It wasn’t until after the murders, and even after her being institutionalized at age 17, facing him in a courtroom and testifying against him in LA that she would finally see him for what he was.
The defense attorney for Manson asked her ‘Are you still in love with Mr. Manson now?’ She responded ‘I guess so’ as she looked at the man she had a deep relationship with the previous years leading up to this point.
Manson in a mugshot from 2009 (left) and more recently in August of 2017 (right).
Manson family members and murder suspects Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkle, and Leslie van Houton (right) shortly after their arrest.
That’s when Manson blurted out ‘You loved everybody. Don’t put it all on, Mr. Manson.’
The courtroom had burst into laughter at Manson’s outburst.
‘I hadn’t seen it before, how he could truly work a room. This man didn’t mean to be funny… he was deflecting responsibility from himself by humiliating me and dismissing my value as a human being.’
That was the moment she finally saw Manson for who he was.
‘A scruffy little man with an enormous ego,’ Lake says in the excerpts to People. ‘He was a fake, a fraud, a pimp, and a con artist. And now I was truly free of him.’
The women who she considered as friends from the Manson family stood by him during the trial.
‘The girls with the Xs on their foreheads? That part always blew me away,’ Lake says. ‘They continued to hang on, be groupies.’
After the trial concluded and Manson was convicted on first-degree murder charges, Lake says she tried to move forward with her life. She is now married, raised three children and earned a master’s in education.
She says she broke her 47-year silence with this book to ‘correct the story of me,’ and to forgive her teenage self. ‘I’m not ashamed of her, I love her’ Lake told People.
‘It’s an interesting story, but it’s also a cautionary tale,’ she says. ‘I hope that my story sheds a little light on this very dark time.’
Leslie Van Houten has been granted parole after appearing before a California board for the 21st time. She is pictured above after the hearing from September.
Just this September, another one of Manson’s followers was granted parole which is now under review.
The youngest Manson follower to have been involved in the murderous spree, Leslie Van Houghton, spoke to a parole board for the 21st time.
Van Houten, 68, who was 19 when she killed for Manson in 1969, attempted to convince members she has reformed and deserves to be released from prison after spending 47 years behind bars.
California governor Jerry Brown now has a 120-day period to affirm, reverse or take no action on the panel’s decision.
Last year, a similar panel granted her parole but was overruled by Brown.
In blocking her release then, Brown said Van Houten had failed to adequately explain to the panel how a model teenager from a privileged Southern California family who had once been a homecoming princess could have turned into a ruthless killer by age 19.
Over two nights in August 1969, Manson’s ragtag band of followers killed seven people, including actress Tate.
Van Houten didn’t take part in the first night’s killings of Tate and four others, but she helped kill grocer Leno LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary, on the second night.
Credits: dailymail.co.uk