeal’s court ruling that recommended Van Houten be offered parole, adding it was unlikely the state’s Supreme Court would consider an appeal.
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Van Houten has been recommended for parole five times since 2016, but Mr Newsom or former governor Jerry Brown has blocked the move, arguing she was still a danger to society.
In a statement last week, Mr Newsom’s office said he was disappointed by the decision to parole Van Houten.
“More than 50 years after the Manson cult committed these brutal killings, the victims’ families still feel the impact,” it said.
Manson, as well as Van Houten and others, visited the home of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca on 10 August 1969 in Los Angeles.
When there, the LaBianca’s heads were covered with pillowcases and bound with power leads, and Manson ordered their deaths. Cult member Tex Watson repeatedly stabbed the couple with a bayonet.
Van Houten stabbed Rosemary LaBiance roughly 16 times in her buttocks, later claiming in court her victim was already dead by the time she’d begun her frenzy.
Image: Charles Manson pictured in 2017. Pic: California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation/AP
After the attack, Tex Watson showered while other members of the group wrote messages on the walls in their victims’ blood – notably the term “healter [sic] skelter” – a vision the Manson family subscribed too in which the leader prophesied there would be a race war.
The LaBianca murders came only a day after the Manson family killed actress Sharon Tate and four others.
Van Houten was 19 at the time.
Charles Manson died in prison in 2017 at the age of 83, after almost 50 years locked up.
American Senator Ted Cruz has broken ranks with fellow US conservatives and
hit out at talk show host Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension, saying it was “mafioso” behaviour.
Kimmel implied the suspect was a Maga Republican, despite the man’s mother telling police he had “started to lean more to the left”.
As a result, Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr threatened Disney and local broadcasters with investigations and regulatory action if they aired Kimmel’s show – which led to dozens of local TV stations affiliated with ABC pulling it.
US President Donald Trump, who appointed Carr, lauded the decision.
But Mr Cruz criticised the threats as “dangerous as hell”.
“I got to say that’s right out of ‘Goodfellas’,” he said, evoking the Martin Scorsese gangster movie. “That’s right out of a mafioso coming into a bar going, ‘Nice bar you have here.
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“It would be a shame if something happened to it’.”
The senator, a former constitutional lawyer, then adopted a broad mafioso accent to quote Mr Carr’s comments about broadcasters this week: “We can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way.”
Mr Trump fired back, telling reporters in the Oval Office on Friday that he disagreed with Mr Cruz – one of the most powerful Republicans in Congress – and calling Mr Carr “an incredible American patriot with courage.”
Image: Demonstrations against his suspension have sprung up. Pic: AP
The Texas senator’s remarks are a rare example of a prominent member of the president’s own party publicly criticising the actions of the administration, highlighting deepening concerns over free-speech rights and Mr Trump’s threatened crackdowns.
Prominent Democrats and civil rights groups condemned the Trump administration’s pressure to punish Kimmel and others who speak negatively of the president.
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US talk show titans speak out
Kimmel’s fellow late-night hosts have rallied around him, as did former US president Barack Obama, who wrote on X: “After years of complaining about cancel culture, the current administration has taken it to a new and dangerous level by routinely threatening regulatory action against media companies unless they muzzle or fire reporters and commentators it doesn’t like.
Image: Barack Obama on Jimmy Kimmel Live in 2016. Pic: Susan Walsh/AP
“This is precisely the kind of government coercion that the First Amendment was designed to prevent, and media companies need to start standing up rather than capitulating it.”
Conservative activists had been angered by Kimmel’s comments on his show that they were using the assassination to score “political points”.
Right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk was shot dead on 10 September as he took part in a public debate at a college campus in Utah .
Tyler Robinson, 22, was charged with aggravated murder, weapon, and obstruction of justice offences.
US talk show host Stephen Colbert has condemned the cancellation of fellow late-night star Jimmy Kimmel as a “blatant assault on freedom of speech”, as America’s top late night presenters came out fighting.
The move by Disney-owned ABC has been widely criticised, with the network accused of kowtowing to President Donald Trump, who celebrated the decision.
Also airing on Thursday night, Jon Stewart, host of Comedy Central’s Daily Show, appeared in a garish gold set, in parody of Mr Trump’s redesign of the White House, to tell viewers the episode would be “another fun, hilarious, administration-compliant show”.
Stewart, playing the role of an over-the-top, politically obsequious TV host under authoritarian rule, lavished praise on the president and satirised his criticism of US cities and his deployment of the National Guard to fight crime.
“Coming to you tonight from the real […] crime-ridden cesspool that is New York City. It is a tremendous disaster like no-one’s ever seen before. Someone’s National Guard should invade this place, am I right?” he said.
He then introduced his guest – Maria Ressa, a journalist and author of the book How To Stand Up To A Dictator.
Image: Jon Stewart. Pic: Associated Press
Over at The Tonight Show, Jimmy Fallon told his audience he was “not sure what was going on” but that Kimmel is “a decent funny and loving guy and I hope he comes back”.
Fallon then promised viewers that in spite of people being “worried that we won’t keep saying what we want to say or that we will be censored”, he was going to cover the president’s recent trip to the UK “just like I normally would”.
He was then replaced by a voiceover describing Mr Trump as “incredibly handsome” and “making America great again”.
Image: Jimmy Fallon on Thursday’s Tonight Show. Pic: The Tonight Show X
Seth Meyers also joined the fray.
“Donald Trump is on his way back from a trip to the UK,” he said at the top of his show Late Night, “while back here at home, his administration is pursuing a crackdown on free speech… and completely unrelated, I just wanted to say that I have always admired and respected Mr Trump.
“I have always believed he was a visionary, an innovator, a great president, and an even better golfer.”
Kimmel’s removal from the show he has hosted for two decades led to criticism that free speech was under attack.
But speaking on his visit to Britain, Donald Trump claimed he was suspended “because he had bad ratings”.
It came after fellow late-night host Colbert saw his programme cancelled earlier this year, which fans claimed was also down to his criticism of Mr Trump, who has since railed against Kimmel, Meyers, and Fallon.
He has posted on Truth Social that they should all be cancelled.
Image: Jimmy Kimmel hosting last year’s Oscars. Pic: AP
Figures from both the worlds of entertainment and politics lined up to lament ABC’s removal of Kimmel.
Chat show doyenne David Letterman said people should not be fired just because they don’t “suck up” to what he called “an authoritarian” president.
During an appearance at The Atlantic Festival 2025 in New York on Thursday night, he added: “It’s no good. It’s silly. It’s ridiculous.
“I feel bad about this, because we all see where see this is going, correct? It’s managed media.”
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Image: Barack Obama on Jimmy Kimmel Live in 2016. Pic: Susan Walsh/AP
Former US president Barack Obama wrote on X: “After years of complaining about cancel culture, the current administration has taken it to a new and dangerous level by routinely threatening regulatory action against media companies unless they muzzle or fire reporters and commentators it doesn’t like.
“This is precisely the kind of government coercion that the First Amendment was designed to prevent, and media companies need to start standing up rather than capitulating it.”
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To match the occasion – a special mashup episode of Electoral Dysfunction and Trump100. Mark Stone is joined by Beth Rigby, Harriet Harman and Ruth Davidson.
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