LOS ANGELES, Aug. 18 – Accused murder mastermind Charles Manson threatened the life of the prosecution’s chief witness if she didn’t remain silent, the girl testified in Los Angeles Superior Court today.

Linda Kasabian, going over her eyewitness account of three of the seven slayings at the Tate-LaBianca homes, said the long-haired hippie leader made threatening gestures toward her when she first took the stand more than three weeks ago.

Asked to demonstrate to Judge Charles Older and the seven-man, five-woman jury some of the motions Manson made, the pale-faced former Manson fingers to her lips then drew an index finger across her throat.

“He played with his beard, as he is doing now,” the girl said. “Then he ran his index finger across his throat. He brought his fingers again up to his mouth and then again across his lips.”

Description of her gestures for the court record brought a heated dispute from attorneys for the prosecution and defense, and even a correction from Manson himself.

Other motions made by Manson, the girl said, were extending his tongue and rubbing it with his finger.

“Another time when I was talking about a father hangup,” Mrs. Kasabian said, “he pointed up, then to himself and said, ‘I’m your father.’ ”

Older, obviously irked with attorneys whose tempers have become frayed during – the two-month-old trial, warned Manson’s lawyer, Irving Kanarek, at a bench conference that he might again be cited for contempt and jailed.

The attorney had been jailed for one night previously for interrupting the witness with constant objections.

Re-direct examination, opened for the second time by Dep. Dist. Atty. Vince Bugliosi, ended today with Mrs. Kasabian’s explanation of why she felt she was an “emissary of God,” a statement she made Monday:

“I feel I am doing the will of God. I feel what’s been done is wrong. They did wrong and I did wrong, too. But I’ve repented for it. Being up here testifying is my repentance. That’s what I mean by the will of God.”

Bugliosi took the witness over her testimony to clarify points made during defense cross-examination. During defense questioning she had said she thought about the killings at the Tate home only once. Under questioning by Bugliosi she said: “How could you forget something like that? But I just don’t remember thinking about it other than the one incident.”

The incident she said occurred when “Charlie called me and asked me to get my driver’s license and a change of clothes” the night of the LaBianca killings.

“I pleaded with him with my eyes. ‘Please, don’t make me go.’ But I didn’t say anything. I was afraid.

“But I knew the same thing was going to happen this night as happened the last night.” The killings at the Tate home took place the night before the LaBiancas were slain.

Monday, Mrs. Kasabian testified that a vision warned her not to call police as she fled from the slaughter at the home of actress Sharon Tate.

Under questioning by Bugliosi, she described fleeing from the Benedict Canyon home of the pregnant actress and falling to the ground, with her first thoughts to call police and tell them about the murders.

“I had a vision. Charlie entered into my heart again and Tanya was there and I was afraid for Tanya’s life.”

Tanya, her two-year-old daughter, she said was back at the Spahn Ranch in Chatsworth where the family lived and Manson was there also.

She said she didn’t tell anyone of the killings later for several reasons:

“I thought policemen were pigs. I thought everyone would think I was crazy. And maybe Charlie would kill me and kill my little girl.”

She said she didn’t call after leaving the ranch for Taos, New Mexico, because her “only interest at that time was to get to my husband.

“I was afraid of police. I didn’t know how to contact police. It was impossible for me to take Tanya but I knew within myself that she would be all right.”

Although admitting she considered Charles Manson Jesus Christ, she said she never was told that by the hippie leader himself.

“The very first time I saw him he was dressed in buckskin and had long hair and a beard. He was just beautiful. But at the cave I just knew he was Jesus Christ.”

Earlier the girl had testified that Manson made love to her in a cave on the second day she arrived to become a member of his family.

“Once Charlie said that Jesus Christ and the Devil were in one body — something like that — that we all have principles of good and bad in us. I’ve seen the evil principle of people come on rather than the pure, good principle.”

Manson, she said, was the center around which most of the ranch activity took place. At supper time when the family ate together she said, “most of the time” he discussed his philosophy.

“He’d talk about the ego and the soul — that the ego should die and the soul never knows the words no or don’t.”

Under cross examination by defense attorney Ronald Hughes, Mrs. Kasabian was asked if she would believe Manson if he told her he was Jesus Christ.

“I believed him” she said smiling, “and he didn’t, even say it.”

Asked that if she considered Manson the Devil would she consider herself an angel, the girl thought for several minutes then answered:

“I’m not sure. I know I’ve got a lot of imperfections so I don’t see how I could be an angel. But I just don’t know.”

By MARY NEISWENDER