LOS ANGELES, May 13 – Former Charles Manson follower Leslie Van Houten testified Thursday that she stabbed Rosemary LaBianca only after Mrs. LaBianca apparently was dead.

Miss Van Houten said that after both Mrs. LaBianca and her husband, Leno, were fatally stabbed, fellow Manson “family” member Charles (Tex) Watson, shoved a knife in her hand and shouted, “Do something.”

Dep. Dist. Atty. Stephen Kay asked her, “What did you do then?”

She replied. “I stabbed Mrs. LaBianca in the back…I don’t know how many times, but it was quite a few.

The prosecutor wanted to know how Miss Van Houten knew Mrs. LaBianca was dead. “Did you take her pulse?” he asked.

“Well, she was just lying there,” Miss Van Houten answered.

Kay then asked her, “Did you want to kill Mrs. LaBianca?” She replied, “I didn’t want to, but I believed it had to be done.”

In earlier testimony Thursday, she had said that she had murder on her mind from the time she and the other Manson followers set out that night in August almost eight years ago from the Spahn movie ranch near Chatsworth.

“What did you think was going to happen?” Kay asked. “I knew we were going to go out and continue to start Hefter Skelter,” she said.

“By doing what?” he asked.

“Killing.” she responded.

“Helter Skelter” was the term Manson applied to a race war he told his followers would occur if they could make the killings look like they were committed by black men, she testified.

“Both the LaBianca slayings and the five murders the previous night at the Benedict Canyon estate of actress Sharon Tate were supposedly committed to trigger the racial conflict.

Miss Van Houten testified she and Patricia Krenwinkel led Mrs. LaBianca into a bedroom while Watson held her husband in the living room.

“Pat asked me to hold Mrs. LaBianca down,” she testified, “but then we heard sounds from the living room … it was a guttural sound and I knew Mr. LaBianca had been stabbed. When I heard that sound I reacted and let go.”

When she released her hold on Mrs. LaBianca the defendant said, Mrs. LaBianca grabbed a lamp that Miss Van Houten quickly wrested from her.

“Pat tried to stab her but the knife bent,” Miss Van Houten testified, saying that she ran out to get help from Watson. By the time she got back into the bedroom. Miss Van Houten claimed, Mrs. LaBianca was lying dead on the floor.

Autopsy testimony earlier in the trial indicated that 16 of the 41 stab wounds sustained by Mrs. LaBianca occurred after she was dead.

All of Miss Van Houten’s testimony Thursday came with the jury out of the courtroom. Her attorney, Maxwell Keith, had called her to the witness stand in an effort to block use of the testimony she gave in her first trial.

Keith maintained the testimony at the earlier trial was not given voluntarily because Miss Van Houten was dominated by Manson. He contended she took the stand in 1971 for the sole purpose of trying to clear Manson.

Superior Judge Edward A. Hinz Jr. rejected Keith’s contention and ruled that Kay could read to the jury the entirety of her testimony from that first proceeding. He began reading it Thursday.

By BILL FARR