SACRAMENTO \u2014 Parole was denied Thursday for convicted killer Patricia Krenwinkel \u2014 a follower of cult leader Charles Manson \u2014 after officials investigated whether battered women\u2019s syndrome affected her state of mind at the time of the notorious murders nearly five decades ago. \u00a0Krenwinkel, 69, was previously denied parole 13 times for the 1969 slayings of pregnant actress Sharon Tate and four other people.<\/p>\n
The next night, she helped kill grocer Leno LaBianca and his wife Rosemary in what prosecutors say was an attempt by Manson to ignite a race war.<\/p>\n
Parole commissioners postponed the latest parole hearing in December while officials investigated whether Krenwinkel suffered from battered women\u2019s syndrome.<\/p>\n
They denied her parole for five more years after resuming the hearing at the California Institution for Women east of Los Angeles, where Krenwinkel is incarcerated.<\/p>\n
The board did not immediately release the reason for its recommendation.
\nKrenwinkel is the longest serving female inmate in California.<\/p>\n
State law requires commissioners to give \u201cgreat weight\u201d to whether physical, emotional or mental abuse affected offenders to the point that \u201cit appears the criminal behavior was a result of that victimization.\u201d<\/p>\n
Krenwinkel\u2019s attorney Keith Wattley did not respond to requests for comment before the hearing.<\/p>\n
Krenwinkel was a 19-year-old secretary living with her older sister when she met the then 33-year-old Manson at a party. She testified that she left everything behind three days later to follow him because she believed they had a budding romantic relationship.<\/p>\n
She said in December that her feelings faded when she realized Manson was routinely sleeping with other women including underage girls, became physically and emotionally abusive, and trafficked Krenwinkel to other men for sex.<\/p>\n
She said she left him twice only to be brought back, that she was usually under the influence of drugs and rarely left alone.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought I loved him. I thought \u2014 it started with love, and then turned to fear,\u201d she said.
\nShe also recounted how she chased down and repeatedly stabbed Abigail Folger, 26, heiress to a coffee fortune, at Tate\u2019s home on Aug. 9, 1969, and helped Manson and other followers kill grocer Leno LaBianca and his wife Rosemary the following night.<\/p>\n
Manson and his right-hand man, Charles \u201cTex\u201d Watson, told her to \u201cdo something witchy,\u201d she said, so she stabbed La Bianca in the stomach with a fork, then took a rag and wrote \u201cHelter Skelter,\u201d \u201dRise\u201d and \u201cDeath to Pigs\u201d on the walls with his blood.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors say the slayings were intended to spark an apocalyptic race war that Manson called \u201cHelter Skelter,\u201d after a Beatles song.<\/p>\n
Intimate partner battery was also briefly discussed during the last parole hearing for Manson follower Leslie Van Houten, 67, in 2016. The commissioners recommended that she be paroled, but Gov. Jerry Brown blocked her release.<\/p>\n
Krenwinkel became the state\u2019s longest-serving female inmate when fellow Manson follower Susan Atkins, the third woman convicted in the series of slayings, died of cancer in prison in 2009.<\/p>\n
Anthony DiMaria, the nephew of victim Thomas Jay Sebring who died during the first massacre, criticized commissioners\u2019 consideration of intimate partner battering, part of what he said \u201chas become the twisted metamorphosis of a killer into victim.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSadly, there are millions of intimate partner battery victims in this country,\u201d he said in remarks prepared for Thursday\u2019s hearing. \u201cBut fortunately, it\u2019s safe to say, that almost none of them suddenly become a maniacal predator that stalks, pounces, butchers and mutilates her victims.\u201d<\/p>\n
By DON THOMPSON<\/p>\n
Source:<\/p>\n
Parole denied for Charles Manson follower Patricia Krenwinkel<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n