Manson Follower Patricia Krenwinkel Wins Parole Backing for a Third Time

The governor reversed her 2022 and 2025 grants; this one, from her 18th hearing, faces a 120-day board review first.

For the third time since 2022, a California parole panel has recommended freeing Patricia Krenwinkel, the Manson follower serving life for the Tate-LaBianca murders.

The panel tentatively granted the 78-year-old parole Tuesday, at what the state calls her 18th subsequent suitability hearing, Fox 11 reported, citing the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. A grant isn't a release. The department said every grant is only a proposal until the governor and the Board of Parole Hearings have both looked it over, and Gov. Gavin Newsom has reversed the last two.

Twice before, a panel said yes. The first came in May 2022, and Newsom overturned it later that year. The second came on May 30, 2025, and he overturned that one on Oct. 13, 2025, according to Fox 11.

His 2025 decision gave her credit first. Newsom praised her work on herself behind bars, including several college degrees and what he called an excellent disciplinary history, then wrote that "she currently poses an unreasonable danger to society if released from prison at this time."

Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman told ABC News he backed that call and said Krenwinkel hadn't fully accepted blame, ABC7 reported. Her attorney, Keith Wattley, said in a statement that Newsom "has unfortunately chosen politics over people," and argued the governor ignored a legal duty to give great weight to her history as a documented survivor of domestic violence.

On Aug. 9, 1969, actress Sharon Tate, who was seven months pregnant, NBC Los Angeles noted, was killed with Thomas Jay Sebring, Abigail Ann Folger, Wojciech Frykowski and Steven Earl Parent at a home in Benedict Canyon. Grocers Leno and Rosemary LaBianca were killed the next day.

Krenwinkel took part alongside Charles "Tex" Watson and Leslie Van Houten, two others from Manson's circle, and in 1971 she was convicted on seven first-degree murder counts. She was sentenced to death, but that became life in prison after the California Supreme Court threw out every death sentence handed down before 1972.

She became California's longest-serving female inmate when Susan Atkins, another Manson follower, died behind bars of cancer in 2009, ABC7 reported. Van Houten has already walked out, after 53 years of a life sentence, Fox 11 has reported.

The next steps run on a fixed clock. The board has up to 120 days after a hearing to review a panel's decision, according to its published procedures, which puts the deadline in early February. After that, Fox 11 reported, the governor gets 30 more days to let the grant stand or reverse it, an extra step that applies because her conviction was for murder.

That power is unusual. The board says only a few states, California among them, let the governor affirm, reverse or modify parole decisions for people convicted of murder, an authority written into the state constitution.

If the governor reverses this one too, Krenwinkel will get another hearing within 18 months of Tuesday's, the corrections department said. It would be her 19th.

Source: foxla.com, retrieved October 8, 2026. Other sources: abc7chicago.com, nbclosangeles.com, State of California.