Linda Kasabian

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Linda Kasabian

Kasabian during Tate-LaBianca trial
Born June 21, 1949 (1949-06-21) (age 58)
Biddeford, Maine USA
Nationality American
Other names Linda Darlene Drouin
Known for = Association with Manson Family; Tate-LaBianca trial witness

Linda Darlene Kasabian, born Linda Darlene Drouin on 21 June 1949 in Biddeford, Maine, is a former member of Charles Manson's "Family". She was the star witness in Vincent Bugliosi's prosecution of Manson and his followers for the Tate-LaBianca murders, one of the most high-profile murder trials in American history.

Contents

[edit] Early life

Kasabian dropped out of high school and fled her Milford, New Hampshire, home at the age of sixteen because she disliked her stepfather. She headed west, looking, she said, for God.[citation needed] She fell into a hippie lifestyle, wandering all over the country from commune to commune, experimenting with psychedelic drugs. She married, divorced, married again, and gave birth to a daughter in 1968. When her second marriage to hippie Robert Kasabian began to fail, Kasabian took her daughter Tanya and returned to New Hampshire, moving back with her mother. Eventually, Robert Kasabian missed his wife and asked her to meet him in Los Angeles. He wanted her to join him and a friend, Charles "Blackbeard" Melton, on a sailing trip to South America. Kasabian, hoping for a reconciliation, returned to Los Angeles, living with Robert in the L.A. hippie hangouts of Topanga Canyon.[1]

[edit] Introduction to the Manson Family

By the time she became pregnant with her second child, Kasabian was feeling rejected by her husband who seemed to have cut her out of the South America trip. A friend of Melton's, Catherine "Gypsy" Share, described an idyllic ranch life with a group of loving hippies, and their search for a "hole in the earth" paradise in which to escape the coming social turmoil. The "hole" sounded like the Hopi legends that she had read about as a child and Kasabian was intrigued. In July 1969, she decided against attending the July 4th Malibu Beach Love-In and instead followed Gypsy, Tanya in tow, to the Spahn Ranch in the Chatsworth area of Los Angeles, where she met and soon fell in love with Charles Manson.

[edit] Involvement in the Tate-LaBianca murders

Kasabian was welcomed into the group, who greeted her with professions of peace and love and assurances that she and her daughter would be taken care of provided she proved loyal. Kasabian became privy to various events and statements that would later prove to be very important to the larger case.[2] She became close with Manson follower Charles "Tex" Watson, and both of them have described their personal and sexual connection as extremely intense.[citation needed] It was Watson who convinced Kasabian to steal a sum of money from her ex-husband's friend, Charles Melton.[3] Turning this sum over to the Family confirmed her place as a trusted member.

She was then introduced to Charles Manson, which for her was a dramatic event. Kasabian thought Manson looked magnificent in his buckskin clothing. He seemed Christ-like to her. Manson talked with her about why she had come to the ranch, and after feeling her legs, accepted her. That night Manson and Kasabian made love in a Spahn Ranch cave. She thought that Manson could "see right through her" and that he was acutely perceptive of her issues with her stepfather and her feelings of being "disposable" to the people in her life and the world around her. "No one else had said that to me before". She adopted the attitude toward Manson of the other ranch girls around her. "We always wanted to do anything and everything for him."[4] 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 Family sustained itself, and Kasabian was willing to participate. "Everything belongs to everyone," Manson would reiterate during his many campfire quasi-spiritual/philosophical "raps" and music-making, lectures rendered more powerful by the ingestion of psychedelic drugs.[5] Once group member Mary Brunner was jailed for using a stolen credit card, Linda became the only member of the group to possess a valid driver's license. This is thought to be the most likely reason that Linda, a newcomer, was called upon for an important mission.

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. This sense of impending revolution 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 Family associate Bobby Beausoleil, who was arrested in connection with the murder of Gary Hinman, seemed to propel the events of the night. 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 Manson Family (Charles "Tex" Watson, Susan Atkins and Patricia Krenwinkel) to the residence of film director Roman Polanski and his wife Sharon Tate. There, she first witnessed Watson shoot and kill Steven Parent, a teenager who had come to visit the caretaker at the wrong time. Watson ordered Linda to remain outside the residence. She stood by the car as Watson, Atkins, and Krenwinkel entered the house and killed Abigail Folger, Wojciech Frykowski, Jay Sebring, and 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 (Parent), that they were killing these people. I wanted them to stop."[6] 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 get the murderers to stop their slaughter by lying to them that she heard "people coming" onto the Tate property, but the killers claimed it was "too late."[7] According to both Watson and Atkins, Kasabian stood rooted to the front lawn, watching with a horrified expression as she observed her companions commit murder.[8] Kasabian testified that, while in a state of shock, she ran toward the car, started it up, considered driving away to get help, but 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. Joined by Leslie Van Houten and Steve "Clem" Grogan, they set off into the city, eventually coming to the LaBianca residence in the Los Feliz area. 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 this 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 again, this time knowing that murder would occur, Kasabian responded that when Manson asked her she was "afraid to say 'no'."[9]

Later the same night in the Venice Beach area of Los Angeles, Manson asked Kasabian to participate in the murder of an acquaintance of hers, Saladin Nader, a Lebanese actor she had met days earlier with fellow Family member Sandra Good. While Atkins and Grogan waited a few feet away to pounce, Linda knocked on the wrong apartment door in order to avoid bringing any harm to Nader. When the occupant of that door answered, she apologized and excused herself, sparing the life of that person as well and avoiding the crime. Two days after the LaBianca murders, she fled from the Manson Family and eventually returned to her mother's home in New Hampshire.

