A panel of the California Board of Parole Hearings has again recommended parole for former Charles Manson follower and convicted killer Patricia Krenwinkel. Krenwinkel was found suitable for parole for the second time in three years on Friday.
But it's not a done deal: The board's legal division has up to 120 days to finalize the decision, at which point the governor has 30 days to review and potentially reverse it. California Gov. Gavin Newsom's office declined to comment.
Newsom overturned the board's 2022 parole recommendation, writing that Krenwinkel still posed "an unreasonable risk of danger to public safety."
"While Ms. Krenwinkel has matured in prison and engaged in commendable rehabilitative efforts, her efforts have not sufficiently reduced her risk for future dangerousness," Newsom wrote in his report, saying she had "not developed sufficient insight into the causative factors of her crime."
Krenwinkel was 21 when she participated in the August 1969 murders of seven people — including actress Sharon Tate, who was eight-and-a-half months pregnant — at Manson's direction. The cult leader tasked members of his so-called family with the killings in the hopes of inciting an apocalyptic race war, after which he would take control of society.
On trial, Krenwinkel admitted her role in the Tate-LaBianca murders, which targeted two Los Angeles households over the course of two nights. She confessed to chasing 25-year-old coffee heiress Abigail Folger with a knife and stabbing her 28 times at Tate's house on Cielo Drive, then helping kill grocery store executive Leno LaBianca and his wife Rosemary the following night.
Krenwinkel said she stabbed Leno LaBianca with a fork and used the couple's blood to scrawl "death to pigs" on the wall.
Krenwinkel was convicted on seven counts of first-degree murder and — alongside Manson and several other cult members — sentenced to death in 1971. The following year, after California briefly outlawed the death penalty, their sentences were commuted to life with the possibility of parole.
Krenwinkel has been denied parole 14 times since then. Now 77, she is the longest-serving woman in California prison.
Keith Wattley, Krenwinkel's parole attorney, said in a statement shared with NPR that "no matter how serious and disturbing the facts of the crime, if a person gets a parole-eligible sentence, our laws require that they be released once they are no longer dangerous."
"After 56 ½ years of incarceration with no rule violations, with substantial change in who she is, and with the last nine psychological evaluators over the past 40 years agreeing that Pat is no longer a risk, it's time to make the possibility of parole a reality," he added, calling on Newsom to support the recommendation.
Manson died in 2017 while serving nine life sentences. One of his followers, Susan Atkins, died of brain cancer in prison in 2009. Another, Leslie Van Houten, walked free in July 2023 after spending over five decades in custody.
The state parole board had recommended Van Houten for parole five times starting in 2016, but Newsom and his predecessor both reversed those decisions, most recently in 2022. Later that year, a state appeals court separately granted Van Houten's petition for writ of habeas corpus, and Newsom declined to challenge the case — paving the way for her eventual freedom.
Krenwinkel says she has taken responsibility
Krenwinkel has said that her complicated family dynamics and low sense of self-esteem made her vulnerable to Manson's manipulation.
"It is countless how many lives were shattered by the path of destruction that I was a part of, and it all comes from just a simple thing as just wanting to be loved," she told the New York Times in 2014.
In her late teens, Krenwinkel lost contact with friends, dropped out of school and moved in with her sister in Manhattan Beach, Calif., where she met and became enamored with Manson. She joined his "family," touring the American West for 18 months together before settling at the infamous Spahn Ranch in 1969.
She said at her 2022 parole hearing that Manson was initially affectionate towards her but became increasingly controlling and abusive. Over time, the group became more isolated, and violence was normalized — she and other members were trained in using weapons, for example.
"I had just totally allowed myself to just start absolutely becoming devoid of any form of morality or real ethics," she told parole officials.
Krenwinkel said by the time she was sitting in isolation on death row, in her early 20s, she made the decision to take responsibility for her past actions and decisions going forward.
During her decades in prison, she earned a bachelor's degree and participated in numerous self-help and community service programs, including supporting incarcerated people with severe mental illness and training dogs to become service animals for people with disabilities. Newsom said she had never been disciplined while in prison and was only cited twice for minor infractions, most recently in 2005.
Krenwinkel told the 2022 hearing that she'd spent the last 50 years working with mental health professionals, "trying to locate that bottom that absolutely allowed me to feel nothing and be nothing and see myself as nothing." As a result, she said, she now enjoys her own company and feels comfortable acting on her wants and needs.
"It's important to me that … not become internal again, that I let people know who I am," she said. "Whether or not you accept me, I don't care. This is your life. And I am content with what I have done to try and put the pieces back together."
Many oppose her potential release
In parole hearings over the years, Krenwinkel has accepted responsibility for her crimes and blamed Manson — and the toxic dynamics of their relationship — for coercing her into them.
That wasn't evidence enough for Newsom, who wrote in 2022 that she had not adequately reflected on "her own internal processes" that led her to join and support Manson's "terror campaign."
"Ms. Krenwinkel was not only a victim of Mr. Manson's abuse. She was also a significant contributor to the violence and tragedy that became the Manson Family's legacy," he wrote. "Beyond the brutal murders she committed, she played a leadership role in the cult, and an enforcer of Mr. Manson's tyranny."
Newsom said the crimes Krenwinkel committed were "among the most fear-inducing in California's history," saying that would present significant stressors and public safety challenges if she were granted parole. Krenwinkel has said she would change her name if released, but would still want to be involved in the community.
"I would like to become engaged with what's going on in the world but I do know that I would be very — I would listen very carefully and try to make myself aware of who I am around," she said at the 2022 hearing. "And … if there's something that could turn into something that would be negative, I would have to be aware of that at all times, that I do know."
The New York Times reports that Krenwinkel did not speak at her four-hour parole hearing on Friday, though family members of her victims read statements of opposition. Debra Tate, Sharon's sister, created an online petition asking Newsom to reverse her parole. It has over 116,000 signatures as of Monday.
"For years this woman laughed about the murders in court and showed absolutely no remorse at all," Tate wrote, adding, "Society cannot allow this serial killer who committed such horrible, gruesome, random killings back out."
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