CALIFORNIA FOCUS
1720 OAK STREET, SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA 90405
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2017, OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
1720 OAK STREET, SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA 90405
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2017, OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“HEINOUS KILLERS LIKE MANSONS SHOULD NEVER
GO FREE”
Buried in the back pages of newspapers
and not even making it onto many television and radio news programs this summer
was the news that Gov. Jerry Brown again refused parole a member of the
murderous Manson Family gang, while a parole board denied freedom to another.
But these actions raised more
questions than they answered. For example, should heinous killers like Charles
Manson and most of his vicious followers ever be allowed back on the streets?
What might new and younger governors with no personal memories of the
Manson-inspired 1969 murder spree do when parole boards made up of their
appointees recommend freedom for these and other murderers whose crimes are in
some ways comparable.
In his latest refusal of a Manson
Family member’s parole bid, Brown denied release to Bruce Davis, convicted in
1972 in the slayings of musician Gary Hinman and movie stuntman Donald (Shorty)
Shea. Brown did not deny that Davis has improved himself and gone 25 years with
no prison discipline for misconduct.
But, he said, these things are
“outweighed by negative factors…incredibly heinous and cruel offenses like
these constitute the ‘rare circumstances’ in which the crime alone can justify
a denial of parole.”
Brown’s action came within a day of a
ruling by a parole panel at the California Institute for Women in Corona blocking
release for former Manson follower Patricia Krenwinkel, whose lawyer insisted
she only went along with the Manson murders because of physical abuse by
Manson.
The board wasn’t buying it, perhaps
because Krenwinkel was one of several “Manson girls” who came to court daily
during their trials with X’s carved into their foreheads as signs of continuing
support for Manson. Krenwinkel was one of those who cut power and telephone
lines at the Beverly Hills-area estate of actress Sharon Tate and then murdered
her and four others, stabbing them over and over.
The next night, she helped kill grocer
Leno LaBianca and his wife Rosemary in the Hollywood Hills, helping carve the
word “WAR” into one victim’s stomach and scrawling other words in blood near
the victims’ bodies.
Besides the murders themselves, one
troubling part of all this is that parole boards persistently recommend release
for some Manson followers. They are perhaps the best-known of many sadistic
California killers, including the likes of Edmund Kemper, the Santa Cruz area’s
“Coed Killer” of the 1960s and ‘70s, and Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris, the
notorious “Tool Box Killers” who kidnapped, raped, tortured and murdered five
young women in Southern California in 1979.
While Brown has said that some serious
criminals can “change their thinking,” he has always left the Manson Family
killers out of that category. No one knows if future governors will do the
same.
That’s why it’s high time the
Legislature created a new category of crime, one whose perpetrators can never
be considered for parole. Had such a law existed when the Mansons and some
others were convicted, relatives of the victims would not have to feel
compelled to attend parole hearings and revive their pain every few years just
to make sure the most brutal of murderers don’t go free.
For sure, the Manson followers have
been like a plague on California’s consciousness that’s impossible to
eradicate. They keep trying for parole and Brown keeps saying no, as did
predecessors Gray Davis and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Perhaps these killers are encouraged by the success a few of their
former pals in the Family had in getting released: Linda Kasabian in the 1970s
as part of a plea deal that saw her provide key testimony against Manson and
friends, Steve Grogan in 1985 for leading authorities to the body of Shea on
the Spahn Movie Ranch near the Los Angeles suburb of Chatsworth and Lynette
(Squeaky) Fromme in 2009, more than 30 years after she tried to shoot
then-President Gerald Ford. None of those three, however, participated in the
Tate or LaBianca killings.
The repeated parole
attempts are certainly within the legal rights of all convicted killers, but
they should not be. It’s high time legislators make sure no future governor can
ever loose this worst sort of criminal back on the public.
Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, go to www.californiafocus.net
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