Manson Family

• 1. Introduction

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  On Friday the 24th of July 1970, the first day of testimony in the murder trial of the Manson Family, Charles Manson walked into court with an X carved into his forehead. He told the court he was "considered inadequate and incompetent to speak or defend himself" and had "X'd himself from the establishment's world." Over the weekend, the women on trial with him copied the mark on their own foreheads. Within a day or so, most of the group's members had done the same.

  The gesture was a piece of theater, staged by a man who had learned to read people. It also raises questions that the rest of this story sets out to answer. How does a man freed from prison gather a devoted circle of young followers? Who were the famous people who crossed his path, and what did they see in him? What happened in the summer of 1969? And why, after a trial, convictions and decades of interviews, do the people closest to the case still disagree about why it happened?

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• 2. Gathering Followers

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  By the time he walked out of prison on the 22nd of March 1967, Charles Manson had spent more than half of his life in institutions or behind bars. He moved to San Francisco and, with help from a prison acquaintance, took an apartment in Berkeley. Behind bars, the bank robber Alvin Karpis had taught him to play the steel guitar. Manson lived mostly by begging.

  Mary Brunner, aged 23, became his first housemate. She was a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and worked as a library assistant at the University of California, Berkeley. According to a second-hand account, Manson talked her past her objections to other women moving in. Before long she was sharing her home with eighteen of them.

  The word "Family" was only a figure of speech. Nobody in the group was known to be a relative of Manson. Members used the name among themselves, and the Los Angeles prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi and the media later popularized "Manson Family." At its peak, the group numbered roughly 100 people, most of them young women from middle-class homes. Many had been drawn in by hippie counterculture and communal living, then radicalized by Manson's teachings. Drugs were a constant, including amphetamine and hallucinogens such as LSD.

  In 1967's "Summer of Love," Manson set himself up as a guru in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district, then emerging as the signature hippie neighborhood. He may have borrowed ideas from the Process Church of the Final Judgement, whose members believed Satan would be reconciled with Jesus and the two would judge humanity together. Manson allegedly told his followers they were the reincarnation of the original Christians and that the establishment played the part of the Romans. Around 1967 he also began using the alias "Charles Willis Manson."

  Before the summer ended, he and some followers were touring in an old school bus. They had removed most of the seats and laid colored rugs and pillows in their place. They eventually settled in Topanga Canyon, Malibu and Venice, in the Los Angeles area.

  On the 15th of April 1968, Brunner gave birth to Manson's son in a condemned house in Topanga Canyon, with several of the young women assisting. She named him Valentine Michael, after the hero of Robert Heinlein's novel Stranger in a Strange Land. Like most in the group, Brunner collected many aliases, among them "Marioche," "Och" and "Mother Mary."

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• 3. Charm Offensive

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  The actor Al Lewis let Manson babysit his children on a couple of occasions and later described him as "a nice guy when I knew him." Others in Hollywood saw the same pleasant surface. Music producer Phil Kaufman introduced Manson to Gary Stromberg, a Universal Studios producer working on a film about the life of Jesus, set in modern America. The film featured a Black Jesus and southern "redneck Romans."

  Stromberg found Manson's ideas about what Jesus might do in a given situation interesting, as though Manson were attuned to the role. Manson once had one of his women kiss his feet, then kissed hers in return, to show where women stood in his thinking. On a beach one day, Stromberg watched him preach against materialism. A listener asked why Manson's bus was so well furnished, and Manson tossed him the keys. The man drove it away while Manson watched, apparently unconcerned.

  Stromberg also recalled how well Manson sensed other people's emotional weak spots. Danny DeCarlo, treasurer of the Straight Satans motorcycle club, was one target. Manson offered him "access" to the Family's women and worked on his vanity to keep him close.

  In late spring 1968, Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson, driving through Los Angeles, picked up two hitchhikers, Patricia Krenwinkel and Ella Jo Bailey, who were under the influence of alcohol and LSD. He took them home to Pacific Palisades for a few hours. The next morning, returning from a night recording session, he found Manson in his driveway. Wilson asked whether the stranger meant to hurt him. Manson said no and began kissing Wilson's feet. Inside, Wilson found twelve strangers, mostly women.

