In the first week of October 2026, a panel of California's Board of Parole Hearings found Patricia Krenwinkel suitable for release. She was 78. She had been in custody since December 1969, longer than any other woman in California, and her lawyer says longer than any woman in the United States. It was the third time a panel had reached that conclusion. The governor had reversed the first two.
The crimes behind those hearings took place over two nights in August 1969, when Krenwinkel was 21. At 10050 Cielo Drive in Benedict Canyon, five people were killed: the actress Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, Abigail Folger, Wojciech Frykowski and Steven Parent. The next night, in a house on Waverly Drive in Los Feliz, Leno and Rosemary LaBianca were killed. Krenwinkel was at both houses. In 1971 a Los Angeles jury convicted her, Charles Manson, Susan Atkins and Leslie Van Houten, and sentenced all four to death.
The sources consulted for this page say little about Krenwinkel's childhood, and most of what they do say comes from her own family or from her own later accounts. According to an Associated Press report carried by WKRG in Mobile in 2022, her family described her as a "perfect, normal, happy, clever, studious, pious, well-behaved child" who "enjoyed her family life, school and church activities, and was never in trouble."
She spent one semester at Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama, the same AP report says. By her late teens, according to NPR's account of her 2022 parole testimony, she had lost touch with her friends, dropped out of school and moved in with her sister in Manhattan Beach, south of Los Angeles. She told the 2022 panel that she felt lost and alone at the time. She has said that her family's dynamics and her low self-esteem made her vulnerable. Debra Tate, Sharon Tate's sister, rejected that explanation when she addressed the board, as described later on this page.
Krenwinkel met Charles Manson at a party while she was living with her sister. Accounts of her age differ slightly. AP, reporting her 2022 testimony, says she was 19 and Manson 33. The AP report carried by WKRG says she met him at 18, through her half-sister. Her lawyer, Keith Wattley, has also described her as "the lost 19-year-old who sought guidance from Charles Manson."
She told the board that Manson "seemed a bit bigger than life" and that "he had answers that I wanted to hear." She said he was affectionate at first and then became more controlling and abusive, physically and emotionally, toward her and the other women. She joined the group that came to be called the Family and spent about 18 months traveling with it around the American West before it settled at Spahn Ranch, outside Los Angeles, in 1969. The group grew more isolated, she said, and violence became normal, including training with weapons. After about two years of travel and drug use, she told the panel, Manson began to talk about a coming race war and asked his followers whether they would kill for him. "And I said yes," she said.
The California Court of Appeal later described the structure of the group from the trial evidence. "Without doubt, Manson was the leader of the Family," the court wrote. He decided where the Family would stay, where its members would sleep and what clothing they would have. "It was understood that membership in the Family required giving up everything to Manson and never disobeying him." Manson's name for the coming war was Helter Skelter; the court notes his fascination with the Beatles and one of their songs. According to the trial evidence summarized by the court, the Family understood that when it came, Manson would lead his followers to safety in "a bottomless pit located in Death Valley." One witness, describing Manson's preoccupation with death, said: "Death is Charlie's trip. It really is."
By August 1969, the court found, Krenwinkel was living at Spahn Ranch with Atkins, Van Houten, Charles "Tex" Watson and Linda Kasabian, among others.
The account of the first night comes mainly from Linda Kasabian, the prosecution's main witness, as summarized by the Court of Appeal in 1976.
On the evening of August 8, 1969, Manson told Kasabian, "Now is the time for Helter Skelter." He told her to go with Tex Watson and do what Watson told her to do. Watson drove Kasabian, Atkins and Krenwinkel directly to 10050 Cielo Drive, where he appeared to cut some overhead wires. Carrying rope, the group walked up a hill toward the house. A car came toward the gate from inside the property. Watson stepped forward with a gun. The driver said, "Please don't hurt me I won't say anything," and Watson shot him. The driver was Steven Parent.
Watson sent Kasabian to look for an open door or window at the back of the house, and then sent her back to the driveway to keep watch. From there she heard screams and the words "No, please, no." A man came out of the house, bleeding. Kasabian begged Atkins to make it stop; Atkins told her it was too late. Watson stabbed and clubbed the man. Kasabian also saw "Krenwinkel with a knife in her hand chasing a woman." Then they left. Their clothes were bloody, and part of the grip of the gun had broken off.
The housekeeper, Winifred Chapman, arrived for work at about 9 a.m. on August 9, found the bodies and ran to a neighbor, who called the police, according to AP's report of August 10, 1969. Sharon Tate and Jay Sebring were in the living room. Abigail Folger and Wojciech Frykowski were on the lawn. Steven Parent was in his car. Someone had written "Pig" on the front door in blood. A young caretaker living in the guest house, William Garretson, was arrested that morning and later cleared.
