In her 2011 parole hearing, Patricia Krenwinkel discussed her parents’ divorce, which happened when she was 15 years old. She said, “Along the way, I was introduced to drugs through my sister, and drinking, as I felt, I never felt like I fit in. So I found out a way to be accepted, and it was through drinking and through alcohol, drugs and that my parents’ separation was, that at that time, you know, I felt it was definitely my problem, that I had created it” (via CieloDrive.com).
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Krenwinkel moved to Alabama from her hometown of Los Angeles when she was 17, and when it was time to ship off to college, she reportedly coveted aspirations of becoming a nun, according to LAmag, and even attended the Jesuit college Spring Hill for a short time while living in the South. However, her life within the clergy was a short-lived one, and shortly after returning to Los Angeles to live with her older sister, Krenwinkel met a young man named Charles Manson. She was 19 at the time, and as she explained it in her parole hearing, three days after meeting Manson, “[H]e said he was going to be leaving, and he wanted to know if I wanted to go with him, and I said yes.”