  Manson told a different story in the book Manson in His Own Words. In that version, he met Wilson at a friend's San Francisco house, where he had gone to get marijuana, and Wilson invited him to stop by. Wilson told the magazine Record Mirror in 1968 that he had mentioned the Beach Boys' involvement with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi to a group of strange women. In his words, "they told me they too had a guru, a guy named Charlie."

  Over the next few months the number of women in Wilson's house doubled. He picked up the bills, which came to about $100,000. That total included a large medical bill and $21,000 for his uninsured car, which they had borrowed and destroyed. Wilson would sing and talk with Manson, and both men treated the women as servants. Wilson paid for studio time to record songs written and performed by Manson. He also introduced Manson to Gregg Jakobson, Terry Melcher and Rudi Altobelli. Jakobson was impressed by "the whole Charlie Manson package" of artist, life-stylist and philosopher, and paid to record Manson's material. When Wilson's lease ended, his landlord evicted the Family.

  On the 23rd of March 1969, Manson walked uninvited onto the grounds of 10050 Cielo Drive, a house he knew as Melcher's residence. It was now rented to the actress Sharon Tate and her husband, director Roman Polanski. The Iranian photographer Shahrokh Hatami, there to photograph Tate before her flight to Rome the next day, met him at the porch. Manson said he was looking for someone Hatami did not recognize. Hatami told him this was the Polanski residence and pointed him toward "the back alley," the path to the guest house. Tate appeared in the doorway behind Hatami. Manson went to the guest house without a word, came back a minute or two later, and left.

  That evening he returned to the guest house and spoke through the screen door with Altobelli, the owner, who had just stepped out of the shower. Manson asked for Melcher. Altobelli said Melcher had moved to Malibu and claimed not to know the new address, though he did. He also said he was leaving the country the next day for more than a year. Altobelli believed Manson had really come looking for him, having met Manson at Wilson's home the previous year. The next day Altobelli and Tate flew to Rome together. Tate asked whether "that creepy-looking guy" had come to see him at the guest house.

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• 4. Spahn Ranch

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  In August 1968, the Family moved to the Spahn Ranch in Los Angeles County after Wilson's landlord evicted them. The ranch had once been a television and movie set for Westerns, but its buildings had decayed. By the late 1960s it earned most of its money by selling horseback rides.

  The owner, George Spahn, was about 80 years old and nearly blind. Female Family members did chores around the property and acted as his guides. Occasionally, on Manson's orders, they also had sex with him. In return, Spahn let the group live there free. One young woman, Lynette Fromme, earned the nickname "Squeaky" because she squeaked whenever Spahn pinched her thigh.

  Charles Watson, a small-town Texan who had quit college and moved to California, soon joined the group at the ranch. Spahn gave him the nickname "Tex" because of his accent.

  A drug robbery changed the mood in the summer of 1969. Watson had become involved in dealing and robbed a dealer named Bernard "Lotsapoppa" Crowe. Crowe allegedly threatened to kill everyone at the ranch. On the 1st of July 1969, Manson shot Crowe at Manson's Hollywood apartment.

  Manson then read a news report about a dumped body of a Black Panther found in Los Angeles. It seemed to confirm that he had killed his man. Crowe was not a Black Panther, but Manson concluded he had been one and expected the Panthers to retaliate. He turned the ranch into a defensive camp with night patrols of armed guards, and brought in members of the Straight Satans motorcycle club as security. Watson later wrote, "Blackie was trying to get at the chosen ones." Around this time, Bobby Beausoleil became more involved with the Family.

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• 5. Summer of Killings

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  Gary Alan Hinman, born on the 24th of December 1934 in Colorado, was a music teacher and PhD student at UCLA. Late in the 1960s he befriended members of the Manson Family and let some of them stay at his home. According to some people, including Susan Atkins, Manson believed Hinman was wealthy.

  On the 25th of July 1969, Manson sent Beausoleil, Mary Brunner and Atkins to Hinman's Topanga Canyon home to persuade him to join the Family and hand over supposed inherited assets. They held Hinman hostage for two days while he insisted he had no money. At one point Manson arrived with a sword and slashed Hinman's face and ear. Beausoleil then stabbed Hinman to death, allegedly on Manson's instruction. Someone used Hinman's blood to write "Political piggy" on the wall and to draw a panther paw, a Black Panther symbol. Beausoleil was arrested on the 6th of August 1969 while driving Hinman's car, and police found the murder weapon in its tire well.