At trial, according to the Los Angeles Times, Krenwinkel testified that she chased Abigail Folger and stabbed her more than two dozen times. Dianne Lake, a Family member, testified that Krenwinkel had told her she had dragged Folger from the bedroom to the living room. Krenwinkel's fingerprint was found at the Tate residence. The Court of Appeal held that the fingerprint alone was enough to corroborate Kasabian's testimony against her.
Sharon Tate was born in Dallas, Texas, on January 24, 1943. She started in Hollywood in the early 1960s with a recurring role on The Beverly Hillbillies and small parts in The Americanization of Emily and The Sandpiper. Her first major role was in Eye of the Devil, filmed in France with David Niven and Deborah Kerr. She met the director Roman Polanski in London and was cast in his film The Fearless Vampire Killers, and they married in January 1968. Her best-known performance was as Jennifer North in Valley of the Dolls (1967). She had just finished a film in Italy. She was 26 and eight and a half months pregnant with Polanski's child, a son, when she was killed. Polanski was working in Europe. Her sister Debra Tate has opposed Krenwinkel's release at hearing after hearing.
Jay Sebring was a celebrity hairstylist who ran salons in Hollywood and had once been Tate's boyfriend. His nephew, Anthony DiMaria, has spoken for the family at Krenwinkel's parole proceedings.
Abigail Folger, 26, was a member of the family that owned the Folger coffee company. She was staying at the house with her partner, Wojciech Frykowski, and was reading in a guest bedroom when the attack began, according to AP's 2019 account of the trial record. She and Frykowski both got out of the house and were attacked on the lawn.
Wojciech Frykowski was a Polish writer and a friend of Polanski's. He had fallen asleep on the living room couch.
Steven Earl Parent was 18 and lived in suburban El Monte. He had come up the drive that evening to visit the caretaker, William Garretson, and, according to the AP account, hoped to sell him a clock radio. He was leaving when he met Watson at the gate.
The next night, according to Kasabian's testimony as summarized by the Court of Appeal, Manson went with the group himself. In Los Feliz, he went into a house on Waverly Drive, came back and said he had tied up a man and a woman. He told Van Houten, Krenwinkel and Watson: "Don't let them know you are going to kill them." He left the three of them at the house and drove off with the others.
Leno LaBianca owned a chain of supermarkets. Rosemary LaBianca was his wife. Her son, Frank Struthers, was 15 or 16; sources differ. It was Frank who found his stepfather's body on August 10, as the court recounts.
Leno LaBianca's hands were tied behind his back, and an electric cord was knotted around his neck. Rosemary LaBianca's hands were tied with an electric cord and a pillowcase had been put over her head. Both had been stabbed many times. The words "Death to the Pigs" and "Rise" were written on the walls in blood, and "Healter Skelter," misspelled, on the refrigerator. According to AP and Oxygen, Krenwinkel wrote them. According to AP, Manson and Watson told her to "do something witchy." Accounts of who struck which blows inside the house differ, and they are set out in the section on disputed points below.
The break in the case came from inside the Family. While in custody, Susan Atkins described the Tate killings to two other inmates. The trial record names the two women as Virginia Graham Castro and Ronnie (Roni) Howard, and both later testified. In December 1969 Atkins repeated her account to a Los Angeles County grand jury under a promise of immunity, which she later withdrew. Manson himself was already in custody, arrested in October 1969 on a charge of receiving stolen property.
By then Krenwinkel had left California. Warrants were issued for her on December 1, 1969, according to the AP account of the case. She was in Mobile, staying with relatives. According to Vincent Bugliosi's book Helter Skelter, as cited by WKRG, officials of the Los Angeles Police Department contacted the Mobile police chief at the time, James Robinson, and asked him to find and arrest her. She was arrested in Mobile. When Krenwinkel, Atkins and Van Houten were arrested, each gave a false name, and the Court of Appeal later treated that as evidence of consciousness of guilt. The sources consulted do not give the exact date of her arrest, the name she used or the details of her return to Los Angeles.
The grand jury indicted Manson, Krenwinkel and Atkins on seven counts of murder and one count of conspiracy to commit murder. Van Houten was indicted on the two LaBianca murder counts and the conspiracy count. Watson was arrested at his parents' home in Texas and fought extradition for months; he was tried separately. Linda Kasabian, who had stayed outside at Cielo Drive and had not gone into the LaBianca house, was granted immunity and became the prosecution's main witness.
