How a 77-year-old Manson follower has Newsom in familiar bind
By Bob Egelko, Courts Reporter
June 3, 2025
San Francisco Chronicle
Once again, a state parole board has found one of cult
leader Charles Manson’s followers – Patricia Krenwinkel – suitable
for release after more than 56 years behind bars for her role in seven 1969
murders. And once again, Gov. Gavin Newsom must decide whether there is any
evidence that Krenwinkel, 77, would pose any danger if released – and whether a
decision to free her would affect his political future.
The Board of Parole Hearings, whose members were
appointed by the governor, voted Friday to grant parole to Krenwinkel, the
state’s longest-serving female prisoner. The board had ruled against her 14
times before recommending parole in 2022, but Newsom vetoed her release, saying
she had not shown “sufficient insight” into her crimes.
The governor gave a similar explanation in 2022 for
vetoing the parole of another Manson follower, Leslie Van Houten, whose release
had been approved five times by the parole board since 2016 but blocked each
time by Govs. Jerry Brown and Newsom.
But a state appeals court ruled in 2023 that Newsom had
failed to justify his conclusions that Van Houten, 73, lacked sufficient
understanding of her actions and could still be dangerous after 54 years in
prison. She was freed after the governor decided not to appeal the ruling.
“The only factor that can explain this veto (of Van
Houten’s parole) is political optics, and California law does not allow
governors to veto people’s parole because it will look bad,” said Hadar Aviram,
a professor at UC College of the Law San Francisco and author of the 2020 book “Yesterday’s
Monsters: The Manson Family Cases and the Illusion of Parole.”
And she said the same thinking will most likely affect
Newsom’s upcoming decision on Krenwinkel, once the parole board’s decision
becomes final in 120 days.
“What does he think people have an appetite for in this
political reality?” Aviram asked, noting California voters’ approval last
November of Proposition 36, which increased some sentences for drug crimes. “It
costs him nothing to oppose (her release). In the worst-case scenario, the
court overrules him again and she gets out.”
Newsom’s office denied a request for comment.
Manson ordered seven of his followers, including the
21-year-old Krenwinkel and two other young women, to kill nine people in three
gruesome attacks in the Benedict Canyon area of Los Angeles in July and August
1969.
During her trial, Krenwinkel admitted chasing Abigail
Folger, heiress of the Folger coffee family, and stabbing her 25 times in the
home of actress Sharon Tate, another murder victim, and then helping to kill
grocery store executive Leno Bianca and his wife, Rosemary, and using their
blood to scrawl “Death to pigs” on a wall.
Convicted of seven murders, Krenwinkel was sentenced to
death along with Manson and three others in 1971. But the sentences were
reduced to life with the possibility of parole after the California Supreme
Court overturned the state’s death penalty law in 1972.
The voters passed a new law in 1977 making capital crimes
punishable by death or life in prison without the possibility of parole, but
those sentenced under the earlier law, including Krenwinkel, remained eligible
for parole. Another ballot measure, approved by the voters in 1988, authorized
the governor to veto decisions by the parole board.
In prison, Krenwinkel has a clean disciplinary record,
earned a college degree and has taken part in community-service programs,
working to support other inmates with mental illnesses. At her 2022 parole
hearing, she said that after dropping out of school and becoming an infatuated
member of Manson’s so-called family at age 19, “I allowed myself to just start
absolutely becoming devoid of any form of morality or real ethics.”
In a statement released by Krenwinkel’s lawyers, Jane
Dorotik, a former inmate and now part of the support group California Coalition
for Women Prisoners, said, “Those of us who served time with her came to know
her as a thoughtful, gentle, and kind person – someone deeply dedicated to
creating a safe, caring environment.”
Relatives of the murder victims have not been persuaded.
“I beg the board to consider parole for Patricia
Krenwinkel only when her victims are paroled from their graves,” Anthony
Demaria, a nephew of victim Jay Sebring, testified at one of her hearings.
And Patrick Sequeira, a prosecutor in the murder cases,
told the board that if Krenwinkel “truly understood her crimes and the horrific
nature of it, she wouldn’t be here at a parole hearing. She would just accept a
punishment.”
Not so, said her lead attorney, Keith Wattley, executive
director of UnCommon Law, an Oakland-based firm that represents inmates seeking
parole.
“Pat has fully accepted responsibility for everything she
did, everything she contributed to, every twisted philosophy she embraced and
endorsed and, most importantly, every life she destroyed by her actions in
1969,” Wattley said in a statement after the board’s latest decision.
“Now it’s the Governor’s turn to show that he believes in
law and order when the law requires a person’s release despite public
outcry.”
