The youngest of the murderous cult leader's Family tells her story for the first time and says she wants to go free

Observer

The killings horrified and appalled America but they were just the start of a two-night rampage: less than 24 hours later, Charles Manson sent his obsessed disciples to murder two more strangers in their home, instructing them to show no pity and smear cultish messages on the wall in their victims' blood to spark the revolution he believed was due.

Now Leslie Van Houten, the youngest of Manson's followers who was sentenced to death for her part in the murders and only escaped execution when America imposed a temporary suspension of the death penalty, has told her story for the first time.

In a new book, written by Karlene Faith, one of America's leading criminologists and Van Houten's mentor for more than 30 years, the murderer pleads for forgiveness and release from jail.

The Long Prison Journey, to be published this week, contains private letters written by Van Houten during her 32-year incarceration.

'I naturally mourn my own life that never has been but most of all, I think about the children who are being born into a family that has to live out the legacy of the crime, the LaBianca children's families,' she said. 'I think a lot about that and the older I get the harder it is. Mrs LaBianca was younger than I am now. I took away all that life.'

During her decades in prison, Van Houten has repeatedly refused to speak out, conceding to be interviewed only when Manson began gaining status as a cult figure of rebellion among young people - in 1976 he was voted among the top 50 individuals most admired by schoolchildren and teenagers in the US.

But she has now agreed to tell her story, partly to engender sympathy for and understanding of her plight. 'Manson was an opportunist of the cruellest, most vicious kind, for his own aggrandisement,' she said. 'I feel very responsible for helping create a monster. A follower is as responsible as a leader for allowing a leader to lead them foully.

'Imprisonment is something I have to go through, something I need to do but you can't help but keep trying to be free, even if you don't stand a chance,' she said. 'You always fight for it and the more attention I get from people truly trying to understand it, the clearer my own perspectives on what happened.'

'But most people have changed and matured within 27 years. Most people have become parents and sometimes grandparents in that period of time. I've had not just the process of ageing but I've had 27 years of intervention, therapy and self-help.'

On Sunday, 10 August 1969, America's media was ringing with the murders of Tate, the wife of film director Roman Polanski, and her friends in their home at Benefict Canyon.

The next morning, however, reports of two further murders in a nearby LA neighbourhood hit the country like an aftershock: the stabbed and mutilated bodies of Rosemary and Leno LeBianca had been found by their 21-year-old daughter and 15-year-old son.

Manson, disappointed by aspects of the Tate murder, drove Patricia Krenwinkel, Charles 'Tex' Watson and Van Houten to a nearby house picked at random with strict instructions to murder its inhabitants.

After the LaBiancas had been tied up, Van Houten held Rosemary in the bedroom while the other two stabbed her husband to death. Watson then killed Rosemary with a bayonet through the heart and demanded that Van Houten also stab her body.

Van Houten stabbed Rosemary LaBianca 14 to 16 times in the lower back and buttocks. 'I felt like a shark with its prey,' she said. 'A primitive animal and a wildcat who had just caught a deer. I didn't take Mrs LaBianca's life but I feel just as responsible as if I had,' she added.

Van Houten met Manson when she was 19, becoming instantly enamoured of the 'Family' he controlled through mental manipulation, sexual abuse, heavy drug use, malnutrition, erratic sleep patterns and isolation from the outside world.

Faith said: 'When I first met Leslie I don't think she knew, consciously, that what she had done was something terrible. Leslie came through it with a startling innocence.'

Faith, however, believes Van Houten has become a contemplative woman, tortured by her past and keen to admit culpability. 'It is time for her to be paroled; Leslie has been thoroughly rehabilitated,' she said. 'The parole board has shown a clear unwillingness, or political inability, to move beyond the crimes and their publicity in evaluating Leslie's suitability for release. Rather than considering who they are today, who they have been for decades and questions of proportional justice, the board continues in 2001 to punish them for what they did in 1969.'