Manson follower Krenwinkel denied parole

(01-21) 04:00 PST Corona, Riverside County --

Charles Manson follower Patricia Krenwinkel - one of two surviving women convicted in the Sharon Tate murders - has been denied parole by a California panel.

The two-member parole board said after a Thursday hearing in Los Angeles that the 63-year-old Krenwinkel will not be eligible for parole again for seven years, the longest such period handed down to any of the Manson Family convicts.

The panel said they were swayed by the memory and of the crimes, along with 80 letters which came from all over the world urging Krenwinkel's continued incarceration.

Krenwinkel told a parole board Thursday she threw away everything good in herself and became a "monster" after she met Manson. Krenwinkel, who was convicted in the Sharon Tate killings, is one of Manson's two surviving female followers.

She has maintained a clean prison record in her four decades behind bars, but her chances for release appeared slim after parole rejections in other Manson cases.

During her hearing, Krenwinkel was soft-spoken and contrite, describing the downward spiral of her life after she met Manson.

"Everything that was good and decent in me I threw away," she said.

It was her father, she said, who helped her realize during his visits to her in prison, "what had happened, and the monster I became."

She said she tells those she counsels in prison, "I am someone you would never have wanted to be, and here are the steps you can take to never go to the dark places I have been."

With members of the victims' families seated in the board room, Krenwinkel said she understood the pain and grief she has caused them.

"I think I have destroyed their lives," she said. "I've taken away their relationships with their loved ones. By my actions, I've created such grief for them."

The parole board members did not ask her to discuss the crimes she committed, although she spoke at length about Manson's effect on her.

Krenwinkel was convicted along with Manson and two other female followers in seven 1969 murders, considered among the most notorious crimes of the 20th century.

None of those convicted has ever been paroled and one of them, Susan Atkins, died in prison last year after being denied compassionate release when she was terminally ill with cancer.

Leslie Van Houten, 61, the youngest of the women convicted, was long thought to be the most likely to win eventual release. But she was denied a parole date last summer by officials who said she had not gained sufficient insight into her crimes.

Parole boards have repeatedly cited the callousness, viciousness and calculation of the murders committed by members of the Manson Family.

This article appeared on page C - 4 of the San Francisco Chronicle