Aug 30, 2007 11:54 pm US/Pacific
Ex-Manson Disciple Denied Parole For 18th Time
LOS ANGELES (CBS) ―
Former Charles Manson disciple Leslie Van Houten was denied parole for the 18th time for the 1969 murders of a Los Feliz couple.
A parole board panel meeting at the California Institute for Women in Frontera gave Van Houten a two-year denial and set her next hearing for 2009.
Van Houten was most recently denied parole in September 2006.
Van Houten was convicted of murder and conspiracy for participating with fellow Mason 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 Cnurt ruled in 1972 that the death penalty was unconstitutional.
Van Houten has acknowledged her role in the La Bianca murders, acknowledging at an August 2004 parole hearing that she stabbed Rosemary La Bianca 14 to 16 times after the woman had already been stabbed by Watson and Krenwinkel.
At earlier hearings, Van Houten said she believed La Bianca was already 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.
(© 2007 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
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