  Two nights later, on the 8th of August 1969, Manson told Tex Watson to take Susan Atkins, Linda Kasabian and Patricia Krenwinkel to 10050 Cielo Drive. According to Watson, Manson ordered them to kill everyone there. Manson told the three women to do as Watson directed. Roman Polanski was away in Europe, working on The Day of the Dolphin.

  The group killed the five people they found. They were Sharon Tate, who was eight and a half months pregnant, and her visitors Jay Sebring, Abigail Folger and Wojciech Frykowski. The fifth was Steven Parent, who had been visiting the property's caretaker. Atkins wrote "pig" in Tate's blood on the front door as they left. The murders created a nationwide sensation.

  The following night, seven Family members drove to the home of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca. They were Leslie Van Houten, Steve "Clem" Grogan, Manson, and the four from the night before. According to Watson, Manson pointed through a window at a man sleeping in the living room. The two men went in through an unlocked back door, and Watson bound the couple with pillowcases over their heads. Manson then left, sending Krenwinkel and Van Houten inside. Watson killed Leno LaBianca with a bayonet, stabbing him 12 times. Rosemary LaBianca fought back by swinging a lamp, and was killed by Watson, Krenwinkel and Van Houten.

  Krenwinkel used the couple's blood to write "Rise" and "Death to pigs" on the walls and "Healter Skelter" on the refrigerator door. Manson meanwhile told Kasabian to drive to the home of an acquaintance of hers. He dropped off Kasabian, Grogan and Atkins, then drove back to Spahn Ranch. Kasabian allegedly saved a would-be victim by knocking on the wrong door on purpose.

  Donald "Shorty" Shea, a stuntman and horse wrangler at Spahn Ranch, was killed about ten days after a sheriff's raid on the 16th of August 1969. Manson suspected Shea had helped set up the raid and believed he wanted Spahn to run the Family off. Manson may also have considered it a "sin" that Shea, a white man, had married a Black woman. A further possibility was that Shea knew about the Tate-LaBianca killings. Manson was found guilty of Shea's murder along with Hinman's, in a 1971 trial held after the Tate-LaBianca convictions. Bruce Davis and Grogan were convicted of the Shea killing in separate trials.

  In 1977 authorities learned where Shea lay buried, contrary to Family claims that his body had been dismembered and scattered. Grogan drew a map for the prosecutor, and the body was recovered intact. In 1985 Grogan became the first person convicted of a Manson-ordered murder to be paroled.

  Manson and his followers were convicted of nine counts of first-degree murder. The Los Angeles Police Department believes the Family could have claimed up to at least twelve more victims. Prosecutor Stephen Kay said he knew of one occasion when Manson told a cellmate he was responsible for 35 murders. Sharon Tate's sister, Debra Tate, said investigators were "just scraping the surface." She also said Manson once sent her a taunting map of the Panamint Range marked with crosses, which she believed stood for buried bodies.

  Several deaths remain unproven or disputed. Nancy Warren, 65, and Clyda Dulaney, 24, were found beaten and strangled at Warren's antique store near Ukiah, California, on the 13th of October 1968. The Family became suspects because members had been in the area, but no one was ever charged. John Philip Haught, 22, a Family member, died on the 5th of November 1969 in what was described as a game of Russian roulette. Police later found the gun held seven bullets and one spent shell and had been wiped of prints, but concluded he killed himself. Joel Pugh, 29, married to Family member Sandra Good, was found dead in a London hotel on the 1st of December 1969. British authorities called it a drug-induced suicide. Kay and others claim Manson hated Pugh.

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• 6. Searching for a Motive

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  According to Susan Atkins, Family members came to believe that Manson was a manifestation of Jesus Christ. They also believed his prophecies of an imminent, apocalyptic race war. Prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi argued at trial and in later best-sellers that the murders were meant to set off that war, which Manson called "Helter Skelter."

  In November 1968 the Family had set up headquarters near Death Valley, at the Myers and Barker ranches. Myers was owned by the grandmother of Family member Catherine Gillies. According to Watson and Paul Watkins, Manson and Watson visited an acquaintance who played The Beatles, the group's double album, and Manson became obsessed. Watkins said Manson taught that racial tensions were about to explode, and that the album's songs foretold it in code. By February, Watkins claimed, the Family was to record an album whose songs would trigger the chaos. The defendants testified that the words on the walls were meant to imitate the Hinman scene, not herald a race war.

