A California parole board in September 2017 did what too many California parole boards do – recommend a murderer be released back into Society.
But this one was special. They recommended that Leslie Van Houten, a Manson Family killer, be released.
When she went on trial, Leslie Van Houten was disruptive and defiant, because Charles Manson wanted it that way. It got out Leslie had problems before she met Manson. Perhaps they made her receptive to his message.
Murderesses Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Leslie Van Houten and police escorts, Manson Family Trial. Credit: Los Angeles Herald Examiner. I like the look on the policewoman between Patty and Leslie. My brother (who I don’t name for his own privacy), a Manson Trial buff, gave me the heads-up on Leslie’s possible break.
Leslie said her boyfriend impregnated her when she was 17, then abandoned her. Leslie said her divorced mother, with whom she lived, forced her into an “induced miscarriage” …. in other words, an abortion. It was 1966, when most people and even most judges and politicians understood abortion for covering up unwed or illicit sexual activity was homicide. So Leslie said her mother got a referral for a doctor who might abort her child illegally and had her do things that would cause her to abort the second-trimester baby. She passed the baby at home and buried her in the back yard.
Adults told Leslie it was okay to kill for convenience.
Leslie heard from her peers it was also okay to kill for Charlie. On August 10, 1969, Leslie was one of a bunch of Manson Family members who murdered Rosemary and Leno La Bianca. They stabbed the couple scores of times.
Charles Manson sent out Linda Kasabian, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Charles “Tex” Watson to murder actress Sharon Tate and her unborn baby, hair stylist Jay Sebring, heiress Abigail Folger, and her companion Wojciech Frykowski one evening earlier. Watson also murdered Steven Parent, a teen who was leaving the premises that night (August 9, 1969 going to August 10, 1969).
The next night Manson was with the other killers. He picked the La Bianca residence and had Leslie Van Houten, Patricia, Susan, and Tex murder the couple after he and Tex tied them up.
Linda Kasabian, who was present both nights, refused to attack anyone. Manson ordered her to drive because she was the only one who had a valid driver’s license.
Watson fled to Texas months later and was convicted separately from the other Manson murderers after a long extradition fight.
Leslie was not attracted sexually to Manson; she was several inches taller than him. She had a crush on another Manson Family killer named Bobby “Cupid” Beausoliel. (Beausoleil and Bruce Davis killed musician Gary Hinman after Manson slashed Hinman’s ear with a sword.) But Leslie committed murder at Manson’s command. She also fired two lawyers who intended to put on a defense for her that would blame her actions on Manson. When her court-appointed lawyer Ronald Hughes tried to do the same toward the end of the trial, he wound up murdered.
Linda Kasabian ran away from the Manson Family days after the murders and was the star witness in the trials that led to their convictions. Jurors found Leslie, Patricia, Susan, and Manson guilty of murdering the La Biancas. They also convicted Manson, Ms. Krenwinkel, and Ms. Atkins of the murders of Sharon Tate, Ms. Folger, Frykowski, and Sebring. Other jurors convicted Watson of these crime later.
California parole officials recommended parole for Leslie Van Houten in September 2017. They had also first recommended parole for Leslie in 2016, but Governor Jerry Brown shot it down. Brown may also flush the 2017 recommendation for her release. Parole officials also want to release Manson Family killer Bruce Davis, but Brown has kept him in prison. So far. Brown, like a stopped watch, is right once in a while.
Ironically, at Leslie Van Houten’s 2013 parole hearing, the prosecutor and parole official stepped on her when she said she was angry about being made to undergo an abortion. They said many girls undergo abortions without being angry to the extent Leslie said she was. Unlike most girls and young women who undergo abortions now, Leslie saw what she aborted and had to bury her baby in the back yard. In other words, she saw the results of a killing she was pressured to commit. If abortion customers had Leslie’s experience, Planned Parenthood and their rivals might well go out of business or be put out of business. This is why they fight informed consent laws.
