LOS ANGELES, Aug. 1 – Linda Kasabian, whose testimony could send Charles Manson to the gas chamber, said yesterday she had “loved Charlie” when she first came to his “family” and thought he was what she always had been looking for — love and truth.

The 21-year-old diminutive blonde, under cross-examination by defense attorney Paul Fitzgerald told of an idyllic life in the hippie concept at the Spahn ranch before the slaughters at the Tate-LaBianca homes last August.

Mrs. Kasabian said she had thought the 35-year-old ex-convict was “the second coming of Christ.”

“Did you love Charlie?” Fitzgerald asked.

“Yes, I did. I thought he was pure truth, what I had always been looking for — love and truth.”

Fitzgerald brought out that the girl had lived in “group communes” from Miami, Fla., to Greenwich Village, from San Francisco’s Haight – Ashbury to the “Psychedelic Circus” in Boston before leaving her husband and joining Manson’s “family” July 4, 1969.

Manson and three of his “girls” — Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten — are on trial for seven murder counts, including the slaying of actress Sharon Tate. Mrs. Kasabian was indicted but has been granted immunity for testifying as the state’s star witness.

The defense lawyer asked if she had considered herself impressionable, naive and innocent when she came to the Spahn ranch.

“Yes, I felt like a blind little girl in the forest and I took the first path that came to me.”

Fitzgerald asked her how many girls had been at the ranch when she first came there, and she replied there had been about 20.

“Did he divide his time equally among them?”

“Not equally.”

“Did some get more attention than others?”

“Yes.”

“Were you one of them?’

“At the beginning I was. He would talk with me and tell me about his philosophies and make love to me.

“How many times did he make love to you?

“Four times. Once in the cave, once at the waterfall, once in the trailer and once in the house.”

“Why do you remember them?”

“I don’t know why. They just stick in mind.”

Fitzgerald asked her when she made love to the other men at the ranch.

“I can’t remember the dates,” she said. “I eventually got around to making love to all of them.”

Mrs. Kasabian said the “family” considered children to be “beautiful creatures” and that she had turned her daughter, Tanya, 18 months, over to them for rearing in the “family” fashion though until then she had been breast-feeding the child.

Tanya was placed with “Bear,” a boy of about the same age whose mother was Mary Brunner, she said, and “Bear” would give food to her daughter.

“But pretty soon Bear didn’t want to give her any food,” she said. “When they would cry, members of the family would hold their hands over their mouths or even hold their nose until they stopped crying.”

Manson talked to her at length about his philosophy, she said. She testified that she had agreed with parts of it but not others but that she never had questioned Manson because, “The girls told me that everything he did and said was always right.”

Fitzgerald asked her if she had been afraid of what Manson might do if she disagreed with him.

“Yes. There was fear.”

Mrs. Kasabian said a few days after she joined the group her husband, Robert Kasabian, had come looking for her but that when she saw him she hid.

“You didn’t want to go away with him?” Fitzgerald asked.

“That’s right.”

After the lunch recess, Fitzgerald moved to questioning about the events of the night of Aug. 8, 1969, when five persons were killed at the Tate residence. He asked Mrs.Kasabian whether she had not considered it unusual that they were taking along with them on an auto trip three knives and a pistol.

The witness said she had considered it unusual.