20th time not the charm for CHARLES MANSON gang murdereress Leslie Van Houten. Victims kin help keep her behind bars.
Van Houten was convicted of murder and conspiracy for her role in the slayings of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, who were stabbed to death by Charles Manson followers August 1969.
Van Houten, 63, confessed to joining in stabbing Mrs. La Bianca after she was dead.
A night prior members of Manson's kill crazed cult killed actress Sharon Tate and four others, but Van Houten was not a participant in those murders.
“I X-ed myself out of society and I ask you to allow me to re-enter society," Van Houten said in her parole request.
But her plea, supported by seeming rehabilitation and good works in prison, carried little weight with the two parole commissioners, who said her crimes were "heinous and atrocious".
"The crimes will always be a factor," said Board of Parole Hearings Commissioner Jeffrey Ferguson. "The question is whether the good will ever outweigh the bad. It certainly didn't today."
Van Houten's lawyer, Michael Satris, said his client "sank to the depths of Dante's inferno and she put herself there by consorting with the devil himself, Charles Manson."
With victims' survivors sitting behind her in a cramped room at the California Institution for Women, Van Houten acknowledged her participation in the Manson ordered murders..
"He could never have done what he did without people like me," said Van Houten.
The parole appeal was finally dead and buried when the panel heard from relatives of the LaBiancas.
The LaBianaca kin denounced her as a remorseless killer and said she would be a danger to society. The panel agreed and parole was denied.
Van Houten has now spent the last 44 years incarcerated.