While undergoing an abortion at the demand of her mother doesn’t excuse Leslie Van Houten from the murders she committed, it was interesting to see the response of the California prosecutor and parole official. Either out of pro-abortion sentiment, or a sense of what they needed to do to be politically correct, the two defended abortion at least as vigorously as they defended the La Biancas.
Mansonette Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme got out of prison in 2009 after being locked up for trying to shoot President Gerald Ford in 1975. Steve Grogan, a car thief and perv who helped Davis and Manson and Watson stab and hack ranch hand Shorty Shea to death, drew a life sentence but got out of prison in 1985, thanks to California parole board members.
Manson, Beausoleil, Davis, Tex Watson, and Patricia Krenwinkel remain behind bars for now. So does Leslie Van Houten. For now.
All these parole hearings have dragged the victims’ surviving loved ones through emotional abuse for decades.
Parole officials have shown compassion for other unworthies at parole hearing. So have prosecutors and judges at sentencing hearings.
John Gardner raped and savagely beat a 13-year old girl in San Diego County in 2000. Gardner acted so hideously the psychiatrist who examined him told the prosecutor to go for the maximum sentence allowable. When a shrink says you deserve maximum punishment because you are unbelievably evil, Hell is about to freeze over. But San Diego County prosecutors sought only a six-year sentence. Gardner got out in five.
Parole officers claimed they checked on Gardner several times over the next couple of years, but the law said they had to check on him twice a month. Gardner violated the conditions of his parole at least seven times, and parole authorities did nothing about it.
Gardner also lied about where he was living. For awhile he was living with his mother Cathy Olson, an evil pig of a woman who was a psychiatric nurse at Scripps Mercy Hospital in San Diego. He was evidently registered as living elsewhere.
In February 2009, Gardner kidnapped, raped, stabbed, beheaded or dismembered, and buried the body parts of Amber Dubois. Amber was a Future Farmers of America member. She was going to buy a lamb for an agriculture project later that day. (Photo of Amber courtesy of her family.)
In February 2010, Gardner raped and murdered Chelsea King at a park near her home in Poway. Chelsea was a popular teen from a wealthy background. Right away her parents got police to issue an Amber Alert. San Diego County lawmen, who basically ignored Amber Dubois, launched a massive effort to find Chelsea. Three days later, they arrested Gardner because his DNA was on Chelsea’s clothes. Two days later they found Chelsea’s body buried.
Gardner’s lawyer volunteered his client might be able to tell them about the whereabouts of Amber Dubois if the death penalty looming against him went away. Instead of charging Gardner for Amber’s murder on reasonable suspicion based on his lawyer’s bringing up her disappearance as part of a plea deal, and then giving Gardner the third degree until he cracked, San Diego County District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis and her underlings gave in.
Gardner got two life terms. But there is no guarantee he won’t be paroled. Amber’s and Chelsea’s loved ones grieve to this day.
God forbid you should ever have to testify at a parole hearing or at a sentencing hearing or at a criminal trial as a victim or as a witness to something truly horrible.
My brother Bryan (God rest his soul) and I weren’t so fortunate.
The rest of this post is a case on how to handle a parole hearing or a sentencing hearing if, God forbid, you find yourself having to do so.
We had a great-uncle Father Bernard Tobin, who was a priest in California’s San Joaquin Valley. He spent much of his life serving the migrants and the small farmers of the Valley. We had visited him as kids with our parents and our other brother and sister. We visited him ourselves when we were young adults, and we called him every so often. We were about to visit him again, so I called his parish, St. Jude in Easton. The person who answered the phone said he had died.
Father Tobin didn’t just die. He had help.
Two paroled felons, Johnnie Lee Smith and Ronald Windfield, wearing masks, broke into the rectory of St. Alphonsus Catholic Church in Fresno on February 10, 1985. At gunpoint, they robbed and beat Father Tobin nearly to death for a couple of hundred dollars he was carrying from a fundraiser at the church, which was near his own little parish in a farming town surrounded by vineyards and groves south of Fresno. Father Tobin was helping out at the Fresno parish. The criminals also robbed and pistol whipped another priest. Father Tobin died several weeks after the robbery.
