LOS ANGELES, Feb. 25 – Linda Kasabian returned as a witness in the Tate-LaBianca murder trial Wednesday and testified as steadfastly as she did six months ago when she spent 18 days on the witness stand as the state’s key witness.

The 22-year-old mother of two wore a purple, ankle-length peasant dress and her sandy hair was pulled back and held with a clasp. She appeared calm and unruffled under questioning by the defense.

She flushed with apparent anger, however, when defendant Susan Atkins interrupted the penalty hearing and commented:

“You only got off by putting it on Manson. Admit it.”

Mrs. Kasabian was granted immunity for her testimony.

“Why don’t you just take your part?” chimed in defendant Patricia Krenwinkel.

“Why don’t you take your part?” echoed defendant Leslie Van Houten.

“I have,” the witness replied. Then, looking at Charles Manson, she said, “Why don’t you take your part?”

Manson said, “Live with it, I see it on your face.”

Mrs. Kasabian admitted the situation “was heavy,” and she said that since returning to the courtroom, the “whole thing” seems “insane” and “almost like it’s unreal.”

But, she assured Manson’s attorney, Irving A. Kanarek, that the story she told about the seven Tate-LaBianca murders was real, not an LSD-inspired dream.

“She never dumped her load on anybody else before,” Manson interjected.

Superior Judge Charles H. Older told the 36-year-old defendant and the three women that he would have them removed from the court if they did not be quiet.

Mrs. Kasabian testified that she never discussed “copycat killings” as a way to free Bobby Beausoleil from charges of murdering Gary Hinman. Beausoleil was subsequently sentenced to death for the musician’s murder.

She admitted under Kanarek’s questioning that she knew Hinman had been killed but she said she did not remember when or from whom she learned it.

The three women co-defendants claimed in witness stand murder confessions that Mrs. Kasabian had discussed ways of freeing Beausoleil, including other murders.

“Sadie” Atkins has testified that she and others who went along on the nights of the Tate-LaBianca murders were under the influence of LSD and possibly STP.

Kanarek asked Mrs. Kasabian whether she or anyone else was under the influence of LSD on the evenings of Aug. 8 and 9, 1969. Not to her knowledge, she said, but she said she thought Charles (Tex) Watson might have taken a drug called speed on the second night.

Kanarek cut short his questioning with a request that the trial be adjourned to the Tate-LaBianca residences so he could question Mrs. Kasabian at the murder scenes.

When Older denied the request, the attorney said:

“Your honor is foreclosing me, your honor. I have no further questions.”

However, after defense attorney Maxwell Keith examined Mrs. Kasabian, Kanarek resumed his questioning.

In the course of his examination, the attorney made a half dozen unsuccessful motions to reopen his direct examination of the witness.

Older finally foreclosed Kanarek’s further questioning by setting the afternoon recess as a time for the end of the lawyer’s examination.

Mrs. Kasabian was excused shortly after the recess, presumably to return almost immediately to her husband, Robert, and two children near Milford.

Dep. Dist. Atty. Aaron Stovitz was the next witness called by the defense. The veteran prosecutor testified about details of an agreement made in December, 1969, for Miss Atkins’ testimony to the Los Angeles County Grand Jury.

Stovitz confirmed testimony given by prosecutor Vincent T. Bugliosi Tuesday that the district attorney’s office agreed not to seek the death penalty if “Sadie” testified truthfully before the grand jury.

Keith asked whether the story the young woman told wasn’t substantially the truth.

“As substantial as the cracks in this building,” Stovitz said.

In another courtroom down the hall from the Tate-LaBianca trial Wednesday, Superior Judge Raymond Choate struck two charges in a Los Angeles County Grand Jury indictment in the case of the LSD-spiked Honolulu hamburger.

Choate ruled there was insufficient evidence to accuse the five defendants of conspiracy to murder and cause great bodily harm to Barbara Hoyt, 19, a former Manson “family” member and a witness for the prosecution.

The young woman told authorities that early in September, 1970, a member of the Manson group gave her a hamburger loaded with LSD when she was In Honolulu.

By JOHN KENDALL