• Forced Into Perversion Manson Witness Says

Forced Into Perversion Manson Witness Says

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 25 – An 18-year-old prosecution witness in the Tate-LaBianca murder trial said today hippie leader Charles Manson forced her to engage in sex perversion, and she left his ranch commune because she was afraid of him.

Barbara Hoyt, testified Manson ordered her to commit an unnatural sex act with a “family” member while three others watched. The incident happened she said, at noon one day during her stay at the Myer ranch, where the clan moved after leaving the Spahn ranch, their former headquarters.

“I didn’t want to, but I was afraid not to,” the long-haired, bespectacled witness said in describing the incident.

Miss Hoyt, on the stand for the third day in the Los Angeles Superior Court trial of Manson and three girl defendants, said she had also been ordered to commit similar acts on other “family” men on two occasions.

She also admitted today she had taken what she believed to be LSD with three other “family” girls. Miss Hoyt said defendant Susan Atkins gave her a tablet “and I got really stoned.”

Under, cross-examination by Manson’s attorney, Irving Kanarek, Miss Hoyt admitted no one forced her to do anything at the ranch. However, she said, “I did things because I was afraid not to.”

Despite her admitted fear, however, Miss Hoyt said she “just walked away from the ranch one day in September.” She said Manson caught up with her and a female companion a short time after they left and asked them if they were coming back.

“I said ‘no’ ” Miss Hoyt testified, “and he asked if we had any money and where we were going. When we told him ‘no’ and we didn’t know, he handed us $20 for bus tickets to Los Angeles.

Thursday Miss Hoyt said she “made love to anyone she liked whenever she liked” and “got stoned” — once on LSD but usually on marijuana — during the five months she lived with the clan at the two Southern California ranches.

In earlier cross-examination, she stuck to her testimony that she overheard Miss Atkins tell another family member about the multiple murders less than a month after the Aug. 9 massacre at the Benedict Canyon home of actress Sharon Tate.

She declared she heard the conversation clearly because Miss Atkins “was talking loudly in the kitchen 15 feet away” from the bedroom where she was trying to nap.

Under questioning by Kanarek, Miss Hoyt was unable to remember specific dates or times of incidents at the ranch other than that the conversation occurred “in the morning.”

After hearing Miss Atkins say that Miss Tate was murdered last “because she had to watch the others die,” the witness said, she rested awhile then went into the kitchen.

“I talked to the people who were there, but not about what I heard,” she said. “I didn’t say anything about that until the district attorney’s office called me and I told them,” she added.

Subsequently, according to Prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi, Miss Hoyt was slipped a near fatal dose of LSD by “family” members in Honolulu.

The Honolulu incident was not tied into Miss Hoyt’s admission that she spent time in a mental hospital “within the past two weeks.” However, reports from Honolulu are that she stayed overnight in the psychiatric ward of Queen’s Hospital.

Attorney Kanarek throughout Thursday dwelt on Miss Hoyt’s bad eyesight, a tactic he said is designed as a serious challenge to her perception.

Miss Hoyt said she did not wear her thick-lens glasses, while living at the ranch, having lost them in the hills.

She said she watched television and navigated the rough country without trouble. This followed a courtroom demonstration in which she was unable to identify the number of fingers Kanarek held up until he walked within two feet of her face.

“Are your other senses impaired when you’re without glasses?” Kanarek asked.

“You mean worser?” she said, then answered, “No.”

By MOLLY BURRELL

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One Response to Forced Into Perversion Manson Witness Says

  1. Bobby Hutchenson says:

    I love you Barbara Hoyt.

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