misplaced?
The next day Manson passed Linda a long handwritten letter. It seemed, at first, mostly nonsensical. Only on looking closer did one notice that key phrases had been marked with tiny check marks. Extracted, spelling errors intact, they read:
“Love can never stop if it’s love…The joke is over. Look at the end and begin again…Just give yourself to your love & give your love to be free…If you were not saying what your saying there would be no tryle…Don’t lose your love its only there for you…Why do you think they killed JC? Answer: Cause he was a Devil & bad. No one liked him…Don’t let anyone have this or they will find a way to use it against me…This trile of Man’s Son will only show the world that each man judges himself.”
Coming just after she had been granted immunity, the message could only have one meaning: Manson was attempting to woo Linda back into the Family, in hopes that once freed she would repudiate her testimony.
Her answer was to give the letter to me.
Though a number of people had seen Manson pass Linda the letter, Kanarek maintained that she had grabbed it out of his hand!
The most effective cross-examination of Linda Kasabian was surprisingly that of Ronald Hughes. Though this was his first trial, and he frequently made procedural mistakes, Hughes was familiar with the hippie subculture, having been a part of it. He knew about drugs, mysticism, karma, auras, vibrations, and when he questioned Linda about these things, he made her look just a little odd, just a wee bit zingy. He had her admitting that she believed in ESP, that there were times at Spahn when she actually felt she was a witch.
Q. “Do you feel that you are controlled by Mr. Manson’s vibrations?”
A. “Possibly.”
Q. “Did he put off a lot of vibes?”
A. “Sure, he’s doing it right now.”
HUGHES “May the record reflect, Your Honor, that Mr. Manson is merely sitting here.”
KANAREK “He doesn’t seem to be vibrating.”
Hughes asked Linda so many questions about drugs that, had an unknowing spectator walked into court, he would have assumed Linda was on trial for possession. Yet Linda’s alert replies in themselves disproved the charge that LSD had destroyed her mind.
Q. “Now, Mrs. Kasabian, you testified that you thought Mr. Manson was Jesus Christ. Did you ever feel that anybody else was Jesus
Christ?”
A. “The biblical Jesus Christ.”
Q. “When did you stop thinking that Mr. Manson was Jesus Christ?”
A. “The night at the Tate residence.”
Though I felt confident the jury was impressed with Linda, I was pleased to hear an independent evaluation. Hughes requested that the Court appoint psychiatrists to examine Linda. Older replied: “I find no basis for a psychiatric examination in this case. She appears to be perfectly lucid and articulate. I find no evidence of aberration of any kind insofar as her ability to recall, to relate. In all respects she has been remarkably articulate and responsive. The motion will be denied.”
Hughes ended his cross-examination of Linda very effectively:
Q. “You have testified that you have had trips on marijuana, hash, THC, morning-glory seeds, psilocybin, LSD, mescaline, peyote, methedrine, and Romilar, is that right?”
A. “Yes.”
Q. “And in the last year you have had the following major delusions: You have believed that Charles Manson is Jesus Christ, is that right?”
A. “Yes.”
Q. “And you believed yourself to be a witch?”
A. “Yes.”
HUGHES “Your Honor, I have no further questions at this time.”
The basic purpose of redirect examination is to rehabilitate the witness. Linda needed little rehabilitating, other than being allowed to explain more fully replies which the defense had cut off. For example, I brought out that Linda meant “state of shock” figuratively, not medically, and that she was very much aware of what was going on.
On redirect the prosecution can also explore areas first opened on cross-examination. Since the theft of the $5,000 had come out on cross, I was able to bring in the mitigating circumstances: that after stealing the money, Linda had turned it over to the Family and that she neither saw it again nor benefited from it.
Not until the re-redirect was I able to bring out why Linda had fled Spahn Ranch without Tanya.
The delay in getting this in was actually beneficial, I felt, for by this time the jury knew Linda Kasabian well enough to accept her explanation.
Direct. Cross. Redirect. Recross. Re-redirect. Re-recross. Just before noon on Wednesday, August 19, Linda Kasabian finally stepped down from the stand. She had been up there seventeen days—longer than most trials. Though the defense had been given a twenty-page summary of all my interviews with her, as well as copies of all her letters to me,
Following the completion of her testimony, she flew back to New Hampshire for a reunion with her two children. For Linda, however, the ordeal was not yet over. Kanarek asked that she be subject to recall by the defense, and she would also have to testify when Watson was brought to trial.
Randy Starr was not the only witness the People lost during August.
Still afflicted with wanderlust, Robert Kasabian and Charles Melton had gone to Hawaii. I asked Linda’s attorney, Gary Fleischman, if he could locate them, but he said they were off on some uncharted island, meditating in a cave, and there was no way to reach them. I’d wanted Melton especially, to testify to Tex’s remark, “Maybe Charlie will let me grow a beard someday.”
The loss of the other witness was a far greater blow to the prosecution. Saladin Nader, the actor whose life Linda had saved the night the LaBiancas were killed, had moved out of his apartment. He’d told friends he was going to Europe, but left no forwarding address. Although I requested the LaBianca detectives to try to locate him through the Lebanese Consulate and the Immigration Service, they were unsuccessful. I then asked them to interview his former landlady, Mrs. Eleanor Lally, who could at least testify that during August 1969 the actor had occupied Apartment 501, 1101 Ocean Front Walk, Venice. But with Nader’s disappearance, we lost the only witness who could even partially corroborate Linda Kasabian’s story of that second night.
On August 18, however, we found a witness—one of the most important yet to appear.
Over seven months after I had first tried to get Watkins and Poston to persuade him to come in for an interview, Juan Flynn decided he was ready to talk.
Fearful that he would become a prosecution witness, the Family had launched a campaign of harassment against the tall, lanky Panamanian cowboy that included threatening letters, hang-up phone calls, and cars racing past his trailer in the night, their occupants oinking or shouting “Pig!” All this had made Juan mad—mad enough to contact LASO, who in turn called LAPD.
Since I was in court, Sartuchi interviewed Flynn that afternoon at Parker Center. It was a short interview; transcribed, it ran to only sixteen pages, but it contained one very startling disclosure.
SARTUCHI “When did you first become aware of the fact that Charles Manson was being charged with the crimes that he is presently on trial for?”
FLYNN “I became aware of the crimes that he is being charged with when he admitted to me of the killings that were taking place…”
