Crime & Safety

UPDATE: Parole Board OKs Release of Manson Family Follower Bruce Davis

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger rejected the parole panel's similar 2010 recommendation.

Update: 4:04 p.m.

A state parole board panel Thursday recommended parole for Bruce Davis, a one-time Manson Family follower who was convicted in connection with two killings in 1969.

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

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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."

Thursday was Davis' 27th parole hearing.

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Sandi Gibbons, spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office, said prosecutors will evaluate the parole panel's decision and determine how to proceed. 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 slaying of 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, who will turn 70 on Friday, 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 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.

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3:48 p.m.:

A state parole board panel Thursday recommended parole for Bruce Davis, a one-time Manson Family follower who was convicted in connection with two killings in 1969.

The decision comes more than 2 1/2 years after a state parole board panel recommended that Davis be released from prison. But in June 2010, then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger rejected the parole board panel's 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."

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

-- City News Service contributed to this report.

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