LOS ANGELES, Jul. 25 – Cultist Charles Manson tried to start a race war with mass murder on two bloody nights last summer when his followers killed seven persons, the prosecution charged Friday in the Tate-LaBianca trial.

Dep. Dist. Atty. Vincent T. Bugliosi offered the “bizarre” motive for the savage killings of actress Sharon Tate and six others in a 40-minute opening statement outlining the case. He also declared that:

—The prosecution’s chief witness, Linda Kasabian, 20, a petite, sandy-haired former Manson “family” member, saw three of the five murders committed at the Tate residence in Benedict Canyon.

— Another Manson-directed murder — the eighth — was avoided the next night — when Leno and Rosemary LaBianca were killed — because Mrs. Kasabian intentionally knocked on the wrong door in Venice.

After the opening statement, the state called Miss Tate’s father, Paul J. Tate, a goateed, mustachioed retired Army colonel, as the first witness in the six-week-old trial.

Tate identified pictures of his daughter with her husband, producer Roman Polanski, and three of Miss Tate’s guests who were killed early last Aug. 9 — coffee heiress Abigail Folger, 26; Polish playboy Voityck Frvkowski, 37, and hair stylist Jay Sebring, 35.

The fifth victim at the Tate home, Steven Parent, 18, of El Monte, was identified through photos shown his father, Wilfred E. Parent, a construction superintendent, the second witness.

Mrs. Winifred Chapman, the maid who ran from the Tate house screaming, “There’s bodies and blood all over the place,” identified the residence and described living arrangements.

Manson, an “X” scratched on his forehead between his eyes, and three of his “girls” who are codefendants — Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten — listened impassively as parents of two of the victims testified.

Earlier, Manson had smiled broadly and the young women had looked scornful, giggled and whispered among themselves as Bugliosi spoke.

“The evidence at this trial will show that these seven incredible murders were perhaps the most bizarre, savage nightmarish murders in the recorded annals of crime,” he said. “I am of course excluding wartime atrocities.”

Bugliosi asked:
“What kind of a diabolical, satanic mind would contemplate or conceive of these mass murders? What kind of mind would want to have seven human beings brutally murdered?”

“We expert the evidence at this trial to show that defendant Charles Manson owned that diabolical mind. Charles Manson, who, the evidence will show, at times has had the infinite humility, if you will, to call himself Jesus Christ.”

The prosecutor described Manson as a frustrated singer-guitarist, a vagrant wanderer, a pseudo philosopher and a megalomaniac who coupled delusions of greatness with a thirst for power and an intense obsession for violent death.

“But most of all,” Bugliosi said, “the evidence will show him to be a killer who cleverly masqueraded behind the common image of a hippie – that of being peace-loving.”

He said Manson was a follower of the Beatles and thought the English singing group was speaking to him from across the sea through their lyrics.

When the Beatles sang a song called “Helter Skelter,” Bugliosi said, Manson told his followers they were forecasting the rise of the black man against the whites, an event he predicted was at hand.

But, the prosecutor said, when a “blood bath” failed to develop the clan leader said, “I’m going to have to show blackie how to do it.”

Manson’s plan, according to Bugliosi, was to blame the seven killings on black people, whom he hated along with “pigs” of the white establishment, then flee with his “family” to Death Valley, where they would live in the Biblical “bottomless pit” of Revelations IX until the blacks won.

Manson thought the reins of power would then fall to him and his follower when blacks discovered they were too inexperienced to lead, the attorney said.

“In Manson mind,” Bugliosi said, “his family and particularly he would be the ultimate beneficiaries of the black-white civil war.”

Bugliosi admitted that the motive was “bizarre as the murders themselves,” but he told the jury of seven men and five women evidence to support it would be presented to help them understand why seven persons died.

Also, he said, several witnesses would be called to testify about Manson’s “strange” and “bizarre” philosophies because perhaps the jurors would not believe so incredible a story from only one witness.

However, Bugliosi said, the principal witness of “who” committed the murders will be Mrs. Kasabian, who is also charged with seven counts of murder but who has been promised immunity.

As briefly outlined Friday, the young woman will tell of her involvement as a driver in two murderous forays from the Spahn Movie Ranch in Chatsworth.

Bugliosi said she will testify that:
-On Manson’s orders she accompanied Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel and Charles Watson, a male member of the “family” who still is fighting extradition from Texas, to the Tate home at 10050 Cielo Drive late in the evening. of Aug. 8 without being told what was planned.

— Although she did not enter the Benedict Canyon home or commit any murders, she saw Watson shoot Parent in a car in the driveway and watched Watson and Patricia Krenwinkel kill Miss Folger and Frykowski on the lawn.

