California’s Gavin Newsome to stop fighting against parole for Manson follower Leslie Van Houten

One member of the Manson Family — led by deranged cult leader Charles Manson who orchestrated a string of murders in Los Angeles in the summer of 1969 — could be freed in the coming weeks after California governor Gavin Newsom announced he would stop denying her parole.

Leslie Van Houten, 73, has spent more than 50 years behind bars while she serves a life sentence in southern California prison for her involvement in two murders in 1969. 

In May, a California appeals court overruled Newsom’s fourth attempt of denying parole eligibility to Van Houten, determining she is entitled to be freed from her prison sentence.

“The governor is disappointed by the Court of Appeal’s decision to release Ms. Van Houten but will not pursue further action as efforts to further appeal are unlikely to succeed,” said Erin Mellon, the governor’s communications director, said.

Van Houten, who was 19 when she was involved with Manson’s cult, is expected to be out on parole in the coming weeks, Nancy Tetreatult, the attorney representing one the ex-Manson’s followers, told NBC News.

“She’s thrilled and she’s overwhelmed,” Tetreatult said. “She’s just grateful that people are recognizing that she’s not the same person that she was when she committed the murders.”

Van Houten was convicted in 1971 on two counts of first-degree murder and one count of conspiracy to commit murder.

She was initially sentenced to death. 

However, that ruling was overturned, and she has spent the last 52 years in state prison.

Van Houten has been recommended for parole five times since 2016 — all of which were denied by Newsom and his predecessor, Democrat Jerry Brown, after they deemed her still a danger to society.

Newsom’s reasoning for his continual denial is that she has not provided a good enough explanation or reason for her involvement in the grizzly murders, which struck fear in California residents. 

The second district court of appeal in Los Angeles ruled 2-1 to reverse the governor’s decision on Friday, revealing “no evidence to support the governor’s conclusions.”

“Van Houten has shown extraordinary rehabilitative efforts, insight, remorse, realistic parole plans, support from family and friends, favorable institutional reports, and, at the time of the governor’s decision, had received four successive grants of parole,” the judges wrote in the May decision.

Manson — who had been serving out his life sentence at Corcoran State Prison since 1989 — died in prison in 2017 at the age of 83, showing little remorse for his dictation in the killing spree.

“I am crime,” Manson proudly proclaimed during a collect call to The Post from prison in the mid-2000s.

In what he told his followers was the precursor to a “race war,” Manson directed his followers — contrived mostly of young females — to murder seven people across LA in a two-night murder spree in August of 1969.

Van Houten was found guilty of brutally stabbing grocery store owner Leno LaBianca and his wife Rosemary in the home on the night of Aug. 10, 1969.

Investigators found a horrific, gory crime scene, which included the words “Death to Pigs and “Helter Skelter” — a misspelling of the famed Beatles song “Helter Skelter” — written on the walls and refrigerator in the victim’s blood.

The previous night, Manson’s cult broke into the Los Angeles home that Sharon Tate, who was pregnant at the time, shared with her husband filmmaker Roman Polanski.

Polanski was overseas in Europe shooting a movie at the time of the killings.

In January, Linda Kasabian, another member of Manson’s cult — who later testified against her fellow cult members — died at the age of 73 in a Tacoma, Washington, hospital.

Kasabian did not partake in the murders and is said to have played the role of “lookout” as other members of the Manson cult carried out the murders of Tate and the Labianca murders.

Charles “Tex” Watson and Patricia Krenwinkel, two members of the Manson Family who were involved in both the Tate and Labianca murders, remain behind bars — both of whose paroles were denied by Newsom as recently as 2021 and 2023.

With Post wires