Governor Rejects Parole for Manson Family Member Bruce Davis

Gov. Jerry Brown has reversed a state parole board panel's decision to recommend parole for Bruce Davis, a one-time Manson family member who
was convicted in two 1969 killings.

Followers of Charles Manson lived at Chatsworth's Spahn Ranch while planning  the multiple Tate-LaBianca murders in 1969.

Davis’ attorney, Michael Beckman, told the Los Angeles Times he was “disappointed and saddened by the governor's horrible decision to play politics yet again with Bruce Davis' life.” Beckman said the governor’s reasons for denying parole would be “laughable if the consequences for my client weren't so devastating."

“Until Davis can acknowledge and explain why he actively championed the Family’s interests, and shed more light on the nature of his involvement, I am not prepared to release him,” the governor said.

In January 2010, a parole board panel also recommended that Davis be released, but six months later, then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger rejected the recommendation. He wrote in an eight-page written review that he believed Davis' release "would pose an unreasonable risk of danger to society at this time."

After a parole panel recommended his release in 2010, District Attorney Steve Cooley sent a letter to the Schwarzenegger urging him to reverse the panel's recommendation.

In his 2010 decision, Schwarzenegger noted that the July 25, 1969, stabbing death of musician Gary Hinman in his Topanga Canyon home and the stabbing and beheading of Spahn ranch hand Donald "Shorty" Shea some time between Aug. 16 and Sept. 1, 1969, were "especially heinous because both victims were abused, tortured and mutilated."

" ... Indeed, some murders are so atrocious that the gravity of the murder, by itself, evidences current dangerousness. I believe this is such a case," the governor wrote.

"... The gravity of the crimes supports my decision, but I am particularly concerned that Davis has not gained sufficient insight into the life offenses and continues to minimize his role in these atrocious crimes," Schwarzenegger wrote, while noting that Davis had made "some creditable gains in prison."

Davis, 70, was not involved with other Manson followers in the Aug. 9, 1969, murders of pregnant actress Sharon Tate and four others in a rented Benedict Canyon home, or the stabbing deaths of grocery store owner Leno La Bianca and his wife, Rosemary, a day later in their Los Feliz home.

Steve Grogan, who was also convicted in Shea's murder and helped to lead authorities to the site where the victim was buried, was the first former Manson follower to be paroled from prison in 1985.

Manson and most of his co-defendants have repeatedly been denied parole.

Onetime Manson family member Susan Atkins died in September 2009, about three weeks after a state parole board panel rejected her plea for a "compassionate release" from prison because of brain cancer.