— She did not actually see the murders of the beauteous, honey-blonde Miss Tate or Sebring, both of whom died inside the house, but did see Susan Atkins come out and say she had lost her knife inside.

— On Watson’s instructions, she threw the killers’ knives and blood-splattered clothing over the side of a hill in Benedict Canyon.

— When the group returned to the Spahn Ranch and Watson had reported what happened, Manson told them they had been “too messy” and he was going to show them how to do it.

— On the next evening, Aug. 9, Manson, Watson, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, Leslie Van Houten and a family member named Steve Grogan, 21, drove at random around Los Angeles County on a mission of murder.

— Ultimately, Manson directed her to drive to 3267 Waverly Drive in the Los Feliz district — a home he had visited a year before — and then walked next door to the home of wealthy grocer Leno LaBianca, 44, and his 38-year-old wife, Rosemary.

— When Manson returned, he reported the hands of the victims had been tied and instructed Watson, Miss Van Houten and Miss Krenwinkel how to murder the couple without causing “panic and fear.”

— Later that same night, Manson ordered the murder of a man who Mrs. Kasabian knew lived in a Venice apartment but she deliberately went to the wrong door to thwart it.

Bugliosi said the “overkill’s tactics of Manson’s followers showed that they were willing participants in the killings. He said Frykowski had been stabbed 51 times, shot four times and struck on the head 13 times.

How the others died was reported before the trial began.

Miss Tate, 8 1/2 months pregnant, was stabbed 16 times; Miss Folger, stabbed 21 times; Sebring, stabbed six times, shot twice; Parent, shot four times, and Mrs. LaBianca, stabbed more than 40 times. Leno LaBianca died under the knife, too. “War” and “X X X” had been carved into his flesh and a carving fork and knife had been left sticking in his body.

“Pig” was smeared in blood on the front door of the Tate house. “Death to Pigs,” “Rise” and “Helter Skelter” were written in blood at the LaBianca house.

Bugliosi said physical evidence to be presented by the prosecution will include a .22-caliber Longhorn revolver, the clothing worn by the killers and a car belonging to a Spahn Ranch ranchhand used on the two evenings.

Each of the young women defendants will be linked to the murders by Mrs. Kasabian’s testimony, Bugliosi said, but the prosecution plans to present additional evidence in each case.

Testimony will show that Miss Atkins told Virginia Graham, Ronni e Howard and Roseanne Walker — fellow inmates in Sybil Brand Institute for Women — about her involvement in the Tate-LaBianca murders, he said.

In Miss Krenwinkel’s case, Bugliosi said, the people will offer evidence proving her fingerprints were found on the inside of a door in the master bedroom at the Tate residence.

As for Miss Van Houten, the prosecutor said there is evidence that the slender, dark-haired young woman told a girl named Diane Lake of her involvement in the LaBianca murders.

During a recess after Bugliosi’s statement, defense attorney Paul Fitzgerald said the prosecution had gone beyond the bounds of a proper opening statement.

He said the outline of the case had “degenerated” into a “defamatory, slanderous, name-calling attack,” and added: “It was emotional in tone and character and totally inappropriate.”

A statement signed by Charles Manson was distributed in the hallway by a reporter for the Free Press, an underground weekly publication.

In it, Manson was quoted as saying he had made the “X” on his forehead as a sign that he had “X’ed” himself from the world because, among other things, he had not been allowed to speak for himself as his own attorney.

The Polanskis’ cook and housekeeper, Mrs. Chapman, completed her testimony in the afternoon session, stating firmly under defense cross-examination that two days before the Aug. 9 murders she had washed the doors on which Watson’s and Miss Krenwinkel’s fingerprints later were found.

The slight, 35-year-old maid testified while clutching her bandaged left arm injured in an automobile accident. She winced with pain and appeared exasperated by some of the questions.

The next witness was William E. Garretson, the only one alive on the Tate property when police responded to Mrs. Chapman’s report of the murders.

The short, curly-haired young man repeated essentially the story he told police after his arrest on charges of murder. Subsequently, he was released.

He testified that he did not hear shots, screams or yelling in the early-morning hours when five persons were killed on the Tate estate.

Garretson said he wrote letters, listened to hi-fi and finally went to sleep at dawn after trying to check for the time and found the phone out of order.

When he was awakened by a dog barking, he said he looked up to see a policeman pointing a rifle at him from a patio of the caretakers’ house where he lived.

Then, another police officer kicked in the front door and was bitten on the leg by Christopher, one of three dogs that he took care of for the owner of the estate.

The crowded courtroom burst into laughter, the only time of the day that humor relieved an unfolding story of seven grotesque murders.

By JOHN KENDALL