He spent 52 years in prison but last night Leslie Van Houten, one of the "death angels" of Charles Manson's cult, was released on parole .

The woman, now 72, was expected to be released after California Governor Gavin Newsom withdrew to appeal a state appeals court decision to grant probation to the prisoner, who was sentenced to life in prison for the heinous murder of the spouses Leno and Rosemary LaBianca which took place in 1969.

For the judges, Van Houten had fallen under the influence of Manson after a difficult adolescence : her parents' divorce, alcohol and drug abuse, a forced abortion. And she was barely of age when she met Manson in a California commune in 1968, joining what her followers dubbed "The Family": a cult of sex and satanic serial murders that left a horrific blood trail in Los Angeles.

The best known and heinous massacre was that of Cielo Drive , on the night between 8 and 9 August 1969. Four members of the Family had entered the house at number 10050 of that lane, where there had been a party organized by the young actress Sharon Tate , 26, recently married to director Roman Polanski.

22-caliber revolvers, kitchen knives and a nylon rope, the adepts killed the actress, eight and a half months pregnant, along with three friends and an 18-year-old boy who was leaving the caretaker's house. Polanski was in London.

Van Houten was not involved but went into action the next day, killing Leno LaBianca , an Italian-American supermarket owner, and his wife Rosemary. She, Manson and five other members of the "Family" (including three women) broke into the house and woke up Leno, who was dozing on the sofa in the living room, by pointing a gun in his face. The man was reassured that they would not harm him and that they only wanted to rob him. Instead they tied his hands, stabbed him and carved the word "war" into his chest, leaving a kitchen fork stuck in his belly and a steak knife in his throat. The four girls then wrote messages on the living room walls using her blood: "Death to pigs" and "Rise". In the meantime, the gang had also inflicted 41 stab wounds on his wife who remained in the bedroom, first hooding her with a pillowcase tied around her neck with the wire of the bedside lamp. After the murders, the killers stayed in the house, ate some food from the LaBiancas' refrigerator and showered before hitchhiking again.

(Unioneonline/ss)

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