The LaBianca murders were the killings of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, a Los Angeles couple stabbed to death in their Los Feliz home in the early morning hours of August 10, 1969, by followers of Charles Manson acting on his orders. The killings came roughly 24 hours after Manson’s followers had murdered five people at the home of actress Sharon Tate, and the two crimes were later prosecuted together as the Tate-LaBianca case. Four people were convicted of the LaBianca killings alongside Manson himself: Charles “Tex” Watson, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Leslie Van Houten. All received death sentences that were commuted to life in prison after California struck down capital punishment in 1972.
What Happened at 3311 Waverly Drive
On the night of August 9, 1969, Manson personally drove a group of followers around Los Angeles looking for victims. With him were Watson, Krenwinkel, Van Houten, Susan Atkins, Linda Kasabian, and Steven “Clem” Grogan. Manson directed the group to the LaBianca house at 3311 Waverly Drive in the Los Feliz neighborhood.
According to Kasabian’s later trial testimony, Manson and Watson went inside first, tied the couple up, and robbed them. Manson then left with Atkins, Kasabian, and Grogan, telling Watson, Krenwinkel, and Van Houten to kill the LaBiancas without letting them know it was coming.
Leno LaBianca was found in the living room with a pillowcase over his face, his hands bound with a leather thong, and an electrical cord knotted around his neck. A carving fork protruded from his stomach. He had suffered 12 stab wounds and seven pairs of puncture wounds from the fork, and the word “WAR” had been carved into his abdomen. Rosemary LaBianca was found in a bedroom, her hands tied, a pillowcase over her head, and a cord around her neck. She had been stabbed 41 times.
The killers wrote messages in the victims’ blood throughout the house: “Death to Pigs” on a living room wall, “Rise” above a doorway, and “Healter Skelter,” misspelled, on the refrigerator. The home had not been ransacked, though Rosemary’s wallet was missing. Leno’s 16-year-old stepson, Frank Struthers, discovered the scene when he returned home from a trip.
Who Were Leno and Rosemary LaBianca
Leno LaBianca was a grocery executive whose family had deep roots in the Los Angeles food industry. His father, an immigrant from Puglia, Italy, founded Gateway Ranch Markets, a small chain that operated across Los Angeles into the early 1970s. Leno became president of Gateway and the family’s wholesale arm, State Wholesale Grocery Company, after his father’s death in 1951. Just weeks before he was killed, he had reached an agreement with other shareholders to leave the grocery business for good.
Rosemary LaBianca was his wife and a business owner in her own right. The couple’s two-bedroom home on Waverly Drive had been built in 1922.
How the Killers Were Caught
Detectives did not initially connect the LaBianca killings to the Tate murders from the night before. Investigators on the Tate case suspected drugs and worked that angle for weeks.
The break came in the fall of 1969. In October, Manson and members of his commune were arrested at Spahn Ranch on vehicle theft and arson charges. One of those arrested implicated Susan Atkins in the earlier killing of musician Gary Hinman. While jailed on that charge, Atkins bragged to cellmates about the Tate killings. In November, an associate named Al Springer told LAPD detectives that Manson had boasted about “knocking off five” people shortly after the August murders, and a second informant, Danny DeCarlo, pointed investigators toward the Spahn Ranch group.
Prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi was assigned to the case on November 18, 1969. A grand jury indicted Manson, Atkins, Krenwinkel, and Van Houten on December 8, 1969, on charges of murder and conspiracy to commit murder.
Convicting Manson of Murders He Didn’t Commit
The joint Tate-LaBianca trial opened in Los Angeles in the summer of 1970. Manson, Atkins, Krenwinkel, and Van Houten were tried together. Watson was tried separately after delays tied to his extradition from Texas.
Bugliosi’s central problem was that Manson had not physically stabbed anyone at the LaBianca house. He argued the “joint responsibility rule of conspiracy”: as leader and organizer, Manson bore legal responsibility for every killing carried out in furtherance of the group’s plan. In closing argument he told the jury that although “there is no evidence that he actually personally killed any of the seven victims in this case,” the conspiracy made him “guilty of all seven murders.”