Father Bernard Tobin, in the mobile home he lived in. Photo by Bryan Sherlock.
The prosecutor involved with one of the killers’ case told me he did not seek the death penalty against the killer because undiagnosed head injuries he suffered which led to his fatal heart attack may have been a secondary cause of his death. Medical malpractice was a red herring, I replied. Without the pistol-whipping and savage beating Smith and Windfield inflicted on Father Tobin, he wouldn’t have needed the medical care.
I asked parole officials to be notified of any attempt by these two germs to obtain parole. For awhile state corrections officials obliged me, then the notifications stopped coming. One of them got a bit of a sentence reduction, and I finally heard about it when I checked in with the parole agency.
So Bryan and I decided to spring an unannounced visit on the parole officials in early 2006. We showed up at the parole commission building in Sacramento and proceeded to get ugly with staffers. Finally a director apologized for the collective incompetence of his agency. I made him sign and date stamp all the documents to prove his problems. Bryan added just the right closing to the episode. When the director tried to shake his hand, Bryan gave him the evil eye and refused. He said, “People like you piss me off.” It was exactly the right touch. I had to keep a straight face, and I did until we left the building and got into our car. Then I collapsed in prolonged laughter.
I prepared for the germs’ parole hearings, which the parole people said would come in 2007. I contacted prosecutors and parole officials for info on their criminal convictions, and conduct behind bars. The prosecutors and parole people were reluctant at first to provide info, but I reminded them of the open records laws of California. I was able to get them to provide me with each germ’s criminal record outside of prison and disciplinary record and activities inside prison.
The info showed the robbery of Father Tobin was not Smith and Windfield’s first armed robbery. A couple of months earlier, just before Christmas 1984, they played Grinch in a serious way when they broke into the house of Ronald and Carol Lopez. At gunpoint, they robbed Ronald Lopez while he tried to stall them so she could escape with their child into the house. They were too fast for her. They caught her and beat her while she was holding their child, and slammed a door on her body. How much did these criminal masterminds make for their robbery and triple assault, including the mugging of a young mother holding her baby in her arms? A lousy 20 bucks.
I got the details by filing for the germs’ criminal case paperwork in Fresno County Superior Court.
I also obtained a copy of Father Tobin’s autopsy report. In California, autopsy reports are hard to get unless you are kin. Since I was kin, I got it. The medical examiner ruled Father Tobin died from acute myocardial failure due to cranial cerebral trauma. In other words, because Smith and Windfield pistol-whipped him so severely they fractured his jawbone and caved in the right side of his skull, Father Tobin suffered enough brain and nerve damage that it triggered the heart attack that ended his life. The medical examiner ruled the cause of Father Tobin’s death was a homicide.
Bryan and I also visited former parishioners of our great-uncle. Some told us Father Tobin’s parishioners wrote hundreds of letters in support of their priest and in support of justice in making the animals stay in prison.
The first parole hearing was for Windfield. One of the parole officials was a faceless bureaucrat who reportedly had a law enforcement background. The other was a pushy hardfaced broad who gave off the vibe of a female prison guard who enjoyed abusing young women. Kind of like Janet Reno.
The victims or loved ones are not allowed to have a lawyer speak for them at parole hearings in California. But an attorney friend of mine was there with us to make sure the parole officials didn’t try to steamroll us. When the parole officials asked me why I brought an attorney to the hearing, I said, “The state has a lawyer here. So does the germ who killed my great-uncle. If you’re going to a knife fight, at least bring a knife!” They were not happy.
First, I laid out Father Tobin’s service to his people.
But these parole officials were in a hurry. They wanted me to go quickly. Instead, I took my own sweet time.
Bryan seethed like an angry stallion at the first hearing while the parole officials and the murderer’s lawyer argued with me and I insulted all of them as I put on our case. Windfield’s lawyer objected when I ran through the murderer’s criminal record and mocked him for being enough of a scumbag to smash a woman and the infant she was carrying between a door and a doorjamb, and called him an outhouse Einstein to his face because the robbery netted him $10 and a felony conviction.
