• Linda Kasabian, Former Manson Follower, Testifies LaBiancas Given Assurance They Wouldn’t Be Harmed

Linda Kasabian, Former Manson Follower, Testifies LaBiancas Given Assurance They Wouldn’t Be Harmed

LOS ANGELES, Jul. 30 – Accused murder mastermind Charles Manson told the slayers of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, “don’t let them know that you’re going to kill them,” chief prosecution witness Linda Kasabian said yesterday.

Mrs. Kasabian, one-time member of the Manson “family,” said Manson directed her to drive to the LaBianca home in the Los Feliz district about 2 a.m. Aug. 10.

She said Manson went into the home on Waverly Drive first, then came out carrying a brown wallet, apparently belonging to Mrs. LaBianca.

“I heard him say there was a man and woman up in the house and that he had tied their hands and he told them not to be afraid because he wasn’t going to hurt them,” the pig-tailed blond mother of two said dispassionately.

Mrs. Kasabian said Manson told Charles “Tex” Watson, Patricia “Katy” Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten to get out of the car in which they had driven to the LaBianca home.

Manson, she recalled, told the trio to hitchhike back to the Spahn Ranch near Chatsworth, stronghold of the “family,” and added: “…not to cause fear and panic in these people.”

With that, she said, she, Manson and two other cult members drove away from the scene.

The 35-year-old hippie chieftain is accused of ordering the murders of the LaBiancas as well as the slayings the day before of actress Sharon Tate and four others.

Miss Van Houten 19, and Miss Krenwinkel 22, also are on trial with him, along with Susan “Sadie” Atkins, also 22. Miss Van Houten is accused only of the murdering the LaBiancas; the rest are charged with all seven murders.

After driving away, Mrs. Kasabian said, Manson told her to take the “change out of the wallet and wipe off the fingerprints.”

“We drove off a few blocks and we stopped and he told me to throw it (the wallet) out on the sidewalk,” she said.

“He said that he wanted a black person to pick it up and use the credit cards…so the establishment would think that it was an organized group, presumably the black panthers, which killed the couple, she said.

The prosecution has contended Manson ordered all of the murders to precipitate a black-white bloodbath. It has been alleged that Manson felt he and his “family” would survive the war and eventually gain control of the United States.

Mrs. Kasabian said she saw a dark-haired woman’s photo on the drivers’ license and the name was “strange…maybe Mexican or Italian.”

Presumably the wallet belonged to Mrs. LaBianca.

Mrs. Kasabian admitted she did not see Watson, Miss Krenwinkel and Miss Van Houten go into the LaBianca home, but the prosecution contends they did and stabbed the couple to death.

The 21-year-old witness, however, was an eyewitness to two of the murders at the actresses’ Benedict Canyon home and testified about those killings on Tuesday.

“He said that we were going to go out again tonight — that last night was too messy and he was going to show us how to do it,” Mrs. Kasabian quoted Manson as saying to his followers on the evening of the LaBianca murders.

Those who went with Manson, she said, were Watson, Miss Krenwinkel, Miss Atkins, Miss Van Houten and Steve “Clem” Grogan.

The little group left after dark from the Spahn Ranch near Chatsworth, stronghold of the “family.”

Mrs. Kasabian, who also went along, said Manson was driving the car in which all were riding.

She said it was the same auto which she, Watson, Miss Krenwinkel and Miss Atkins used when they went to Miss Tate’s home the night the actress and four others were killed.

She said after she got into the car, Manson gave her a rolled-up leather thong, which she put into her pocket. She said the 35-year cult leader was wearing a similar leather thong, around his neck. She said it “looked like a hangman’s noose.”

Watson is in Texas fighting extradition. Grogan was not indicted.

Earlier, Mrs. Kasabian identified the dark, blood-stained clothing worn by Watson, Miss Krenwinkel and Miss Atkins at the Tate residence.

The young woman was impassive as she identified the clothing, found several months after the murders by a television camera crew.

Her demeanor on the witness stand was in direct contrast to her sob-punctuated testimony Tuesday.

Mrs. Kasabian testified that after the Tate murders, she, Watson, Miss Krenwinkel and Miss Atkins drove back to the Spahn Ranch.

She said Manson was waiting for them in the ranch parking lot.

Manson seated at the defense table, shook his head slightly at this point and Mrs. Kasabian looked over at him and said:

“It’s not a lie, Charlie, you know.”

She claimed the hippie leader told them to get a sponge and wipe away a spot of blood on the outside of the car and then told her and Miss Krenwinkel to check the inside of the auto.

They later met in the ranch’s bunkhouse and Manson, she said, asked each of them if they had any remorse.

Each of them, she testified, replied, “No.”

Mrs. Kasabian also said that Watson told Manson that he had exclaimed to the victims at the Tate residence, “I’m the Devil, here to do the Devil’s work.”

She also said Watson told Manson, “There was a lot of panic. It was really, really messy — bodies were laying all over the place, but they were all dead.”

Her testimony yesterday morning was almost as grisly as that of Tuesday when she described in vivid detail the two murders which she saw.

She related conversations of the defendants after they left the Tate home in Benedict Canyon in the early morning hours of Aug. 9.

“Katy (the family name for Patricia Krenwinkel) said her hand hurt,” Mrs. Kasabian testified.

“She said that when she stabbed that there were bones in the way and she couldn’t get her knife through all the way and it took too much energy or hurt her hand or whatever.”

The witness also recalled that Miss Krenwinkel, “said one of the girls was crying for her mother and for God.”

Others killed beside Miss Tate were coffee heiress Abigail Folger, Polish playboy Voityck Frykowsky, men’s hair stylist Jay Sebring and 18-year-old Steven Parent, who had been visiting the estate’s caretaker.

Mrs. Kasabian said she saw the murders of Parent, who was shot to death, and Frykowsky, who was stabbed, and watched Miss Krenwinkel chase Miss Folger across the lawn with a knife.

The witness claimed she ran back to the defendants’ car before the others did, and when they got to the vehicle all were “bloody.”

The fourth member of the murder party, Watson, “seemed really up-tight because I had run to the car,” Mrs. Kasabian said.

Mrs. Kasabian said that co-defendant Miss Atkins complained that her head hurt.

“Sadie came right out and said that when she was struggling with a big man, he hit her on the head,” the witness testified.

Earlier, Mrs. Kasabian had given a long and vivid description of the goings-on at the Spahn Movie Ranch near Chatsworth, stronghold of Manson’s “family” of young people.

She said she first joined the “family” July 4, 1969, and almost immediately was initiated by Manson, who “made love” to her.

Mrs. Kasabian also dispassionately described an orgy she said was ordered by Manson and involved about two dozen men and women.

Her testimony was filled with references to Manson’s “hold” over his followers and of the fear of black people he instilled in them.

Manson, she said, often referred to what he called “helter skelter,” or a black-white revolution.

Mrs. Kasabian claimed Manson felt the blacks were “watching” members of the “family” because “they knew that we were going to save the white race and go out to the hole in the desert.”

After the Tate-LaBianca murders, Manson took the remnants of his clan to Death Valley, where most were arrested last fall.

Mrs. Kasabian said that on the afternoon before the Tate murders, Manson said “now is the time for helter skelter.”

Mrs. Kasabian, who began testifying Tuesday, did not become emotional until Wednesday afternoon, when co-prosecutor Vincent T. Bugliosi showed her a .22-caliber longhorn revolver.

She began crying and identified the weapon as the one she, Watson, Miss Atkins and Miss Krenwinkel took with them on their death mission.

Mrs. Kasabian said she did not know they were going to the home to kill anyone, however.

By SANDI METTETAL

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