Leslie Van Houten's parole bid denied by Gov. Brown

SACRAMENTO - Gov. Jerry Brown denied parole Friday for Leslie Van Houten, the youngest follower of murderous cult leader Charles Manson who is serving a life sentence for killing a grocer and his wife more than 40 years ago.

Brown overturned the recommendation of a parole board that found Van Houten was no longer the violent young woman who committed a gruesome murder and was now fit for release. She has completed college degrees and been a model inmate.

The Democratic governor acknowledged her success in prison and her youth at the time of the murders, but he wrote in his decision that she failed to explain how she transformed from an upstanding teen to a killer.

“Both her role in these extraordinarily brutal crimes and her inability to explain her willing participation in such horrific violence cannot be overlooked and lead me to believe she remains an unacceptable risk to society if released,” Brown wrote.