Leslie Louise Van Houten (born August 23, 1949) is an American convicted murderer and former member of the Manson Family.

During her time with Manson's group, she was known by aliases such as Louella Alexandria, Leslie Marie Sankston, Linda Sue Owens and Lulu.

[7][8][9][10] After a few months in a commune in Northern California, Van Houten met Catherine Share and Bobby Beausoleil and moved in with them and another woman during the summer of 1968.

[8][19] On August 9, 1969, Van Houten, Tex Watson, Patricia Krenwinkel, Linda Kasabian, Susan Atkins, Clem Grogan and Manson went to the house of Rosemary and Leno LaBianca.

She testified in 1971, “And I took one of the knives, and Patricia [Krenwinkel] had one – a knife – and we started stabbing and cutting up the lady.”[25] Manson, who denied responsibility, never explained a motive for the murders.

[17] Manson was accused of orchestrating both attacks, but the only defendants at the trial whose murder charges were for actually inflicting injuries on the LaBiancas were Van Houten and Krenwinkel.

Van Houten did not appear to take the court seriously (later claiming to have been supplied with LSD during the trial) and giggled during testimony about the victims.

[28] An often-cited example of how he seemed to exert control over Van Houten and the others was when Manson carved an X on his forehead and she and the other two women defendants copied him.

[30][page needed] When Ronald Hughes, her attorney, was asking an expert witness about the effect of LSD on judgment, Van Houten shouted that, "This is all such a big lie.

During the sentencing phase of the trial, in an apparent attempt to exonerate Manson, Van Houten testified that she had committed a killing in which she was not, in fact, involved.

She told a psychiatrist of beating her adopted sister, leading him to characterize her as "a spoiled little princess" and a "psychologically loaded gun", and was adamant that Manson had no influence over her thought processes or behavior.

[33] Van Houten was granted a retrial in 1977 due to the failure to declare a mistrial when Ronald Hughes, her lawyer, died.

Her defense argued that Van Houten's capacity for rational thought had been diminished due to LSD use and Manson's influence.

According to what the jury foreman later told reporters, they thought it was difficult on the basis of the evidence to determine whether Van Houten's judgment had been unimpaired enough for a verdict of first degree murder rather than manslaughter.

At Van Houten's second re-trial in 1978, the prosecution, who were now being aided by a specialist in diminished responsibility, altered the charges by using the theft of food, clothing and a small sum of money taken from the house to add a charge of robbery, whereby the felony murder rule tended to undermine a defense of reduced capacity.

In the early 1970s, Van Houten, Atkins and Krenwinkel worked with a social worker, Karlene Faith, who sought to help them re-establish their identities separate from the Manson Family.

In the book, Faith tells how two of the women believed that they would "grow wings and become fairies" after the expected race war had occurred.

[40] Susan Atkins and Patricia Krenwinkel (who were originally convicted along with Van Houten and Manson at the main trial) had both been found guilty of the most notorious crime, the murder of five people at 10050 Cielo Drive.

[46] After receiving her 13th rejection, in which the hearing concluded she posed "an unreasonable risk of danger to society", Van Houten took legal action.

Judge Bob Krug ordered the board to re-hear the application because their reasoning turned solely on the unalterable gravity of her offense and effectively gave her life without parole, "a sentence unauthorized by law".

In announcing a decision to deny parole, the commissioner of the hearing board said that she had failed to explain how someone of her good background and intelligence could have committed such "cruel and atrocious" murders.

[9] On April 14, 2016, a two-person panel of the California Parole Board recommended granting Van Houten's parole request, but California Governor Jerry Brown vetoed the release on the grounds that: "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.

"[48] On September 29, 2016, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge William C. Ryan issued an 18-page ruling upholding the governor's reversal earlier in the year of a parole board's decision to release Van Houten.

But on June 4, 2019, Governor Gavin Newsom overruled the parole board's recommendation, claiming the then 69-year-old Van Houten was still a "danger to society" and that she had "potential for future violence".

Among his reasons for denial, Newsom stated the then 71-year-old Van Houten "currently poses an unreasonable danger to society if released from prison".

[57][58] Again, her lawyer, Rich Pfeiffer, said they would appeal the governor's latest decision,[59] but her request for review was rejected by the California Supreme Court on February 9, 2022.

[63] On July 7, 2023, Governor Newsom announced that he would not file an appeal with the California Supreme Court to block her parole, paving the way for her release.

[4] According to her attorney, citing the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Van Houten was transferred to a "transitional living facility" while subject to parole supervision.

A year earlier, in 2003, Amy Yates portrayed Leslie Van Houten in the film The Manson Family.

Later in 2016, Greer Grammer portrayed Van Houten in Leslie Libman's film Manson's Lost Girls, which starred MacKenzie Mauzy as Kasabian.