Patricia Krenwinkel, a former follower of cult leader Charles Manson, who was convicted of her role in the murders of seven people during a two -day murderous Spree in Los Angeles in 1969, is recommended for conditional release.
It is the 16th time that Krenwinkel has appeared for the Parole Board Panel, and the second time is conditional release recommended – the first in 2022, before the decision was destroyed by the Governor Gavin Newsom in California.
Krenwinkel, 77, is the longest serving female prisoner of California, originally sentenced to her role in the brutal “Helter Skelter” murders, which shocked America in 1971 and was shining on the dark side of the hippie culture of the 1960s.
Her sentence was converted to life with the possibility of conditional release in 1972, when the State Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty was unconstitutional.
Patricia Krenwinkel has spent the last 54 years in prison for her role in the murders of ‘Manson Family’. ((AP Photo: George Brich))
In 1967, when Krenwinkel was 19, she met musician and small criminal Charles Manson at a party, leaving her job and apartment three days later to travel with him to San Francisco because she believed that they might have a romantic relationship.
During the next 18 months they and several other young men and women Manson throughout the country and they became known as ‘the Manson family’ while they fell deeper under his influence, often with the help of psychedelic drugs.
She later said that Manson was physically and emotionally abused her during this period, including trading her for other men for sex, and she had tried to escape the group twice to be brought back alone by other members of the “family”.
Manson’s grip on his followers is described as hypnotic. ((AP -Photo))
In 1969, Manson – once an aspiring popster – convinced his followers that he received secret messages via the white album of the Beatles and informed him about an upcoming racing war that his group could wait before he came up to rule the world.
In which prosecutors label an attempt to ignite that racing war, Manson Krenwinkel and various other followers drew up the house of actress Sharon Tate and her husband, director of Roman Polanski, and to kill everyone they have found inside.
His followers shot, defeated and stabbed five people in the house that evening – including Mrs. Tate, who was eight months pregnant at the time.
The next night Manson and his followers Leno and Rosemary Labianca attacked in another house that was randomly chosen, and put them dead before Krenwinkel “HEASTER SKELTER” wrote ” [sic]”Rise” and “Death to Pigs” on the walls with their blood.
During their trial, Krenwinkel and two other young women involved in the murders of the attention for smiling, laughing and singing while the procedure took place, then pulled for shaving their heads and cutting the letter X in their forehead as Manson had done.
‘Manson Family’ Members Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel (Center) and Leslie van Houten in 1970. ((AP Photo: George Brich))
While during her trial she remained loyal to the cult leader and at the start of her prison, she started to distance herself from him over time, to abandon her earlier actions and to speak out against his claim not to have ordered the murders.
“[I’m] Just haunted every day by the endless suffering that caused my participation in murders, “she told a conditional hearing in 2016.
“I am so ashamed of my actions … I am once aware that the victims who died had so much life to live.“
The panel that Krenwinkel recommended conditionally released conditionally, acknowledged its perfect behavioral record for her 54 years in prison and said she is little risk on recidivism.
Nevertheless, family members of her victims remain strong against a possible release, According to the New York Times.
Debra Tate, Sharon’s younger sister, told the newspaper that she asked face-to-face meetings with Manson family members for “many, many years” under a recovering justice framework, but “they all refused”.
“They can get the chance to actually sit down personally and say that they are sorry, but they won’t do it,” she said.
“If you refuse to talk and the families of your victims keep asking for it, isn’t that a kind of torture?”
The recommendation of the Parole Board Panel is not the last word about the fate of Krenwinkel. The decision will first be assessed by the legal division of the board, a process That can take up to 120 days.
The governor will then have the chance to reverse the decision, as he made in 2022, or to return it to the panel for further assessment.
A similar decision by Mr. Newsom to block the release of Manson family member Leslie van Houten, was destroyed by a court of appeal in 2023, which led to the release of Van Houts from prison.
Krenwinkel is now one of the two Manson Cult members who are still behind bars about the murders in 1969, the other is Charles “Tex” Watson, 79, who coordinated the murders.
Manson himself died behind bars in 2017 at the age of 83, because they were convicted of orders the murders.
#Manson #Family #Cult #member #Krenwinkel #recommended #conditional #release