A state parole board panel on Friday recommended parole for former Charles Manson follower Patricia Krenwinkel, who is serving a life prison term for her role in the 1969 Tate-La Bianca murders.
Krenwinkel, now 77, was convicted of seven counts of first-degree murder in 1971 for participating with fellow Manson family members Charles “Tex” Watson and Leslie Van Houten in the Aug. 9, 1969, killings of the seven-months-pregnant actress Sharon Tate, Thomas Jay Sebring, Abigail Ann Folger, Wojciech Frykowski and Steven Earl Parent and the slayings of grocers Leno and Rosemary La Bianca the following day.
She originally received a death sentence, but it was reduced to life in prison under a California Supreme Court ruling that invalidated all death sentences before 1972.
FILE – Former Manson family member and convicted murderer Patricia Krenwinkel listens to the ruling denying her parole, at a hearing at the California Institution for Women in Corona, Calif., Thursday, Jan. 20, 2011. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon, File)
FILE – In this Jan. 25, 1971, file photo, three members of Charles Manson’s hippie style clan leave a Los Angeles courtroom just after being found guilty, along with Manson of first degree murder, in Los Angeles. From left are Patricia Krenwinkel, Susan Atkins and Leslie Van Houten. (AP Photo/Pool, File)
FILE – Three co-defendants in the Sharon Tate murder case, from left, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten, laugh as they walk to court in Los Angeles for sentencing on March 29, 1971. (AP Photo/File)
FILE – In this Aug. 20, 1970, file photo, Charles Manson followers, from left, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten walk to court to appear for their roles in the 1969 cult killings of seven people in Los Angeles. Timing alone ensures that the Woodstock music festival and Charles Manson murders will be joined in memory. But the apex of peace and love and the abyss of pitiless violence were born out of similar drives as old as the U.S. itself. (AP Photo/George Brich, File)
FILE – This March 13, 2020, photo provided by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation shows Charles Manson follower Patricia Krenwinkel. (California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation via AP, File)
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FILE – Former Manson family member and convicted murderer Patricia Krenwinkel listens to the ruling denying her parole, at a hearing at the California Institution for Women in Corona, Calif., Thursday, Jan. 20, 2011. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon, File)
The parole board panel’s recommendation is subject to a review by the full Board of Parole Hearings and Gov. Gavin Newsom, which can take up to 150 days, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
A parole board panel had recommended parole for Krenwinkel in May 2022, but the parole grant was reversed by the governor in August 2022, according to records from the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