[edit] Witness for the prosecution

Susan Atkins was jailed along with the rest of the remaining Family after an October raid on the Spahn Ranch for car theft. The police had no idea that they were also rounding up the Tate-LaBianca killers, the investigation and intense media coverage of which was in progress. Atkins changed all that when she told fellow cellmates about the crime, who then informed the authorities. In early December, 1969, Manson, Watson, Krenwinkel, Atkins, Van Houten, and Kasabian were indicted for the Tate-LaBianca murders.

Originally, an offer of reduced sentence (life imprisonment instead of the death penalty) had been given to Susan Atkins for her testimony since she was the first defendant in custody and agreed to tell the story at a grand jury proceeding, but Atkins relinquished this chance when she reinstated her allegiance to Manson and repudiated any incriminating statements. Subsequently, the prosecution turned to Kasabian who had voluntarily turned herself in to New Hampshire authorities and traveled back to California. She was offered immunity in exchange for turning state's evidence. There were reports that Kasabian wanted to tell her story to the prosecution with or without any kind of deal, to "get it out of my head," as prosecutor Bugliosi described her statements, but that her attorney Gary Fleischman insisted she remain silent until the district attorney produced an offer.[10] Kasabian, by then pregnant with her second child, agreed readily to the immunity offer. This was seen as a preferable, though somewhat controversial option for the prosecution for a number of reasons. Though she did not prevent the crimes nor contact authorities afterwards (hence the controversy), Kasabian had not entered either residence and had not physically participated in any of the murders. She had by most accounts been reluctant and extremely upset during the events of both nights,[11][12] even challenging Manson ("I'm not you, Charlie. I can't kill anyone."[13]), and was the only member of the group to express remorse and sympathy for the victims. When brought back to the Tate residence by the prosecution to retrace the events of the crime, Kasabian reportedly suffered an emotional breakdown.[14] The prosecution was relieved to withdraw the deal from Atkins, whose behavior and statements seemed especially depraved.[15]

Taking the stand, Linda Kasabian was the star witness in the case and tearfully recounted the murders for the jury in vivid detail. During the trial, the unjailed members of Manson's so-called Family led a campaign of intimidation against Kasabian to prevent her from testifying. The defendants constantly disrupted her testimony with a blizzard of dramatic courtroom theatrics. These included Manson running a finger across his throat while staring at her as she spoke (an act he repeated during the testimony of other prosecution witnesses),[16] Susan Atkins telling her from across the courtroom "You're killing us!" to which Kasabian responded "I am not killing you, you have killed yourselves,"[17] and Manson famously revealing a Los Angeles Times newspaper to the jury with the headline "Manson Guilty, Nixon Declares" referring to President Richard Nixon's statements to the press about the pre-verdict trial (supposedly it was Manson's hope that the move would result in a mistrial, for which the defense argued but lost. Judge Charles H. Older refused to allow the defendants to legally benefit from the antics.[18]) The female defendants were also noted for giggling like schoolgirls during Kasabian's description of the murders, as though the killings were nothing more to them than a game.

For the majority of her 18 days of testimony the defense attorneys tried unsuccessfully to discredit Kasabian by bringing into account her extensive use of LSD and by attempting to perforate her story. Unfortunately for the defense, the petite, 5'1" Kasabian refused to break under intense cross-examination, and her testimony matched all of the physical evidence in addition to being supported by subsequent prosecution witnesses. During Kasabian's cross-examination, Manson defense lawyer Irving Kanarek attempted to unnerve her by showing her color crime-scene photographs of the Tate murders. Kasabian's strong emotional reaction to those photographs only served to emphasize her humanity and inability to commit such horrific acts, in stark contrast to the defendants.[citation needed]

Although the Tate-LaBianca trial would go on for nine months with testimony from countless witnesses (including several other former Family members), it is believed that Linda Kasabian's powerful testimony, more than anything else, led to the conviction of Manson, Watson, Atkins, Krenwinkel and Van Houten.[19]

[edit] The penalty phase of the trial

On January 25, 1971, the defendants were found guilty, leading to the penalty phase of the trial that would determine the punishment of the convicted. Kasabian, defected Family member, then became the subject of a rather bizarre defense tactic. Various female witnesses, including the defendants and other loyal Family members (all of whom would carve bloody X's into their foreheads as a sign of allegiance to Manson), testified that not only had Charles Manson not directed the crimes, but that Linda Kasabian herself was the mastermind of the killings. The inconsistent and unconvincing tales were rejected by the jury. More recently, these accusations have been repudiated by various former Family members who originally offered the tale, including Catherine Share,[20] Susan Atkins,[21] and Tex Watson, who has since described the allegations as “patently ridiculous.”[22]