The trial of Manson, Krenwinkel, Atkins and Van Houten began in Los Angeles on June 15, 1970, before Superior Court Judge Charles H. Older. The prosecutors were Vincent Bugliosi and Aaron Stovitz. Krenwinkel was represented by Paul Fitzgerald. Manson's lawyer was Irving Kanarek and Atkins' was Daye Shinn. Van Houten's lawyers over the course of the case included Ira Reiner, Ronald Hughes and Maxwell Keith.
Testimony began on July 24, 1970. Manson came to court that day with an "X" cut into his forehead. On the following day, a detective testified, Krenwinkel, Atkins and Van Houten appeared with X marks on their foreheads too. On October 5, 1970, Manson lunged at Judge Older with a pencil while the women chanted, according to the account in Great American Trials. During the trial, President Richard Nixon said in Denver that Manson was "guilty, directly or indirectly of eight murders." The defense moved for a mistrial and Older denied it. Around Thanksgiving, Ronald Hughes disappeared on a camping trip and was later found dead, and the trial was postponed for two weeks.
The three women wanted to testify, against their lawyers' advice. "The female appellants nevertheless insisted on their right to do so," the Court of Appeal wrote. "Appellants were more than passive participants in their trial." Krenwinkel also refused, on her lawyer's advice, to give the court samples of her handwriting. The Court of Appeal later held that the jury could treat the refusal as evidence of consciousness of guilt.
Linda Kasabian described life on the ranch, the drug use and Manson's control over the group, and gave the account of both nights summarized above. The defense argued that her drug use had left her unable to tell fact from fantasy. The Court of Appeal upheld the use of her testimony under the immunity statute.
The other prosecution witnesses named in the appellate opinion include Family members and people who had lived or worked around the ranch: Dianne Lake, Barbara Hoyt, Paul Watkins, Juan Flynn, Danny DeCarlo, Brooks Poston and Stephanie Schram. DeCarlo testified that Manson often talked about starting a race war. Watkins testified that Manson had told him, "In order to love someone you must be willing to die for them and must be willing to kill them, too." Flynn, a ranch hand, said Manson held a knife to his throat and claimed to be responsible for the killings. Hoyt testified that she had overheard Atkins describing the murders. Winifred Chapman, the Tate housekeeper, described what she found that morning. Virginia Graham Castro and Ronnie Howard testified to what Atkins had told them in jail.
The physical evidence against Krenwinkel was her fingerprint at Cielo Drive. Against her as against the others, the prosecution's case was that the killings were the work of a conspiracy led by Manson, carried out to set off Helter Skelter.
On January 25, 1971, the jury found all four defendants guilty as charged and found every murder to be first-degree. AP reported that they "sat passively" as the 27 guilty verdicts were read. Krenwinkel was convicted on seven counts of first-degree murder and one count of conspiracy.
The penalty phase lasted about two months. In it, according to Great American Trials, Krenwinkel and Van Houten admitted taking part in the killings but denied that Manson had ordered them, and Atkins blamed Kasabian. On March 29, 1971, the same jury returned death sentences for all four.
The case was appealed directly to the California Supreme Court. On February 18, 1972, while it was pending, the court decided People v. Anderson, which invalidated the state's death penalty. Every death sentence in California, including Krenwinkel's, was reduced to life imprisonment, which at that time carried the possibility of parole. The appeals were then sent to the Court of Appeal for the Second District.
In People v. Manson, decided August 13, 1976, that court took up the defendants' challenges to the conviction. It held that Kasabian's immunized testimony was properly admitted, that Krenwinkel's fingerprint was sufficient corroboration of that testimony, that the conspiracy had not ended before the statements used against the defendants were made, and that her refusal to give handwriting samples and the false names the women gave at arrest could be considered by the jury. The convictions are final.
Charles Manson died in prison in November 2017. Susan Atkins died of cancer in prison in 2009, and Krenwinkel then became California's longest-serving female prisoner. Leslie Van Houten was released on parole in 2023 after an appeals court overruled the governor. Tex Watson remained in prison as of June 2025, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Krenwinkel is held at the California Institution for Women, the state women's prison that reports place in Chino or Corona. Accounts of her record there are consistent. In his 2025 decision Gov. Gavin Newsom credited her with "extensive rehabilitation," including self-help programs, vocational training, "multiple college degrees" and mentoring work, and an "excellent disciplinary history." NPR reported that she earned a bachelor's degree and that her only citations were two for minor infractions, the most recent in 2005, and that Newsom noted she had never been disciplined.