  Bugliosi claimed Manson told Kasabian to hide a wallet from the scene in the women's restroom of a service station near a Black neighborhood. Co-prosecutor Stephen Kay later pointed out that it was actually left about 20 miles away in Sylmar, a predominantly White neighborhood.

  A second theory, "copycat," came from Atkins, Krenwinkel, Van Houten, Beausoleil and others. They said Beausoleil's arrest for the Hinman killing set off the spree, and that the goal was to convince police the real Hinman killers were still free. Writer Truman Capote's interviews with Beausoleil, and one by Ann Louise Bardach in November 1981, backed that account. Detective Charlie Guenther said of Beausoleil, "He called the Spahn Ranch after he was arrested. The sole motive for those murders was to get Bobby out of jail." Bugliosi's co-prosecutor Aaron Stovitz agreed that copycat killing was the motive.

  The stories about Hinman himself differ too. In magazine interviews, Beausoleil said he went to Hinman's home to recover money paid for mescaline supplied to the Straight Satans, which was supposedly bad. In her 1977 autobiography, Atkins wrote that Manson sent them to get a supposed $21,000 inheritance. She said Manson had privately told her two days earlier that if she wanted to "do something important," she could kill Hinman and take his money.

  A third explanation points to drugs. Jim Markham, Jay Sebring's protege, believes the murders answered a bad drug deal the day before. In his account, Manson went to Tate's house to sell marijuana and cocaine to Sebring and Frykowski, and the two men attacked and beat him. Frykowski's friend Witold Kaczanowski told police that Frykowski was involved with many criminals and the drug trade. Beausoleil told Capote, "They burned people on dope deals. Sharon Tate and that gang." Researchers Ed Sanders and Paul Krassner uncovered information that Joel Rostau, boyfriend of Sebring's receptionist, delivered mescaline and cocaine to the house hours before the murders. During the Manson trial, Rostau and other Sebring associates were murdered.

  The fourth explanation centers on the producer Terry Melcher. Melcher was at first interested in recording Manson and making a film about the Family's commune life. Manson auditioned for him, and Melcher declined to sign him. He dropped the film idea after watching Manson fight with a drunken stuntman at Spahn Ranch. Wilson and Melcher then cut their ties with Manson, which angered him. Melcher, his girlfriend Candice Bergen and the musician Mark Lindsay had shared the Cielo Drive house, and Melcher and Bergen moved out soon afterward.

  Some authors and police officers have theorized that Manson targeted the house in revenge for Melcher's rejection, not knowing Melcher had left. Watson said Manson did know. Lindsay recalled Melcher saying that Manson or someone from his group left a note on Melcher's porch in Malibu. Atkins told police and a grand jury that the house was chosen "to instill fear into Terry Melcher because Terry had given us his word on a few things and never came through with them." Melcher hired a bodyguard and told Bugliosi he was in psychiatric treatment. Bugliosi reassured him that "Manson knew you were no longer living on Cielo Drive."

  In his 2019 book CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties, Tom O'Neil reexamined the case. He found police files suggesting Melcher was associating with Manson in the four months after the Tate-LaBianca murders but before Manson's arrest. O'Neil argued that documents seemingly hidden by Bugliosi undermined the claim that the murders were meant to frighten Melcher.

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• 7. Capture and Courtroom

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  Winifred Chapman, the Polanskis' housekeeper, found the Tate crime scene when she arrived for work on the 9th of August 1969, and the murders became national news that day. The next day, sheriff's detectives who had the Hinman case told LAPD detectives about the bloody writing at the Hinman house. According to Bugliosi, the Tate team suspected a drug deal and brushed aside the similarities. Caretaker William Garretson was held briefly as a suspect and released on the 11th of August 1969 after a polygraph examination.

  At about 10:30 p.m. on the 10th of August, roughly 19 hours after the LaBianca killings, 15-year-old Frank Struthers came home from a camping trip. He noticed all the window shades were drawn and his stepfather's speedboat was still hitched to the family car. With his sister's boyfriend, Joe Dorgan, he went in and found Leno's body. Officers found Rosemary's body after they arrived. On the 12th of August, the LAPD told the press it saw no connection between the Tate and LaBianca killings.