[edit] Life after the trial

The heavy media coverage of the trial had rendered Linda Kasabian a well-known if controversial name by the time the proceedings had concluded, with opinions about her varying from sympathetic to hostile. Linda eventually returned to her home state of New Hampshire with her husband and children, seeking to escape the glare of the media and raise her children quietly.[23] She lived on a hippie commune and obtained employment as a cook. She was called back to Los Angeles several times after the first trial. She took the stand again during the trial of Tex Watson in 1971, and also during two re-trials of Leslie Van Houten in 1977. She divorced Robert Kasabian and remarried.

Though not of the same ilk as her former associates, she is reported to have led a troubled life. She had numerous traffic violations until a car accident left her partially disabled. During an Easter celebration in New Hampshire in 1978, she along with friends interfered with firefighters who were attempting to extinguish a bonfire. Though she had completely disconnected all ties with the Manson group, the Secret Service nevertheless subjected her to considerable monitoring and harassment after her former Manson associate Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme attempted to assassinate President Gerald Ford, and she was the target of scorn from the few remaining but loyal and potentially dangerous Family members.[24] Relocating to the state of Washington, she had legal troubles involving the possession of drugs.[25]

Over the years, Kasabian has refused most media attention, surfacing only once for an interview with the syndicated American television show A Current Affair in 1988.

[edit] In popular culture

In The White Album, Joan Didion wrote of her meetings with Kasabian during her stay in custody while testifying.

Kasabian has been portrayed in films by actresses Clea Duvall, Marilyn Burns, and Michelle Briggs.

A popular British rock band, Kasabian, is named after her.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Gilmore, John and Ron Kenna. Manson: The Unholy Trail of Charlie and the Family. Amok Books: Los Angeles CA 2000. ISBN 1878923137.
  2. ^ Sanders, Ed. The Family. Thunder's Mouth Press: New York, 2002. ISBN 1-56025-396-7.
  3. ^ Watson, Charles as told to Ray Hoekstra. Will You Die for Me? Cross Roads Publications, 1978. Chapter 13. ISBN 0800709128.
  4. ^ Testimony of Linda Kasabian in the Charles Manson Trial
  5. ^ My Life with Charles Manson, by Paul Watkins with Guillermo Soledad. 1979, Bantam. ISBN 0-553-12788-8
  6. ^ "Tate Killings Described", The Stars And Stripes, Thursday, July 30, 1970
  7. ^ Testimony of Linda Kasabian in the Charles Manson Trial
  8. ^ Watson, Charles as told to Ray Hoekstra. Will You Die for Me? Cross Roads Publications, 1978. Chapter 14.
  9. ^ Testimony of Linda Kasabian in the Charles Manson Trial
  10. ^ Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders, by Vincent Bugliosi with Curt Gentry. New York, 1974, W.W. Norton and Co. ISBN 0-553-57435-3.
  11. ^ Larry King CNN Interview with Leslie Van Houten, 1994 http://www.mansonfamilytoday.info/van-houten-larry-king-interview.htm
  12. ^ Watson, Charles as told to Ray Hoekstra. Will You Die for Me? Cross Roads Publications, 1978. Chapter 14.
  13. ^ Testimony of Linda Kasabian in the Charles Manson Trial
  14. ^ Manson: The Unholy Trail of Charlie and the Family, by John Gilmore. Los Angeles, CA, 2000, Amok Books. ISBN 1878923137
  15. ^ Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders, by Vincent Bugliosi with Curt Gentry. New York, 1974, W.W. Norton and Co. ISBN 0-553-57435-3
  16. ^ Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders, by Vincent Bugliosi with Curt Gentry. New York, 1974, W.W. Norton and Co. ISBN 0-553-57435-3
  17. ^ The Mammoth Book of Famous Trials: The 30 Greatest Trials of All Time, by Roger Wilkes. New York, 2006, Avalon. ISBN 13-978-0-78671-725-5
  18. ^ Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders, by Vincent Bugliosi with Curt Gentry. New York, 1974, W.W. Norton and Co. ISBN 0-553-57435-3.
  19. ^ Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders, by Vincent Bugliosi with Curt Gentry. New York, 1974, W.W. Norton and Co. ISBN 0-553-57435-3.
  20. ^ Catherine Share with Vincent Bugliosi, Hard Copy, 1997
  21. ^ Child of Satan, Child of God, by Susan Atkins with Bob Slosser. Plainfield, New Jersey, 1977, Logos International. ISBN 0-88270-276-9
  22. ^ Chapter 19 On Trial :: Will You Die For Me?
  23. ^ Newsweek, "Leaves From a Family Album," September 22, 1975
  24. ^ Newsweek, "Leaves From a Family Album," September 22, 1975
  25. ^ Sharon Tate and The Manson Murders, by Greg King. Fort Lee, NJ, 2000, Barricade Books. ISBN 978-1569801574

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] External links

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