Brown denies Manson follower parole

SACRAMENTO (AP) — California Gov. Jerry Brown denied parole Friday for Leslie Van Houten, the youngest follower of murderous cult leader Charles Manson who is

serving a life sentence for killing a wealthy grocer and his wife more than 40 years ago.

Brown overturned the recommendation of a parole board that found Van Houten was no-longer the violent young woman who committed a gruesome murder and was now fit for release. She has completed college degrees and been a model inmate.

The Democratic governor acknowledged her success in prison and her youth at the time of the murders, but he wrote in his decision that she failed to explain how she transformed from an upstanding teen to a killer.

“Both her role in these extraordinarily brutal crimes and her inability to explain her willing participation in such horrific violence cannot be overlooked and lead me to believe she remains an unacceptable risk to society if released,” Brown wrote.

Van Houten, 66, participated in the killings of Leno La Bianca and his wife, Rosemary, a day after other so-called “Manson family” members murdered pregnant actress Sharon Tate and four others in 1969. Van Houten did not participate in the Tate killings. The crimes and the trials that followed fascinated the world and became tabloid fodder.

“Gov. Brown has done a good thing here, and I think he sees what we see — that this was an unrepentant killer,” said Lou Smaldino, nephew of the La Biancas.