  On the 16th of August, the sheriff's office raided Spahn Ranch and arrested Manson and 25 others as suspects in an auto theft ring that converted stolen Volkswagen Beetles into dune buggies. Because the search warrant had been misdated, the group was released within days.

  The real breakthrough came from the desert. Family members had been searching Death Valley for a hole in the ground they believed led to the Bottomless Pit. National Park Service rangers, the California Highway Patrol and the Inyo County Sheriff's Office raided the Myers and Barker ranches after the Family burned an earthmover owned by Death Valley National Monument. They arrested two dozen people, including Manson, whom a Highway Patrol officer found hiding in a cabinet beneath Barker's bathroom sink. The raiders had no idea they were holding suspects in the Los Angeles murders.

  In mid-October, LaBianca detectives learned of the Hinman case and of Kitty Lutesinger, Beausoleil's girlfriend, who had been arrested with Family members. Meanwhile, Susan Atkins was held at Sybil Brand Institute in Monterey Park, California, for the Hinman murder. There she described her part in the killings to bunkmates Ronnie Howard and Virginia Graham, and one of them informed the LAPD. On the 1st of December 1969, the LAPD announced warrants for Watson, Krenwinkel and Kasabian. Kasabian surrendered voluntarily in Concord, New Hampshire, on the 2nd of December.

  Physical evidence came from the public too. On the 1st of September 1969, a 10-year-old named Steven Weiss found the .22-caliber revolver Watson had used and gave it to the police. In mid-December, after the Los Angeles Times published an account based on information Atkins had given her attorney, Weiss's father kept calling until the LAPD matched the gun to the murders. A local ABC television crew used the same account to find the bloody clothing the killers had discarded.

  The trial began on the 15th of June 1970. Kasabian was the prosecution's main witness. She had not taken part in the killings, and she received immunity in exchange for her testimony. Judge William Keene had reluctantly allowed Manson to act as his own lawyer. He withdrew that permission after Manson broke a gag order and filed what were called "outlandish" and "nonsensical" motions. Manson then filed an affidavit of prejudice, and Judge Charles Older took over.

  Family members kept vigil on the sidewalk outside, and some wore sheathed hunting knives, which were legal to carry in plain view. Others tried to silence witnesses. Paul Watkins was badly burned in a suspicious fire in his van, and Juan Flynn was threatened. Barbara Hoyt, who had overheard Atkins describing the murders, flew to Hawaii with Ruth Ann Moorehouse. There, Moorehouse allegedly gave her a hamburger spiked with LSD, and Hoyt was found drugged on a Honolulu curb. Before that, Hoyt had been a reluctant witness. Afterward her reluctance disappeared.

  On the 4th of August, Manson showed the jury a Los Angeles Times front page reading "Manson Guilty, Nixon Declares." It referred to President Richard Nixon's complaint that the media were glamorizing Manson. The jurors insisted it had not influenced them. On the 5th of October, Manson leapt over the defense table to attack the judge and was wrestled away by bailiffs. The female defendants chanted in Latin. Older allegedly began wearing a revolver under his robes afterward.

  On the 16th of November, the prosecution rested. Three days later the defense stunned the court by resting without calling a witness. Atkins, Krenwinkel and Van Houten demanded to testify, planning to say they alone were responsible. Van Houten's lawyer, Ronald Hughes, refused to "push a client out the window." The prosecutor saw Manson behind the plan. In a 1987 documentary, Krenwinkel herself said the proceedings were scripted by Manson.

  Manson then testified, with the jury out of the room, for more than an hour. He said the music was telling young people to rise up against the establishment. He also asked, "Why blame it on me? I didn't write the music." Shortly afterward, Hughes disappeared on a weekend trip during a recess. His badly decomposed body turned up in March 1971, wedged between boulders in Ventura County. It was rumored, but never proven, that the Family killed him, though flooding may have been the cause. Kay said he was "on the fence." Sandra Good called Hughes the first of the "retaliation murders."

  Attorney Maxwell Keith replaced Hughes, and getting up to speed on the transcripts delayed the trial by more than two weeks. Defendants then disrupted the prosecution's closing argument, and Older banned all four from the courtroom for the rest of the guilt phase. He said it was becoming obvious they were putting on a performance.

