Eslie Van Houten was 19 years old when she joined the Manson family, and she still didn’t know that a lifetime in prison awaited them.
The attractive and smiling teenager, with her youth intact on her skin, is currently a 73-year-old woman, with gray hair and wrinkles that the passage of time has carved into her face.
This is how he appeared in public for the last time, at the most recent appearance before the prison board. She was dressed in the butane frog of a prisoner and walked with her hands handcuffed and her ankles chained, surrounded by police officers and officials.
After more than half a century in prison for abominable crimes, today he is in the process of regaining his smile, of wearing civilian clothes, of having his chains removed and of returning to the streets. He has never been closer to that dream.
Van Houten, who was part of the apocalyptic cult led by Charles Manson, is eligible for parole, a California appeals court ruled.
That decision, which does not mean automatic freedom, reverses the governor’s order to deny the possibility, when the board recommended the new status in 2020. But the governor, who had the final say, considered her to be “a unreasonable danger to society if he was released from prisonâ€.
It was the fifth time the California prison commission had recommended his release since 2016, and each time Newson or predecessor Jerry Brown refused to sign it.
“There is no evidence to validate the governor’s conclusion,” a Los Angeles court replied this week.
In August 1969, followers broke into the home of actress Sharon Tate and director Roman Polanski (she was in Europe) and killed the hostess (pregnant) and four guests.
Van Houten did not participate. Yes, he did the next day, in the killing of supermarket executive Leno LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary. Manson took them there in his vehicle. The faithful stabbed the marriage fiercely. Van Houten took a direct part in the murder of Rosemary, who she strangled with a cable while another punched her, and she herself did it 14 times. He then used the blood to write messages on the wall. The word “war” was carved into Leno’s stomach.
His misdeeds marked an era. They were sentenced to death in 1971. But the state abolition of capital punishment left the punishment in life imprisonment.
In case of doing so, period in which the prison would be maintained, there is a good chance that the Supreme Court will ratify the decision of freedom. Should the governor let the deadline pass, Van Houten would only have to overcome a small red tape.
In the resolution, the judges emphasized that the woman has been an exemplary inmate (“the best record in a California penitentiary”), that she has obtained a master’s degree in Humanities in prison and has participated in mental health programs.
“I regret it”, he said at the last appearance and explained, without using an excuse, that the leader was for the group “like Jesus Christ”. Charles Manson died in prison of natural causes in 2017.