The motive was an apocalyptic racial fantasy Manson called “Helter Skelter,” borrowed from a Beatles song. He had convinced his followers a race war was imminent, one in which Black Americans would rise up against the white establishment. He believed he needed to “show them how to do it” by committing ritualistic killings and staging them to look like the work of Black militants, which accounted for the blood-scrawled messages at the scenes. Manson told his followers they would wait out the conflict in a “bottomless pit” in Death Valley and emerge afterward to rule the world.
The prosecution’s key witness was Linda Kasabian, who had been present at both nights of killings and testified under a grant of immunity. She began testifying on July 27, 1970, and gave a detailed firsthand account of Manson’s orders. California law required her testimony to be corroborated, and the court found that Manson’s own statements about Helter Skelter, which matched the pattern of the actual crimes, supplied that support.
Proving Manson’s control over his followers was essential. The prosecution introduced evidence about life inside the commune: members obeyed him without question and submitted to his authority over their routines, clothing, and children. Several followers described him as a messianic figure. The court allowed the evidence as relevant to Manson’s ability to induce others to kill on command. On appeal, in People v. Manson, 61 Cal. App. 3d 102 (1976), the court upheld this approach, reaffirming that conspiracy can be proven almost entirely through circumstantial evidence and that a jury may infer agreement from the parties’ conduct before, during, and after the crimes.
Verdicts, Death Sentences, and Commutation
On January 25, 1971, the jury convicted all four defendants of first-degree murder. Manson, Atkins, and Krenwinkel were found guilty on seven counts of murder and one count of conspiracy. Van Houten was convicted on two counts of murder and one count of conspiracy, reflecting her involvement only in the LaBianca killings. On March 29, 1971, the jury imposed death sentences on all four. Judge Charles Older formally ordered Manson to San Quentin’s death row on April 19, 1971. Watson was tried separately later in 1971 and also received the death penalty.
On February 18, 1972, the California Supreme Court declared the state’s death penalty unconstitutional in People v. Anderson. Every death sentence in California was automatically commuted to life with the possibility of parole, including those of all five Tate-LaBianca defendants.
Where Each Convicted Killer Is Now
The five people convicted of the LaBianca murders have followed sharply divergent paths through the parole system.
Charles Manson became eligible for parole in 1978 and was denied every time he appeared before the board. He died of natural causes in a California prison on November 19, 2017, at age 83.
Susan Atkins was denied parole 12 times and became the longest-serving female inmate in California. Diagnosed with brain cancer in 2008, she appeared before a parole board on a gurney in September 2009 seeking compassionate release. The board denied the request, citing the nature of her crimes. She died in prison on September 24, 2009, at age 61.
Leslie Van Houten spent 53 years in prison. She earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees, completed vocational training, and maintained what officials called a “laudable disciplinary record.” She was denied parole more than 20 times, and California governors reversed parole board recommendations in her favor five times. In May 2023, a state appeals court granted her petition for a writ of habeas corpus, ruling that the governor’s prior refusals amounted to “unsupported intuition” with no legal basis. Governor Gavin Newsom’s office expressed disappointment but declined to appeal further. Van Houten was released on July 11, 2023, at age 73, to a transitional living facility under a three-year parole term.
Charles “Tex” Watson has been denied parole 18 times. As of his most recent hearing, in October 2021 at Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego, he remains incarcerated at a prison in Sacramento. He is not eligible for another parole hearing until 2026.
Patricia Krenwinkel is the longest-serving female inmate in the California prison system, held at the California Institution for Women. On May 30, 2025, a parole board panel recommended her release for the second time, citing her age, spotless disciplinary record, and low risk of reoffending. The board finalized that recommendation on September 27, 2025. Governor Newsom reversed it on October 14, 2025, writing in a four-page decision that Krenwinkel “currently poses an unreasonable danger to society” and pointing to what he described as deficits in self-awareness and a tendency to externalize blame. Her attorney, Keith Wattley, called the decision “100% political, directly contrary to the evidence and the controlling law.” Newsom had blocked a parole recommendation for Krenwinkel once before, in 2022.
The LaBianca Family at Parole Hearings
Relatives of the victims have attended parole hearings for decades to argue against release. Lou Smaldino, identified as Leno LaBianca’s nephew, has been a regular presence at hearings for Krenwinkel and other defendants. Debra Tate, sister of Sharon Tate, has also represented multiple victims’ families at hearings, continuing work her mother Doris Tate began after a deputy district attorney alerted her that one of her daughter’s killers was eligible for release.