I dared the criminal’s lawyer to take the killer home to live with his wife and children, and put them at risk for rape and murder. The parole board members were not happy with me for mocking the animal and his counsel. They tried to back me off, but I told them I’d waited 22 years for this day so I was going to say whatever I (expletive deleted) pleased.
I also said Father Tobin’s parishioners had bombarded the California Department of Corrections with hundreds of letters urging them to keep the animals locked up. The parole officials said they didn’t see any of them. I said something along the lines of it didn’t surprise me because they were too incompetent or uncaring to do their jobs. They weren’t happy with my assessment of their agency.
I next told them Father Tobin was the second of my relatives to be murdered in the 1900s.
When they said it had nothing to do with the issue, I replied it had everything to do with the issue because there were fewer incompetent parole officials like them to spring killers unjustifiably back in the day. So I read the following into the record.
“Let us compare for a minute the fate of these murderers with the fate of Gustave Marx, Harvey Van Dine, and Peter Neidermeyer, the three men who murdered my other relative.
My great-great grandfather Bohumil “Benny” Legro, an immigrant from what is now the Czech Republic, was shot to death in his Chicago saloon on August 2, 1903. His killers, this trio of punks known as the Car Barn Bandits, also killed a patron at the bar. The till held only eight dollars.
The three felons killed three other people and robbed a railroad office. One of them shot dead a policeman who tried to collar him, but another cop apprehended him. The other two fled to their hideout in Indiana. They escaped from one group of policemen and a posse of farmers, killing another policeman and a trainman in the process. A second posse of shotgun-wielding farmers forced them to give themselves up in November 1903. Gustave Marx, Harvey Van Dine, and Peter Neidermeyer were tried for the eight murders, were convicted, and were hanged in the Cook County Jail April 22, 1904.
My great-great-grandfather and the other seven men were eight of only 236 murder and criminal homicide victims in 1903.
In 2005, according to the U.S. Justice Dept., roughly 17,000 people were the victims of murder or criminal homicide. This is more than 70 times as many wrongful deaths as in 1903. In 1903 there were 75 million people in the U.S.; now there are about 300 million people … four times as many.
Bottom line? A person is almost 20 times as likely to be murdered now in this country than a person was a century ago.
Let’s also look at punishment. In 1904, local and state authorities executed 106 people, almost all for murder. In that decade, they executed 1190 people … about 120 a year. Bear in mind the three men who killed my ancestor were hanged … punishment for the murders of eight people.
This means a very high proportion of murderers wound up dead at the hands of law enforcement officials, often within a year of their crimes.
We have had very few executions in the past 25 or so years. Lighter sentences and more crime go hand in hand.
I blame you parole people for releasing Smith and Windfield early after they robbed and hurt the Lopez couple. If you people had done your jobs, these two vermin would have been in jail instead of beating my great-uncle to death.”
I then reminded them the germ probably didn’t have the job skills or temperament to make it on the outside. I said the public, not the criminals, deserved mercy, by not having bloodthirsty felons dumped on them. The parole officials recommended Windfield stay in prison another five years before he could apply for parole again. This was the most they could give him.
I still complained to the parole system hierarchy about how they handled the hearing. Since I had an attorney with me, the parole officials did take a hit. They reassigned the male official because he was the bigger culprit.
The second hearing went much better. This was good, because Smith was a harder con. He was being held at San Quentin, a tougher joint than where Windfield was doing his time. Two women parole officials conducted the hearing.
I again laid out the service and character of Father Tobin. It went like this:
“You don’t have to believe in a priest’s religion to observe the impact he has upon those who do believe … and ultimately on how his parishioners treat others because of their faith and his guidance. But for those who hear this or read it in the public record who do not have the Catholic’s understanding of the role of a priest, here it is for the record.
A priest’s preaching and teaching lead many people away from the sense of sinful selfishness that causes the propensity to commit acts such as lying, cheating, stealing, robbing, and murdering.
