Patricia Krenwinkel, one of the most notorious members of the Manson Family and convicted of seven murders, was paroled this week and will be free after about 56 years in prison unless the entire state parole board and the governor take action.
Krenwinkel was granted preliminary parole at her 18th hearing on Tuesday to evaluate her suitability for parole, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. “All parole approvals are proposed decisions and become final only after a thorough and comprehensive review by the Board of Parole Hearings and the Governor,” department officials said in a statement.
The now 78-year-old prisoner was paroled for the third time while serving his sentence. Each time, the governor’s office exercised its authority to block her release. The parole decision will become final after 120 days, subject to approval by the Parole Board’s Legal Office, which is then sent to the governor, who has 30 days to decide whether to overturn the parole decision.
In October 2025, Newsom reversed that decision, noting that Krenwinkel had worked hard to better herself in prison but saying the potential danger she posed to the public outweighed her personal growth.
Prosecutors with the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office said they would encourage the governor’s office to put Krenwinkel behind bars. She did not attend Tuesday’s hearing. She is being held at the Coronado Women’s Institution. She was eligible for the state’s geriatric prisoner parole program because she was young at the time of the fatal killings.
Krenwinkel was convicted along with other members of the so-called Manson Family in 1971 for the murders of seven-month-pregnant actors Sharon Tate, Thomas Jay Sebring, Abigail Ann Folger, Wojciech Frykoski and Steven Earle Parent, and the next day for the slayings of grocery store supervisor Lenore Roska and his wife, LaBianca, and his wife, Rabbi Rose. She was sentenced to death, but the sentence was commuted to life in prison with the possibility of parole in 1972 after the death penalty was ruled unconstitutional.
Actor Sharon Tate was one of the victims of the Manson Family murders in the late 1960s.
(Associated Press)
Krenwinkel and other Manson followers broke into the Benedict Canyon home of Tate and her husband, Roman Polanski. Tate and four others were stabbed and shot in the attack.
The high-profile trial of the Manson Family made Manson and several of his followers one of the most notorious criminals of the 20th century. Krenwinkel testified that she chased coffee company heiress Abigail Folger and then stabbed her more than two dozen times. She also testified that she wrote “Death to Pigs” in blood on the walls of her home.
Krenwinkel appeared in court with co-defendants Susan Atkins and Leslie Van Houten with an “X” carved into his forehead, as did Manson.
Sharon Tate’s sister, Debra Tate, has been an outspoken advocate for jailing Krenwinkel and other former Manson followers.
“Society cannot allow the return of a serial killer who committed such horrific, gruesome, random killings,” she wrote in the online petition, which has received more than 100,000 signatures since it was created in 2016.
Former members of the Manson Family, now elderly inmates in state prisons, have faced several parole hearings, all of which were outright denied.
Other former Manson followers, including Charles Denton “Tex” Watson and Robert Kenneth Beausoleil, remain in prison. Charles Manson, Susan Atkins and Bruce Davis died in custody.
In 2023, Leslie Van Houten was paroled and released from prison after maintaining what many described as an exemplary record over decades in prison. Newsom denied an earlier decision to grant Van Houten parole, which was overturned by an appeals court.
Newsom previously reversed the parole board’s decision to grant Krenwinkel parole, saying the offender “did not fully understand the causative factors of his crime and the factors that trigger antisocial thinking and behavior in the context of maladaptive relationships.”
Krenwinkel was young at the time of the murder, 21 years old. Although she was not in court Tuesday, her attorneys noted at previous hearings that she was abused by Manson or others at the time.