her to wipe off the prints and remove the change. In opening it, she noticed the driver’s license, which had a photo of a woman with dark hair. She recalled the woman’s first name was “Rosemary,” while the last name “was either Mexican or Italian.” She also remembered seeing a number of credit cards and a wrist watch.
When I asked Linda the color of the wallet, she said it was red. Actually it was brown. She also claimed to have removed all the change, but when the wallet was found there were still some coins in one of the inner compartments. Both were understandable errors, I felt, particularly overlooking the extra change compartment.
Manson again took over the driving. Linda was now on the passenger side, Susan and Clem in back. Manson told Linda that when they reached a predominantly colored area he wanted her to toss the wallet out onto a sidewalk, so a black person would find it, use the credit cards, and be arrested. This would make people think the Panthers had committed the murders, he explained.
Manson drove onto the freeway not far from where they had dropped off Tex, Katie, and Leslie. After driving for a long time, he pulled off the freeway and stopped at a nearby service station. Apparently having changed his plans, Manson now told Linda to put the wallet in the women’s rest room. Linda did, only she hid it too well, lifting the top of the toilet tank and placing it over the bulb, where it would remain undiscovered for four months.
I asked Linda if she could remember anything distinctive about the station. She remembered there was a restaurant next door and that it seemed “to radiate the color orange.”
There was a Denny’s Restaurant next to the Standard station in Sylmar, with a large orange sign.
While Linda was in the rest room, Manson went to the restaurant, returning with four milk shakes.
Probably at the same time the LaBiancas were being murdered, the man who had ordered their deaths was sipping a milk shake.
Again Manson had Linda drive. After a long time, perhaps an hour, they reached the beach somewhere south of Venice. Linda recalled seeing some oil storage tanks. All four got out of the car, Sadie and Clem, at Charlie’s instructions, dropping behind while he and Linda walked ahead in the sand.
Suddenly Manson was again all love. It was as if the events of the last forty-eight hours had never happened. Linda told Charlie that she was pregnant. Manson took Linda’s hand and, as she described it, “it was sort of nice, you know, we were just talking, I gave him some peanuts, and he just sort of made me forget about everything, made me feel good.”
Would the jury understand this? I thought so, once they understood Manson’s charismatic personality and Linda’s love for him.
Just as they reached a side street, a police car pulled up and two officers got out. They asked the pair what they were doing.
Charlie replied, “We were just going for a walk.” Then, as if they should recognize him, he asked, “Don’t you know who I am?” or “Don’t you remember my name?” They said, “No,” then returned to the patrol car and drove off, without asking either for identification. It was, Linda said, “a friendly conversation,” lasting only a minute.
Finding the two officers on duty in the area that night should be fairly easy, I thought, unaware how wrong I could be.
Clem and Sadie were already back in the car when they returned. Manson then told Linda to drive to Venice. En route he asked the three if they knew anyone there. None did. Manson then asked Linda, “What about the man you and Sandy met in Venice? Wasn’t he a piggy?” Linda replied, “Yes, he’s an actor.” Manson told her to drive to his apartment.
I asked Linda about the actor.
One afternoon in early August, Linda said, she and Sandy had been hitchhiking near the pier when this man picked them up. He told them he was Israeli or Arab—Linda couldn’t recall which—and that he had appeared in a movie about Kahlil Gibran. The two girls were hungry, and he drove them to his apartment and fixed them lunch. Afterward, Sandy napped and Linda and the man made love. Before the girls left, he gave them some food and spare clothing. Linda couldn’t remember the man’s name, only that it was foreign. However, she felt sure she could find the apartment house, as she had located it when Manson asked her to drive there that night.
When they pulled up in front, Manson asked Linda if the man would let her in. “I think so,” she replied. What about Sadie and Clem? Linda said she guessed so. Manson then handed her a pocketknife and demonstrated how he wanted her to slit the actor’s throat.
Linda said she couldn’t do it. “I’m not you, Charlie,” Linda told Manson. “I can’t kill anybody.”
Manson asked her to take him to the man’s apartment. Linda led Charlie up the stairs, but deliberately pointed to the wrong door.
On returning to the car, Manson gave the trio explicit instructions. They were to go to the actor’s apartment. Linda was to knock. When the man let her in, Sadie and Clem were to go in also. Once they were inside, Linda was to slit the man’s throat and Clem was to shoot him. When finished, they were to hitchhike back to the ranch.
Linda saw Manson hand Clem a gun, but was unable to describe it. Nor did she know if Sadie also had a knife.
“If anything goes wrong,” Manson told them, “just hang it up, don’t do it.” He then slid into the driver’s seat and drove off.
Like the church and sports-car incidents, Susan Atkins had not mentioned the Venice incident to me, nor had she said anything about it when testifying before the grand jury. While I felt that she might have forgotten the two earlier incidents, I suspected the third was omitted intentionally, since it directly involved her as a willing partner in still another attempted murder. It was possible, however, that had I had more time to interview Susan, this too might have come out.
The actor’s apartment was on the top, or fifth, floor, but Linda did not tell Clem or Sadie this. Instead, on reaching the fourth floor, she knocked on the first door she saw. Eventually a man sleepily asked, “Who is it?” She replied, “Linda.” When the man opened the door a crack, Linda said, “Oh, excuse me, I have the wrong apartment.”
The door was open only a second or two and Linda caught just a glimpse of the man. She had the impression, though she was unsure of this, that he was middle-aged.
The three then left the building, but not before Sadie, ever the animal, defecated on the landing.
It was obvious that Linda Kasabian had prevented still another Manson-ordered murder. As independent evidence corroborating her story, it was important that we locate not only the actor but the man who answered the door. Perhaps he’d remember being awakened at 4 or 5 A.M. by a pretty young girl.
From the apartment house Clem, Sadie, and Linda walked to the beach, a short distance away. Clem wanted to ditch the gun. He disappeared from sight behind a sandpile, near a fence. Linda presumed that he had either buried the gun or tossed it over the fence.
Walking back to the Pacific Coast Highway, they hitched a ride to the entrance of Topanga Canyon. There was a hippie crash pad nearby, next door to the Malibu Feedbin, and Sadie said she knew a girl who was staying there. Linda recalled there was also an older man there, and a big dog. The three stayed about an hour, smoking some weed, then left.
They then hitched two rides, the last taking them all the way to the entrance of Santa Susana Pass Road, where Clem and Linda got out. Sadie, Linda learned the next day, remained in the car until it reached the waterfall area.
When Linda and Clem arrived at the ranch, Tex and Leslie were already there, asleep in one of the rooms. She didn’t see Katie, though she learned the next day that, like Sadie, she had gone on to the camp by the waterfall. Linda went to bed in the saloon.
Two days later Linda Kasabian fled Spahn Ranch. The manner of her departure, however, would cause the prosecution a great deal of concern.
Rather than taking Linda directly to the LaBianca residence, I had the sheriff’s deputy drive to the Los Feliz area, to see if Linda could find the house itself. She did, pointing out both the LaBianca and True houses, the place where they had parked, the driveway up which Manson had walked, and so on.
I also wanted to find the two houses in Pasadena where Manson had stopped earlier that night, but, though we spent hours looking for them, we were, at this time, unsuccessful. Linda did find the apartment house where the actor had lived, 1101 Ocean Front Walk, and pointed out both his apartment, 501, and the door on which she had
