less than complete immunity for Linda Kasabian. Not until after I had talked to Linda myself did I learn that she had been willing to talk to us immunity or not, and that only Fleischman had kept her from doing so. I also learned that she had decided to return to California voluntarily, against the advice of Fleischman, who had wanted her to fight extradition.
After a number of discussions, our office agreed to petition the Superior Court for immunity,
The agreement was signed by Younger, Leavy, Busch, Stovitz, and myself on February 26, 1970.
Two days later I interviewed Linda Kasabian. It was the first time she had discussed the Tate-LaBianca murders with anyone connected with law enforcement.
As noted, given a choice between Susan and Linda, I’d preferred Linda, sight unseen: she hadn’t killed anyone and therefore would be far more acceptable to a jury than the bloodthirsty Susan. Now, talking to her in Captain Carpenter’s office at Sybil Brand, I was especially pleased that things had turned out as they had.
Small, with long light-brown hair, Linda bore a distinct resemblance to the actress Mia Farrow. As I got to know her, I found Linda a quiet girl, docile, easily led, yet she communicated an inner sureness, almost a fatalism, that made her seem much older than her twenty years. The product of a broken home, she herself had had two unsuccessful marriages, the last of which, to a young hippie, Robert Kasabian, had broken up just before she went to Spahn Ranch. She had one child, a girl named Tanya, age two, and was now eight months pregnant with another, conceived, she thought, the last time she and her husband were together. She had remained with the Family less than a month and a half—“I was like a little blind girl in the forest, and I took the first path that came to me.” Only now, talking about what had happened, did she feel she was emerging from the darkness, she said.
On her own since sixteen, Linda had wandered from the east coast to the west, “looking for God.” In her quest she had lived in communes and crash pads, taken drugs, had sex with almost anyone who showed an interest. She described all this with a candor that at times shocked me, yet which, I knew, would be a plus on the witness stand.
From the first interview I believed her story, and I felt that a jury would also. There were no pauses in her answers, no evasions, no attempts to make herself appear something she was not. She was brutally frank. When a witness takes the stand and tells the truth, even though it is injurious to his own image, you know he can’t be impeached. I knew that if Linda testified truthfully about those two nights of murder, it would be immaterial whether she had been promiscuous, taken dope, stolen. The question was, could the defense attack her credibility regarding the events of those two nights? And I knew the answer from our very first interview: they wouldn’t be able to do so, because she was so obviously telling the truth.
I talked to her from 1 to 4:30 P.M. on the twenty-eighth. It was the first of many long interviews, a half dozen of them lasting six to nine hours, all of which took place at Sybil Brand, her attorney usually the only other person present. At the end of each interview I’d tell her that if, back in her cell, anything occurred to her which we hadn’t discussed, to “jot it down.” A number of these notes became letters to me, running to a dozen or more pages. All of which, together with my interview notes, became available to the defense under discovery.
The more times a witness tells his story, the more opportunities there are for discrepancies and contradictions, which the opposing side can then use for impeachment purposes. While some attorneys try to hold interviews and pre-trial statements to a minimum so as to avoid such problems, my attitude is the exact opposite. If a witness is lying, I want to know it before he ever takes the stand. In the more than fifty hours I spent interviewing Linda Kasabian, I found her, like any witness, unsure in some details, confused about others, but never once did I catch her even attempting to lie. Moreover, when she was unsure, she admitted it.
Though she added many details, Linda Kasabian’s story of those two nights was basically the same as Susan Atkins’. There were only a few surprises. But they were big ones.
Prior to my talking to Linda, we had assumed that she had probably witnessed only one murder, the shooting of Steven Parent. We now learned that she had also seen Katie chasing Abigail Folger across the lawn with an upraised knife and Tex stabbing Voytek Frykowski to death.
She also told me that on the night the LaBiancas were killed, Manson had attempted to commit three other murders.
PART 5
“Don’t You Know Who You’re Crucifying?”
“For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect…Wherefore, if they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the desert; go not forth…”
“Just before we got busted in the desert, there was twelve of us apostles and Charlie.”
“I may have implied on several occasions to several different people that I may have been Jesus Christ, but I haven’t decided yet what I am or who I am.”
MARCH 1970
On March 3, accompanied by attorney Gary Fleischman and some dozen LAPD and LASO officers, I took Linda Kasabian out of Sybil Brand. For Linda it was a trip back in time, to an almost unbelievable night nearly seven months ago.
Our first stop was 10050 Cielo Drive.
In late June of 1969, Bob Kasabian had called Linda at her mother’s home in New Hampshire, suggesting a reconciliation. Kasabian was living in a trailer in Topanga Canyon with a friend, Charles Melton. Melton, who had recently inherited $20,000, and had already given away more than half, planned to drive to the tip of South America, buy a boat, and sail around the world. He’d invited Linda and Bob, as well as another couple, to come along.
Linda, together with her daughter, Tanya, flew to Los Angeles, but the reconciliation was unsuccessful.
On July 4, 1969, Catherine Share, aka Gypsy, visited Melton, whom she had met through Paul Watkins. Gypsy told Linda about “this beautiful man named Charlie,” the Family, and how life at Spahn was all love, beauty, and peace. To Linda it was “as if the answer to an unspoken prayer.”[53] That same day Linda and Tanya moved to Spahn. Though she didn’t meet Manson that day, she did meet most of the other members of the Family, and they talked of little else. It was obvious to her that “they worshiped him.”
That night Tex took her into a small room and told her “far-out things—nothing was wrong, all was right— things I couldn’t comprehend.” Then “He made love to me, and a strange experience took place—it was like being possessed.” When it was over, Linda’s fingers were clenched so tightly they hurt. Gypsy later told her that what she
