Linda Kasabian - Involvement in The Tate-LaBianca Murders

Involvement in The Tate-LaBianca Murders

Kasabian was welcomed by group members, who greeted her with professions of peace and love and assurances that she and her daughter would be cared for, provided she proved loyal. Kasabian became privy to various events and statements that would later prove to be important to the criminal case. During her first night with the "family", she met and had sexual relations with the high-ranking Manson follower Charles "Tex" Watson. Both of them have described their initial encounter as very intense. Watson persuaded Kasabian to steal a sum of money from her ex-husband's friend, Charles Melton.

Kasabian was then introduced to Manson, a dramatic event for her. She thought that he looked magnificent in his buckskin clothing, and that he seemed to be Christ-like. Manson talked with her about why she had come to the ranch, and after feeling her legs, he accepted her. That night, Manson and Kasabian had sexual relations together in a Spahn Ranch cave. She thought that Manson could "see right through her" and that he was perceptive of her issues with her stepfather and her feelings of being "disposable" to the people in her life and to the world in general, as recorded in her trial testimony;

Kasabian adopted the attitude toward Manson that the other ranch girls held: "We always wanted to do anything and everything for him."

Kasabian began joining "family" members on their "creepy crawls", quietly sneaking into random homes in Los Angeles to steal money while the occupants slept. These and other criminal activities were the means by which the members of the "family" supported themselves, and Kasabian was willing to participate. "Everything belongs to everyone," Manson would reiterate during his many philosophical campfire "raps", lectures rendered more powerful by the ingestion of psychedelic drugs. When Mary Brunner was jailed for using a stolen credit card, Kasabian became the only member of the group to possess a valid driver's license.

On August 8, 1969, Manson announced, "now is the time for Helter Skelter", a term taken from a Beatles song that Manson believed (or convinced his associates that he believed) meant a revolution prophesied in the Book of Revelation. (The term "helter-skelter" means confusion or disorder, or something occurring haphazardly. In British English, it also refers to a popular spiral slide for people at fairs and carnivals.) This sense of impending chaos, along with the desire to strike back at the society that had jailed several "family" members and possibly create copy-cat crimes that would exonerate the "family" associate Bobby Beausoleil (arrested in connection with the murder of Gary Hinman), seemed to propel the events of the next two nights. Kasabian was directed by Manson to gather a knife, a change of clothing and her driver's license, then to accompany three other members of the "family", Charles "Tex" Watson, Susan Atkins, and Patricia Krenwinkel, to the residence of the film director Roman Polanski and his wife Sharon Tate. There, Kasabian saw Watson shoot and kill Steven Parent, a teenager who had come to visit the caretaker. Watson then ordered Kasabian to remain outside the residence, and she stood by the car while Watson, Atkins, and Krenwinkel entered the house and killed Jay Sebring, Wojciech Frykowski, Folger, and the eight-month pregnant Sharon Tate.

Kasabian testified that at one point she heard the "horrible screams" of the victims and left the car. "I started to run toward the house, I wanted them to stop. I knew what they had done to that man, that they were killing these people. I wanted them to stop." Approaching the house from the driveway, Kasabian was met by Frykowski, who was running out the front door. Kasabian said in her testimony, "There was a man just coming out of the door and he had blood all over his face and he was standing by a post, and we looked into each other's eyes for a minute, and I said, 'Oh, God, I am so sorry. Please make it stop.' But then he just fell to the ground into the bushes." Then Watson repeatedly stabbed Frykowski and hit him in the head. Kasabian tried to stop the murderers by claiming that she heard "people coming" onto the Tate property, but the killers had insisted that it was "too late". According to Watson and Atkins, Kasabian stood rooted to the front lawn, watching with a horrified expression as her companions committed murder. Kasabian testified that, while in a state of shock, she ran toward the car, started it up, and considered driving away to get help, but then became concerned for her daughter back at the Spahn Ranch.

The next night, Manson once again ordered the quartet to gather a change of clothing and get into the car, this time joining them to "show them how to do it," because he felt the deed the night before had been performed sloppily. This time joined by Leslie Van Houten and Steve Grogan, the group set off into the city, eventually coming to the LaBianca residence in Los Feliz. Kasabian witnessed Manson and Watson walk towards the house and return to the car a few minutes later, whereupon Manson reported that the occupants of the house were tied up. Manson instructed Watson, Krenwinkel, and Van Houten to enter the house. At that point, Manson, Kasabian, Susan Atkins, and Grogan drove off. Inside the residence, Watson, Krenwinkel, and Van Houten murdered Leno and Rosemary LaBianca. When asked why she went out with the group again, knowing this time that murders would occur, Kasabian responded that when Manson asked her to go with them she was "afraid to say no".

Later the same night, in the Venice Beach area of Los Angeles, Manson asked Kasabian to participate in the murder of an acquaintance, a Lebanese actor named Saladin Nader. Kasabian had met the actor a few days earlier with fellow "family" member Sandra Good. Atkins and Grogan waited a few feet away, with knife and gun in hand, prepared to kill, as Manson had told them to. Kasabian purposely knocked on the wrong apartment door in order to avoid causing any harm to Nader. When the occupant answered, Kasabian apologized and excused herself, thus preventing the crime. Two days after the LaBianca murders, she fled from the Manson "family", and she eventually returned to her mother's home in New Hampshire.