A priest performs hundreds of baptisms to bring people into the light of faith. He helps prepare hundreds of young people for weddings and the married life, and performs the wedding ceremonies that unite brides and grooms in matrimony.
A priest hears the confessions of those who have sinned and are seeking to atone. Counseling remorse for one’s crimes, the desire to reform to avoid crimes in the future, and ensuring the penance for one’s sins are among the works of a priest. Feeling guilty for one’s transgressions is not wrong; it is the normal function of a healthy conscience. Hearing and alleviating the burden of guilt each sinner brings to him when that sinner confesses is one of the greatest works of a priest; so is his absolution and his admonishment of sinners to avoid the sins and avoid the circumstances that lead the person to sin. A priest is better than a psychologist at providing spiritual and emotional healing, and he doesn’t charge a dime for his work.
A priest offers sacrifice for the people before God in Holy Mass. He distributes the sacraments and teaches the people about the Gospels, the Epistles, and the other truths of their faith. He visits the sick in the hospitals and the jailed in the prisons. He gives the Last Rites to those who are near death; he helps them prepare for death and to prepare to meet God Himself on Judgment Day.
In one year, 1957, the only year I have records for, according to the record of Father Tobin’s order, he visited 11,000 patients in hospitals, gave 3000 of them Communion, heard 2437 confessions, and administered the last rites to 304 people who were dying. I repeat, he did that in one year, besides celebrating Masses on Sundays, holy days, and daily throughout the year, and performing his other parish duties. No social worker could handle that kind of case load.
A priest consoles the bereaved when they lose loved ones. He ensures the dead are interred with dignity. He prays for the repose of the dead one’s soul and prays the survivors will get the strength and grace they need to carry on.
Father Bernard Tobin offered all of this help and more to the many thousands of people he served in his lifetime. He ministered to the poorest of migrant workers, and to the great masses of believers who are neither rich nor poor. He admonished the wealthy that to whom much has been given, much will be expected of him to help his fellow man.
Hundreds of people attended the funeral and memorials for Father Tobin.
The outcry concerning Father Tobin’s death was so great in the area that Johnny Smith’s attorney sought a change of venue. That speaks to how well Father Tobin was regarded as a man and as a man of God. Even one of Windfield and Smith’s friends attended one of the services and told parishioners he was overwhelmed at the outpouring of emotion for this great man.”
I then laid out Smith’s criminal history and mocked him like I had mocked Windfield. The sneer on his face became one of impotent anger.
Word to the wise: Don’t look sad and don’t cry at a parole hearing or a sentencing hearing. It feeds these criminals’ egos. That’s why I mocked the murderer instead. I wanted to rub excrement in his face.
I used the autopsy report to point out the extent of the injuries the murderers inflicted on Father Tobin. I pointed to the similar portions of my own head to indicate what skull bones of Father’s Smith and his murderous partner broke in their vicious assault.
Smith’s lawyer, a young punk from Cal Berkeley, said in a snarky tone, “Well, my client didn’t shoot your uncle.”
I snarled, “The a-hole used a gun to fracture my uncle’s skull in several places. Let’s add a torture specification to his crimes!”
Then I said, “If your murderer is such a great guy, why don’t you demand the parole board release him to your custody so he can live with you? He won’t pose a threat to any of your loved ones because you’re enough of a (expletive deleted) that no one could love you!”
The guards enjoyed my reply. The two female parole board members didn’t seem to mind it either. They broke out their boots and whips (figuratively) and started applying a little needed discipline to the juvenile defense lawyer for being a such a punk.
I didn’t have to say much else. I put a written statement into the record, then told them Father Tobin’s parishioners had written hundreds of letters urging Smith to stay in prison. I said parole officials said they hadn’t seen them, so I let the female parole officials know they were somewhere in the parole bureaucracy or in a landfill in Sacramento, put there by parole personnel.
I said, “It took an unannounced visit on our part in January 2006 and a confrontation with an obviously embarrassed official at the Board of Prison Terms named Ramón Lopez to get the registration and notification issue straightened out. If their handling of our case is any guide, I’m estimating there are thousands of victims and survivors like us out there who are being kept in the dark by incompetent or uncaring prison system officials and bureaucrats and prosecutors.