  On the 25th of January 1971, the jury found all four defendants guilty on each of 27 counts. In the penalty phase, Atkins, Krenwinkel and Van Houten testified that the killings were copycat versions of the Hinman murder, planned by Kasabian. Midway through, Manson shaved his head and trimmed his beard to a fork. He told the press, "I am the Devil, and the Devil always has a bald head." On the 29th of March 1971, the jury returned death verdicts on all counts, and on the 19th of April 1971 Older sentenced the four to death.

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• 8. Afterward

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  Tex Watson had gone home to McKinney, Texas, where police arrested him on the 30th of November 1969 after a fingerprint match to a print on the front door of the Tate home. He fought extradition long enough to miss the first trial. His own began in August 1971. By October he was guilty on seven counts of murder and one of conspiracy, and prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi quickly dismantled his psychiatric defense. In February 1972, the California Supreme Court abolished the state's death penalty in People v. Anderson, and all five death sentences became life terms.

  Back in prison, Manson's speeches carried little weight. He found temporary acceptance with the Aryan Brotherhood but a submissive role at San Quentin. A Los Angeles Times reporter tracked down his mother, Kathleen Maddox, who said he had been "pampered by all the women who surrounded him" as a child.

  On the 8th of November 1972, a hiker found the body of 26-year-old James Lambert Willett, a Marine combat veteran, near Guerneville, California. He had been forced to dig his own grave. His 19-year-old wife, Lauren, was found buried in the basement of a Stockton house where several Manson followers lived. Michael Monfort pleaded guilty to her murder, and others pleaded guilty as accessories or to James's murder.

  On the 5th of September 1975, Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme tried to assassinate President Gerald Ford in Sacramento. She and Sandra Good had moved there to be near Manson at Folsom State Prison. A search of their apartment led to Good's conviction for conspiring to send threatening mail and transmitting death threats. The threats targeted corporate executives and government officials over supposed environmental neglect. Fromme was sentenced to 15 years to life, the first person sentenced under the federal law against attempting to assassinate a president. In December 1987 she briefly escaped from a federal prison camp in West Virginia, trying to reach Manson after hearing he had cancer. She was released on parole on the 14th of August 2009.

  Catherine Share told Bugliosi in 1994 that her penalty-phase testimony, which introduced the copycat story, was a fabrication given at Manson's direction. In a 1997 segment of Hard Copy she implied Manson had threatened her. In August 1971 she had joined a violent store robbery meant to get weapons to free Manson. In January 1996, a latter-day follower, George Stimson, started a Manson website with Good's help. Good had been released in 1985 after serving 10 years of her 15-year sentence.

  In a 1998-99 interview in Seconds magazine, Bobby Beausoleil rejected the idea that Manson had ordered him to kill Hinman. He said Manson did slash Hinman with a sword, which he had denied in a 1981 interview. Caretaker William Garretson said in a 1999 E! program that he had in fact seen and heard part of the Tate murders. That fit the 1969 polygraph examiner's impression that Garretson was "clean" on involvement but "muddy" on whether he heard anything.

  Susan Atkins was found to have brain cancer in early 2008. She was denied compassionate release that July and denied parole for the 18th and final time on the 2nd of September 2009. She died of natural causes on the 24th of September 2009 at the Central California Women's facility in Chowchilla. In a January 2008 Discovery Channel segment, Barbara Hoyt said she had gone along with the Family because she was "trying to keep them from killing my family."

  A forensic search at Barker Ranch in February 2008 identified two likely grave sites and a third worth further investigation. After testing, the Inyo County sheriff dug up four potential sites. On the 21st of May, he ended the search. They held no human remains. Juan Flynn told Los Angeles magazine in 2009, "Charles Manson got away with everything." He added that Manson was "exactly where he wants to be."

  Charles Manson died of a heart attack and complications from colon cancer on the 19th of November 2017, aged 83. Leslie Van Houten was released on parole on the 11th of July 2023, aged 73. Patricia Krenwinkel won a parole grant on the 26th of May 2022, but Governor Gavin Newsom reversed it that October. A 2025 recommendation for her release was reversed again. Newsom also denied parole to Bobby Beausoleil after the board recommended it in 2019.

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