According to NPR and Oxygen, she has taken part in therapy and group counseling, has trained service dogs for people with disabilities, and has worked supporting incarcerated people with severe mental illness. According to the Los Angeles Times, nine consecutive psychological evaluations found that she no longer posed a risk to public safety. Wattley, who founded the advocacy group UnCommon Law, describes her as both a perpetrator and a survivor of violence.
Krenwinkel's account of herself has changed over the decades. In the 1971 penalty phase she denied that Manson had ordered the killings. In later years she has described him as an abuser and herself as fully responsible.
In a 1994 interview with Diane Sawyer she said: "I wake up every day knowing that I'm a destroyer of the most precious thing, which is life." She told the New York Times in 2014: "It is countless how many lives were shattered by the path of destruction that I was a part of." At her 2022 hearing she described her state in 1969: "I had just totally allowed myself to just start absolutely becoming devoid of any form of morality or real ethics." And: "I just kept accepting and allowing myself to go all along for the ride."
In 2016 her lawyer told the board that she had been abused at the time, by Manson or by someone else. In 2022 the panel concluded that she had been a victim of intimate partner battery when the crimes were committed. Her lawyer says California law requires that such a history be given "great weight" in parole decisions, and has argued that the governor did not do so.
Under the sentence she received after 1972, Krenwinkel became eligible for parole in the 1970s. According to Fox News, citing the governor's 2025 decision, the board held 17 hearings for her from 1977 on, and she was denied 14 times; once she declined to seek parole. Oxygen dates the denials from 1976. Her last denial before 2022 came in 2017. The sources consulted do not give the date and result of each early hearing, and this page does not attempt to list them.
On Thursday, May 26, 2022, a two-member panel found Krenwinkel suitable for release, the first time any panel had done so. She was 74. Los Angeles County prosecutors did not attend to object, under District Attorney George Gascón's policy at the time.
Debra Tate told the board that Krenwinkel's explanation, an unsupportive family and drinking, was no excuse. "We all come from homes with problems and didn't decide to go out and brutally kill seven strangers," she said. Anthony DiMaria, Jay Sebring's nephew, urged Newsom to block release "due to the rare, severe, egregious nature of her crimes," which he said had left "permanent historical scars."
On Friday, October 14, 2022, Newsom reversed the grant. He accepted that she had behaved well, completed many rehabilitation and education programs and "demonstrated effusive remorse," and that she was "not only a victim of Mr. Manson's abuse." But he wrote that she had "fully accepted Mr. Manson's racist, apocalyptical ideologies," "played a leadership role in the cult" and "was an enforcer of Mr. Manson's tyranny," and that she had "forced the other women in the cult to obey Mr. Manson, and prevented them from escaping." He concluded that she lacked sufficient insight into what caused her crimes and that "her efforts have not sufficiently reduced her risk for future dangerousness." According to Fox News, the Los Angeles County Superior Court denied her challenge to the reversal in January 2024, and the ruling was affirmed on appeal.
On Friday, May 30, 2025, a panel granted parole again. The Los Angeles Times described it as her 16th appearance before the board. The hearing lasted about four hours. Krenwinkel used her right not to testify; members of the victims' families read statements opposing her release. Wattley said: "Pat has fully accepted responsibility for everything she did," and argued that California's laws "require that they be released once they are no longer dangerous." Debra Tate's online petition against release, started in 2016, had more than 116,000 signatures, NPR reported.
The board's review ended with the decision becoming final on September 27, 2025, and Newsom had until October 27 to act. He reversed it on Monday, October 13, 2025, according to FOX 11, ABC7 and Fox News. He called her progress "commendable" but wrote that she "lacks the requisite insight she needs to be safely released," cited "deficits in self-awareness" and "a tendency to externalize blame for her prior transgressions," and noted that "her current physical condition is not the most relevant indication of her current risk level." His conclusion: "when considered as a whole, I find the evidence shows that she currently poses an unreasonable danger to society if released from prison at this time. Therefore, I reverse the decision to parole Ms. Krenwinkel."
Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said his office agreed and that Krenwinkel had not fully accepted blame. Wattley said Newsom "has unfortunately chosen politics over people" and had ignored the legal requirement to give great weight to her history as a survivor of domestic violence.
On Tuesday, October 6, 2026, a parole panel found Krenwinkel suitable for parole at what the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation called her 18th subsequent parole suitability hearing. CDCR confirmed the decision on Wednesday, October 7, FOX 11 reported. She was 78.
The decision is not final. CDCR said that "all grants of parole are proposed decisions and become final only after a thorough and comprehensive review by the Board of Parole Hearings and the Governor." The board has 120 days to review the grant. Because she was convicted of murder, the governor then has an additional 30 days to let it stand or reverse it. If he reverses it, she will receive another hearing within 18 months of the October 6 hearing.
