LOS ANGELES, Apr. 14 – Robert Beausoleil, a member of the “Manson family” on trial for the slaying of a 34-year-old musician, testified Monday the killing was committed by hippie cult leader Charles Manson.

Beausoleil, 22, took the witness stand to accuse Manson of stabbing to death Gary Hinman three weeks before the Tate-LaBianca killings.

The bearded long-haired Manson, the accused mastermind of those slayings, is awaiting trial on seven counts of murder.

Previous witnesses had testified that Beausoleil killed Hinman with a Bowie knife. At his first trial which ended in a hung jury, Beausoleil did not take the stand.

He told the jury he went to Hinman’s home with two female members of the cult to try to force him to give $20,000 to the family. He said he telephoned Manson at the cult hangout at the Spahn Ranch and told him Hinman had offered to give only $100 or $200.

Manson came to Hinman’s home looking “very fierce and very keyed up,” Beausoleil said. The defendant said Manson slashed the bagpipe musician across the face with a sword and beat him over the head with the hilt.

Manson left, Beausoleil said, but came back a second time and talked with the musician about moving to the ranch, becoming a member of the family and “living like a king.”

When Hinman said he didn’t want to give up his Buddhist sect or his friends, Beausoleil said Manson pulled out a knife and stabbed him twice in the stomach.

“I was scared, sick to my stomach, shocked and numb,” Beausoleil said.

He said Manson ordered one of the girls, Susan Atkins, to write “political piggy” in Hinman’s blood on the wall to “make it look like an assassination.”

Manson has not been charged in the Hinman slaying.