This story doesn't compute.
It says he "stole a pickup truck," but for all we know he thought he was just borrowing the family transportation where he found himself, stuck out in the sticks somewhere. He was probably dry and went into town to get a drink. It's not clear from the story whether he hurt the woman or not.
I agree that it was foolish to take a violent criminal and stick him into a family like that, but what did they expect? If there's any hope for a released criminal it has to involve being in some sort of half-way house situation until he has his head together and some sort of job to occupy his time and support himself. They weren't doing themselves or society any favors by doing what they did, and they weren't doing the released criminal any favors either. I don't know if there was any hope that he might have reformed himself, but if so, this was not the way to handle it.
All I know is I live close to where this happened. Do you want convicted murderers being brought to your neighborhood?
I'm guessing there were house rules.
And I'm guessing that one of the house rules was "Don't take the truck without permission."
Also, just a stab in the dark here, I'd also guess one of the conditions of parole was: "No Drinking".
Just a wild jump to a conclusion - but I'd venture that following laws and rules wasn't high on Hanson list of personal priorities.
Stealing and drinking seemed to come in a tad higher.