Convicted for her role in seven murders, Manson Family killer Patricia Krenwinkel has been denied parole 14 times and remains in prison to this day.
Getty ImagesOne of the Manson Family’s deadliest killers, Patricia Krenwinkel (left) helped murder seven people at the Los Angeles homes of Sharon Tate and Leno LaBianca in August 1969.
No one could ever have expected that Patricia Krenwinkel would become a murderer.
In fact, no one expected much from her at all. Born into a broken home and hopelessly unsure of herself, Krenwinkel struggled to find her place in the world. Unfortunately, she soon found it in Charles Manson.
Not long after falling in with the Manson Family, Patricia Krenwinkel participated in the brutal Tate-LaBianca murders that left seven people dead in Los Angeles in August 1969. To this day, Krenwinkel remains behind bars for the horrific acts she perpetrated at age 19.
Patricia Krenwinkel’s Dark And Difficult Childhood
Born on December 3, 1947 to a homemaker and an insurance salesman in Los Angeles, Patricia Krenwinkel was paralyzed by insecurity from an early age. At school, she was bullied for being overweight and an embarrassing endocrine condition that caused her to grow excess hair on her arms.
Los Angeles Public LibraryPatricia Krenwinkel during the trial for the Tate-LaBianca murders in 1970.
Alongside these adolescent insecurities, Krenwinkel’s home life began to fall apart. Although her family would later claim a perfectly “normal” childhood for her, it was anything but.
At a parole hearing in 2011, Krenwinkel described her parents’ divorce and how she was forced to go to three different high schools, and how her older stepsister introduced her to alcohol and drugs. Following the divorce, Krenwinkel’s mother moved to Alabama and Krenwinkel, just 17 and still in high school, chose to stay in California with her father and stepsister.
Patricia Krenwinkel eventually followed her mother to Alabama to go to university at Spring Hill, a Jesuit school. She even considered becoming a nun. In the end, Krenwinkel only lasted one semester before moving back to Los Angeles where she moved in with her stepsister — a heroin addict.
Los Angeles Public LibraryCharles Manson being escorted from court in 1970.
While living with her sister in Manhattan Beach, Patricia Krenwinkel met Charles Manson. Manson later described Krenwinkel, whom he referred to as “Pat” as: “[not] a prizewinner for beauty but…she had smarts…At one time she had been pretty deep into the Bible…it was easy to see she didn’t believe in herself as much as she wanted others to believe.”
Krenwinkel Falls Under Charles Manson’s Spell
Almost immediately, Patricia Krenwinkel saw Manson as an escape from a dead-end job and her sister’s addiction. At her 2011 parole hearing, she acknowledged this, saying: “This seemed like a way out…he seemed like the answer…he seemed like my salvation at the time.”
Manson corroborated this story and recalled how after five hours of “conversation, sex, and complete fulfillment,” Krenwinkel put her head in his lap and cried. She said: “Charlie, you’ve given me a new world. Anything you do has to be right. Take me with you wherever you go.”
Los Angeles Public LibraryPatricia Krenwinkel during her trial in July 1970.
So Manson took Patricia Krenwinkel in. Together, they lived in a van with two other women: Lynette Fromme and Mary Brunner, who would become the mother of Manson’s third biological son, Valentine Michael Manson.
In Krenwinkel’s recollection, this group eventually grew to about 50 people. They routinely used LSD and marijuana, which, in the San Francisco of the late 1960s, was readily available.
But how did Patricia Krenwinkel, who once wanted to become a nun, find herself on Cielo Drive on August 9, 1969, covered in blood? Her desperate love for Manson led her to shed pieces of her self and her morality bit by bit. Through the lens of time, and perhaps desiring release from prison, she recalled:
“I wanted this man’s love…any time I saw something I normally would be against, any of the values I held, I began to justify it…rationalize it…the more I did that, the more I lost any values I held.”
Manson even changed Patricia Krenwinkel’s name to Katie because “their old names belonged to the past.”
Patricia Krenwinkel Helps Carry Out The Brutal Tate Murders
FlickrThe home at 10050 Cielo Drive where Patricia Krenwinkel murdered heiress Abigail Folger on August 9, 1969.
In August of 1969, now completely immersed in the Manson Family and living with them at Spahn Ranch, Patricia Krenwinkel completely shed her former identity. She went from a shy schoolgirl and aspiring nun to a murderess.
Motivated by Manson, who aimed to start a race war by framing the murder of Hollywood elites on Black Americans, Krenwinkel gathered with other members of the Manson Family, including Tex Watson, Susan Atkins, and getaway driver Linda Kasabian, at the home of actress Sharon Tate and director Roman Polanski at 10050 Cielo Drive in Los Angeles.