In coming here, I can say airline stewardesses and waitresses and other working women have given us encouragement. Working women are all too often victimized by violent criminals. They have every right to fear for their safety, and they commended us for fighting for their safety.
If they feel unsafe, they have every reason to do so … too many underpunished felons are walking the streets thanks to our judges and parole officials, and these women fear being robbed, raped, and murdered. They don’t have bodyguards or gated communities, so the potential for being victims of violent crime is a part of their lives.
We advise and admonish the prison and justice officials of California to prevent yet another violent felon to gain early release and victimize others again because he lacks a conscience and the job skills to earn an honest living. Show the people of the public mercy. Keep Johnny Smith in prison until he has served his full sentence – 27 years minimum to life maximum.”
I then thanked the women officers for their attentiveness and mature firmness in running the hearing.
They gave Smith the maximum in terms of not being able to appear for another hearing for awhile. After guards led Smith and his lawyer out of the hearing office, the women parole officials told me they liked my style. Guards who led us out of San Quentin said they enjoyed the way I handled Smith and his lawyer.
I did one more thing before appearing before the second parole board. I practiced what I was going to say in front of a live audience. In this case, my audience was an Army buddy of mine who is known as “Moose.” Moose grew up around a number of prison officials. Some of them worked at Folsom Prison. Moose played the role of an ACLU jerk to try to fluster me. He critiqued my speech and my answers to his roostering, so I gave my speech again and he interrupted me again. Going up against the scumbag’s lawyer in front of the parole officials at San Quentin Prison was a piece of cake after a head-butting session with The Moose.
All of these things can help you if, God forbid, you have to speak at a sentencing hearing or at a parole hearing.
To recap:
Assemble your evidence.
Tell the truth.
Mock the criminal or say ugly things about him that the officials will remember. You can’t unring a bell. Also, your doing so might cause the criminal to react inappropriately, hurting his case.
Candace Moncayo got away from Gardner by striking him in the nose and breaking free when he cried out in pain and loosened his grip on her. At the sentencing hearing, she mockingly asked, “How’s your nose?”
Gardner, who had been fake-crying to gain sympathy after pleading guilty to murdering Amber DuBois and Chelsea King, dropped his mask. He became infuriated for all to see. He angrily denied Candace had hit him and punked him. Candace blew up his fake crying act with one accurately placed needle
Practice your statement in front of others. Let them pick at you so you can gain confidence making your points if you encounter opposition.
If you think you need a lawyer, bring one. Even if he or she can’t speak, he or she can still witness.
Any lawyer reading this post – If you are willing to give a very reasonable rate to help victims, I will put your name on this website for victims and survivors to consult.
God bless all of you.
SHERLOCK JUSTICE
WE CAN SHOW YOU HOW TO BE YOUR OWN DETECTIVE.
END NOTES
Info on Leslie Van Houten and others in the Manson Family comes from Vincent Bugliosi’s book “Helter Skelter,” the transcript of Leslie’s 2013 parole hearing posted on the cielodrive website, other pages of the same site, multiple Internet sources on the whereabouts of the murderers, the autopsy report of Donald “Shorty” Shea, articles in the 3/13/2013 and 9/7/2017 New York Daily News, a 7/22/2016 L.A Times article, a 4/14/2016 AP article, and an article in the 9/6/2017 Santa Rosa, California Press Democrat.
Info on Amber Dubois, Chelsea King, John Gardner, and the parole people come from an Inspector General report on the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s Supervision of John Gardner, and the following articles:
San Diego Union Tribune 3/13/2010, 4/16/2010, 5/17/2010
L.A. Times 3/8/2010, 3/10/2010
Fox News 3/19/2010
CBS News 3/6/2010, 3/8/2010, 3/20/2010
Daily Mail (Britain) 11/8/2010
New York Daily News 3/12/2010
Scare Monkeys website 3/13/2010
Kimberly Dvorak website 3/7/2010
