Leslie Van Houten is a former member of the Manson Family, a cult led by Charles Manson. Leslie Van Houten is the daughter of Paul and Jane Van Houten.
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She grew up in a middle-class church-going family with an older brother and two adopted Korean siblings, a brother and a sister. Her parents divorced when she was 14 years old.
Around the age of 15, she began taking LSD and Benzedrine and smoking hashish, fleeing for a time but returning to finish high school. She claimed that when she was 17, she became pregnant and was ordered by her mother to have an abortion and bury the foetus in their backyard.
Van Houten stated that following this event, she felt estranged from her mother and harboured intense resentment towards her. She was interested in yoga and took a year-long secretarial course before becoming a hippie and living in a commune.
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Leslie Van Houten became involved with the Manson Family when she was 19 years old. Along with other members of the Manson Family, she took part in the brutal killings of actress Sharon Tate and four others at Tate’s residence, as well as the murders of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca the following day.
After her arrest in October 1969, Van Houten faced trial and was found guilty of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder. Initially, she was sentenced to death, but her sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment when the death penalty was invalidated in California in 1972.
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