Five people would die that night: Wojciech Frykowski, Sharon Tate, who was eight months pregnant, Steven Parent, Jay Sebring, and Abigail Folger.
Patricia Krenwinkel found Abigail Folger asleep in one of the bedrooms and dragged her into the living room, where they gathered all the victims except for Stephen Parent, who had been shot in his parked outside. A scuffle ensued between the two women and Krenwinkel stabbed Folger.
YouTubeAbigail Folger, the coffee heiress brutally murdered by Patricia Krenwinkel and Tex Watson on August 9, 1969.
Folger managed to escape and ran desperately outside — Patricia Krenwinkel followed, pinned her to the ground, and continued to stab her as Folger cried, “Stop, I’m already dead!” When police found Folger the next day, her white nightgown had turned entirely red to such an extent that police thought it was the original color.
The Manson Family Kills The LaBiancas The Night After Murdering Sharon Tate
The carnage did not end with the Sharon Tate murders at Cielo Drive. Within 48 hours, Patricia Krenwinkel joined Manson and other members of the family at a home in Los Feliz, Los Angeles. Manson and his right-hand man, Tex Watson, entered the house and tied up the inhabitants — a grocer named Leno LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary.
Coming back out of the house, Manson sent Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten inside. Manson allegedly told Krenwinkel to “do something witchy.”
Los Angeles Public LibraryTex Watson, the man who committed the most infamous Manson Family murders alongside Patricia Krenwinkel, Susan Atkins, and Leslie Van Houten.
Van Houten and Krenwinkel brought Rosemary LaBianca upstairs. As Rosemary pled for the life of her husband, Krenwinkel, Van Houten, and Watson stabbed her with a knife they’d found in the kitchen 41 times. Then, following instructions to do something “witchy,” Patricia Krenwinkel stabbed Leno LaBianca in the stomach with a fork. Using a rag, she soaked up his blood and then wrote a message on the wall: DEATH TO PIGS and HELTER SKELTER.
As the police began to close in on Manson and his family, Manson ordered Krenwinkel to go to Alabama. She later said that she went to Alabama to escape Manson, but this was likely a doubtful explanation given her behavior before the arrest and during the trial. The police nonetheless arrested Patricia Krenwinkel there on Dec. 1, 1969, two days before her 22nd birthday.
What Happened To Patricia Krenwinkel And Where Is She Today?
Los Angeles Public LibraryPatricia Krenwinkel (left) with an X carved in her forehead.
Today, Patricia Krenwinkel remains in prison for her role in the Manson murders. She is the longest-incarcerated woman in the California penal system. She was initially sentenced to death but the Supreme Court outlawed the death penalty for a time in 1972. As such, she serves nine life sentences instead.
During her trial, Krenwinkel reportedly showed little regret. She shaved her head and carved an X into her forehead in solidarity with Manson. As the trial went on, Krenwinkel sat and drew satanic symbols. When asked if Tate’s pregnancy disturbed Krenwinkel, she replied: “No…I didn’t think about it.”
Los Angeles Public LibraryFrom right, Patricia Krenwinkel, Susan Atkins, and Leslie Van Houten during the Tate-LaBianca murder trial in October 1970.
But as the years wore on, something in Patricia Krenwinkel appeared to change. She attributed this to her father who stood by her. “He kept believing in me,” Krenwinkel recalled at her 2011 parole hearing. “His loyalty and his love, his unconditional love and acceptance were the beginnings of the foundation for me to stop and realize what I had become…the monster I became.”
To date, Krenwinkel has been denied parole 14 times. That’s more than even Manson himself, who was denied parole 12 times before his 2017 death. Most recently, Patricia Krenwinkel was granted parole on May 26, 2022, but that October, Governor Gavin Newsom reversed the decision, keeping her behind bars at the California Institution for Women in Chino, California.
California Department of Corrections and RehabilitationPatricia Krenwinkel’s most recent parole opportunity was denied in 2022, and she remains behind bars to this day.
“This is how I look at my life,” she said in the 2014 documentary, My Life After Manson. “It is broken beyond repair.” Interviewed that same year by The New York Times, Krenwinkel described her younger self as “a coward.”
“The thing I try to remember,” Patricia Krenwinkel said, “is that what I am today is not what I was at 19.”
After reading about Patricia Krenwinkel, check out the story of Kathleen Maddox, the mother of Charles Manson. Then, discover the most interesting Charles Manson facts.
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