Wattley said the finding "offers a glimmer of hope." "Now, the Governor must respect these decisions and allow Pat to come home," he said. He described her as "a young woman with no self-esteem who was searching for somewhere to belong" when Manson exploited her "through manipulation, drugs, and psychological abuse."
As of the October 9, 2026 Agence France-Presse report, the grant was awaiting the board's review, and no decision by Newsom had been reported. The board's written decision had not been published.
Proven by verdict: Krenwinkel was convicted of all seven murders and of conspiracy, as a principal and co-conspirator. The convictions do not depend on proving which defendant struck which blow, and that question has never been fully settled.
Her own role at Cielo Drive is the clearest. Kasabian saw her chasing a woman with a knife; her fingerprint was in the house; she told Dianne Lake she had dragged Abigail Folger through the house; and at trial she testified that she stabbed Folger. The court records the coroner's count of 28 stab wounds to Folger.
At Waverly Drive the accounts differ. HISTORY's British channel says Krenwinkel and Van Houten were in the bedroom with Rosemary LaBianca and that Krenwinkel stabbed her, while Watson killed Leno LaBianca. Oxygen's 2022 report says Krenwinkel stabbed Rosemary with a fork; its 2026 report says she stabbed Leno with a fork. The Court of Appeal records only that a carving fork was found in Leno LaBianca's body, without saying who used it. This page does not choose between these accounts.
Manson's role: at the penalty phase Krenwinkel denied that Manson had ordered the killings. Since then she has said the opposite, that he directed and controlled the group. The jury convicted Manson on the prosecution's theory that he ordered both nights to start Helter Skelter.
Abuse: the 2022 panel found that she was a victim of intimate partner battery in 1969. Newsom accepted that she was a victim of Manson's abuse but found she was also a leader and enforcer within the group. Debra Tate and Anthony DiMaria reject the abuse explanation as an excuse.
Her age when she met Manson is given as 18 or 19, and her age at the crimes as 21 (most sources) or 19 (one statement by her lawyer, which more likely refers to her age on meeting Manson).
Relatives of the seven victims have opposed her release for years. Debra Tate has spoken against Krenwinkel's release at hearing after hearing and runs the petition urging the governor to block it. Jay Sebring's nephew, Anthony DiMaria, has done the same. Relatives of other victims read statements at the 2025 hearing. They have argued that the scale of the crimes and the choice of strangers as victims set this case apart from the ordinary run of parole decisions. Krenwinkel's lawyer has argued that the law asks whether she is dangerous now, however serious the crime, and points to nine consecutive psychological evaluations that found she was not.
1960s: Krenwinkel spends one semester at Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama; later moves in with her sister in Manhattan Beach, California.
About 1967 (by her stated ages): meets Charles Manson at a party, at 18 or 19; travels with his group for about 18 months.
1969: the Family settles at Spahn Ranch.
August 8-9, 1969: Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, Abigail Folger, Wojciech Frykowski and Steven Parent are killed at 10050 Cielo Drive.
August 9-10, 1969: Leno and Rosemary LaBianca are killed in their home on Waverly Drive.
October 1969: Manson is arrested on an unrelated charge.
December 1, 1969: warrants issued for Krenwinkel; she is arrested in Mobile, Alabama.
December 1969: Atkins testifies before the grand jury; indictments follow.
June 15, 1970: trial of Manson, Krenwinkel, Atkins and Van Houten begins before Judge Charles H. Older.
July 24, 1970: testimony begins; Linda Kasabian is the main witness.
January 25, 1971: all four convicted; Krenwinkel on seven counts of first-degree murder and one of conspiracy.
March 29, 1971: jury returns death sentences.
February 18, 1972: People v. Anderson invalidates California's death penalty; sentences become life with the possibility of parole.
August 13, 1976: Court of Appeal rules in People v. Manson.
1977 onward: parole hearings; 14 denials, one hearing declined.
1994: interview with Diane Sawyer.
2009: Susan Atkins dies in prison; Krenwinkel becomes California's longest-serving female prisoner.
November 2017: Charles Manson dies in prison.
May 26, 2022: first parole grant.
October 14, 2022: Gov. Newsom reverses it.
January 2024: Superior Court denies her challenge; later affirmed on appeal.
May 30, 2025: second parole grant.
October 13, 2025: Newsom reverses it.
October 6, 2026: panel finds her suitable at her 18th subsequent hearing; CDCR confirms on October 7.
As of the October 9, 2026 AFP report: grant under Board of Parole Hearings review (up to 120 days), then up to 30 days for the governor.