California's Board of Parole Hearings have recommended (for the fifth time) that Leslie Van Houten - who was a follower of the infamous Charles Manson - should be released from prison, where she is serving a life sentence.
"These hearings are very hard on her," Van Houten's attorney Rich Pfeiffer said.
Gavin Newsom, who has been governor of California since 2019, and his predecessor Jerry Brown, have both vetoed Van Houten's release: Newsom said she "poses an unreasonable danger to society", citing the "extreme nature of the crime in which she was involved".
FILE - Leslie Van Houten attends her parole hearing at the California Institution for Women in Corona, Calif., Sept. 6, 2017
© AP Photo / Stan Lim
Houten helped members of the Manson Family in the gruesome assassination of Leno LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary, back in 1969. The double murder happened just a day after the cult's most notorious massacre when Manson followers killed pregnant actress Sharon Tate and four others.
The founder of the cult, Charles Manson, drugged his followers and urged them to go on a killing spree to trigger an apocalyptic race war in the US which he called "Helter Skelter". Manson himself spent the rest of his life in prison, and died in November 2017, at the age of 83.