LOS ANGELES, Jun. 28 – After more than two months of testimony that has almost always focused on Charles Manson, the jury in the retrial of Leslie Van Houten heard the voice of Manson himself Monday.

What the jurors heard was a tape recording of Manson being interviewed by Dr. Joel Fort, a San Francisco psychiatrist called by Dep. Dist. Atty. Stephen Kay as a prosecution rebuttal witness.

The jurors last week listened to Fort’s version of what Manson said about Miss Van Houten but her defense attorney, Maxwell Keith, asked that the tape be played so they could hear it from Manson himself.

Fort led off the two-hour interview, which took place last March at Folsom Prison, by saying to Manson:

“Miss Van Houten says it’s all your fault. Her attorney says that she didn’t have anything to do with it and was just a robot. And I don’t feel that is an adequate explanation. So I came here to give you a fair chance to present your point of view.”

Manson denied that he directed Miss Van Houten and two of his followers, Charles (Tex) Watson and Patricia Krenwinkel to kill Rosemary and Leno LaBianca and also denied that he was even at the Los Feliz area residence the night of Aug. 10, 1969, when they were stabbed to death.

Asked by Fort about how much influence he had over Miss Van Houten, Manson replied:

“People had Leslie Van Houten long before I had her. Her mother had her first, her dad had her, her parents had her, her school had her, TV had her, the movies had her, she was in a convent for a Buddhist, the Buddhists had her.

“And you come up and say, ‘Well you had influence over her,’ Man, I’ve seen the broad only a few times … I never paid that much attention to her … I’m telling you the truth. I never had that much effect on Leslie, because I never — how can one guy have effect over 30 to 50 broads”?

In discussing sexual activities of his group, Manson told Fort, “Ah, my moral fibers are not that of Hustler magazine. My moral fibers are not of the loose and promiscuous nature that they would project upon me.”

Referring to prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi, the 42-year-old cult leader said, “In other words, the district attorney’s sex paranoia would have me doing all kinds of lascivious things because in his lugubrious brain he would be doing these things.”

On the subject of drug taking by himself and his “family,” Manson told Fort:

“I took LSD and it’s heightened my awareness a little bit: made me aware of a few things I already knew. We weren’t all that much into drugs. Everybody’s saying we were but that’s not the truth. The truth is that we took acid whenever it was around … Sometimes it would be maybe once a week and sometimes once a month … We weren’t into speed or hard drugs. A little hash and a little grass. Just a blaze kind of get-loaded social thing.”

Miss Van Houten is putting forth a “diminished capacity” defense, claiming that her ability to make decisions was severely diminished because of the heavy use of LSD and the domination of Manson.

By BILL FARR