Leslie Van Houten's Real Name: Leslie Van Houten

Quick answer: Leslie Van Houten is her real name; she was not known by an alias. A Library of Congress record gives her birth date as August 23, 1949, and AP reported that she was 73 when she left prison in July 2023. A longer form, Leslie Louise Van Houten, appears in that record only as a quotation from an online encyclopedia, so the middle name is unconfirmed.

Real name and early life

AP describes Van Houten as a former high school cheerleader and homecoming princess whose life spiraled out of control at 14 after her parents divorced. CNN says she was 19 when she met Charles Manson and joined the group that came to be called the "Manson family."

Career highlights

Van Houten is known only for her role in the Manson case and its long legal aftermath. This section covers the official record and court outcomes, not the details of the crimes.

Conviction and sentence

NPR says she was arrested in November 1969. The original AP report from January 1971, republished in AP's "AP Was There" series, says Manson and three women followers, including Van Houten, were convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy. AP says she was sentenced to death in 1971 for helping carry out the killings of a Los Angeles couple, and that the sentence was commuted to life when the California Supreme Court overturned the state's death penalty law in 1972.

NPR says that "after years of court proceedings and reversals," she was sentenced to seven years to life on two counts of first-degree murder and one count of conspiracy. CNN describes these as concurrent sentences.

Parole

The California Board of Parole Hearings recommended her for parole five times starting in 2016, NPR says, but Governor Jerry Brown and then Governor Gavin Newsom reversed each decision. In May 2023, AP says, a state appeals court ruled 2–1 that there was "no evidence to support the Governor's conclusions" about her fitness for release. Newsom's office said it would not appeal further.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said that on Tuesday, July 11, 2023, she "was released to parole supervision" from the California Institution for Women in Corona. CNN says the parole term was set at a maximum of three years. AP says she earned bachelor's and master's degrees while in prison and tutored other incarcerated people; AP calls the master's in counseling, while NPR says humanities. AP notes that she was the only Manson follower involved in the murders to be released.

Name notes for searchers

Van Houten is her family surname, and it is sometimes indexed as "Houten, Leslie Van." She is often grouped in searches with co-defendants Patricia Krenwinkel and Susan Atkins, who are separate people.