LOS ANGELES, Feb. 19 – Hippie leader Charles Manson today played master puppeteer, pulling the strings to start a finger-raising protest among the defendants in the Tate-LaBianca murder trial today.

Even Patricia Krenwinkel, who Thursday told a gory tale of murder at both the home of pregnant actress Sharon Tate and at the home of market owner Leno LaBianca the following night, joined the protest from the witness stand, half-raising her left arm, her index finger extended.

Manson, who had been sitting silently at the counsel table during much of the penalty phase of the trial in Los Angeles Superior Court, quietly raised his left arm shortly before 10:30 a.m. today and kept it raised until the judge recessed the court more than a half-hour later.

Susan Atkins and Leslie Van Houten first followed Manson’s lead, resting their elbows on the arms of their chairs and extending their forefingers.

Within seconds Miss Krenwinkel did the same on the witness stand, but continued to answer questions.

When Dep. Dist. Atty. Vincent Bugliosi spotted Manson’s action he interrupted questioning by defense attorney Irving Kanarek to comment to Judge Charles Older, “Mr. Manson seems to be disruptive.”

Judge Older, who had noticed Manson’s actions earlier and had ignored them, continued to ignore them, answering, “I see Mr. Manson. Let’s proceed.”

The protest came as Miss Krenwinkel attempted to explain the effects of LSD which she claimed she used just prior to the Tate and LaBianca murders.

“I’ve taken so much acid,” she said, raising her finger, “I am acid. I never come down.”

Thursday, in chilling, unemotional tones, she told of “running through the woods like a nymph with flowers in my hair,” and she described running down and killing coffee heiress Abigail Folger on the lawn of the Benedict Canyon home of Miss Tate.

Her long hair covering most of her face, 23-year-old Miss Krenwinkel detailed to the jury not only how she killed the San Francisco coffee heiress, but how, the next night, she stabbed to death Rosemary LaBianca and then carved “war” on the stomach of the dead or dying Leno LaBianca.

She ended her midnight visit to the market owner’s home by plunging a barbecue fork into La Bianca’s stomach, then used his blood to write “Rise”, “Helter Skelter” and “Death to Pigs” on the walls, she testified. Her story was the first insight into the LaBianca deaths.

Claiming to be in an LSD fog at the time of the killings in August of 1969, the girl said she felt no sorrow for what was clone. “It was right,” she said, showing absolutely no emotion.

Asked by her attorney Paul Fitzgerald, who opposed her taking the stand, to relate what she did the day of the killings, she claimed she couldn’t remember because she had “dropped acid”.

“Some people were getting into a car and I got in too…when you’re on acid you’re in complete empathy, but maybe Sadie (Susan Atkins) said something about going for a ride.

“On acid, it’s like driving into a monstrous stomach — seeing arteries and streets — just driving. But we ended up on Cielo Drive, or whatever street it was.

“I remember Tex (Charles Watson, also charged with the murders but yet to face trial) getting out. I guess he cut some wires. I remember just sitting there with Linda (Kasabian) and Sadie. I remember taking the car back down the road and parking it and walking back and climbing over a fence.

“The next thing I heard were gun shots. Then we went to the front of the house. There was a window and Tex was doing something. He went through it, I guess, because I walked through the front door.

“One man (Voityck Frykowski) was there and Tex was talking to him and a gun went off. I remember tying somebody’s hands…it’s all a picture of motion and reaction.

“Sadie walked in with some people, and Linda was still in the house… pretty soon Sadie was fighting with two women and I guess just got up and ran over and started fighting with a woman over there.

“I had a knife in my hands and she took off running. She ran out through a backdoor…We started fighting and I stabbed her and kept stabbing her.”

The next night, she said, the family started out on another ride which this time ended up at the home of the market-owner. Before the ride they again took LSD, she said.

“Tex and Linda got out of the car and went somewhere. Linda came back and said ‘Tex is staying’. Leslie (Leslie Van Houten, the third girl convicted of the murders) and I said we wanted to stay with Tex, so we got out of the car.

“We went to the front door which was open and Tex was standing there. There were two people sitting on the sofa. They looked at us and we looked at them. The man’s hands were tied.

“The woman started talking, saying something about ‘I’ll give you anything and we won’t call the police’. It is a strange thing,” she explained, “but on acid if someone tells you something and says ‘don’t’ you don’t hear the don’t.

“Leslie and I walked the woman into the bedroom. Leslie and I had a fast flash…we looked into her closet and saw all kinds of greens and golds. I turned around and the woman had a lamp in her hand. Leslie pushed her away and I ran out to the kitchen, and grabbed a whole bunch of utensils. I had a knife in my hand when I came back. Leslie, I guess, had put a pillow over her head and she kept saying ‘I won’t call police, just leave.’

“She went to grab above her head and I started stabbing her. I guess Leslie did too. I didn’t pay any attention.

“I walked out of the bedroom and I still had the kitchen utensils in my hand. I remember flashing on a strange thing — pictures of kids.

“I went back into the living room and a man was lying on the floor. I remember thinking you won’t be sending your son off to war, so I guess I put ‘war’ on the man’s chest, and I guess I had a fork in my hand and put it. in his stomach… “I wrote on the walls. I don’t remember what I wrote, I just wrote.”

Then, she said, they all left, hitchhiking back to the Spahn Ranch. She found Manson wilh his “young love.”

By MARY NEISWENDER