35 Facts About Linda Kasabian

Linda Kasabian's father, Rosaire Drouin, was a construction worker of French-Canadian ancestry.

Linda Kasabian was the eldest child, and her mother Joyce has remarked that with so many younger children and stepchildren to care for, she was not able to devote the necessary attention to her teenage daughter.

Linda Kasabian was regarded as kind and shy but "forced to grow up too soon".

Linda Kasabian dropped out of high school and ran away from home at the age of sixteen due to conflict with her stepfather, Jake Byrd, whom she claimed mistreated both her and her mother.

Linda Kasabian briefly moved to Miami and tried to reconnect with her father, who was working as a bartender, but they again drifted apart before long.

Linda Kasabian then traveled to Boston, remarried, and gave birth to a daughter in 1968.

Later, Robert Kasabian contacted Linda and invited her to meet him in Los Angeles.

Linda Kasabian wanted her to join him and a friend, Charles "Blackbeard" Melton, on a sailing trip to South America.

Linda Kasabian, who was hoping for a reconciliation with Robert, returned to Los Angeles to live with him in Topanga Canyon.

Linda Kasabian was welcomed by group members, who greeted her with professions of peace and love and assurances that she and her daughter would be cared for, provided she proved loyal.

Linda Kasabian became privy to various events and statements that later proved to be important to the criminal case.

Watson persuaded Linda Kasabian to steal a sum of money from her ex-husband's friend, Charles Melton.

Linda Kasabian thought that Manson could "see right through her" and that he was perceptive of her issues with her stepfather and her feelings of being "disposable" to the people in her life and to the world in general, as recorded in her trial testimony:.

Linda Kasabian stated she saw Watson shoot and kill Steven Parent, a teenager who had come to visit the caretaker, William Garettson.

Watson then ordered Linda Kasabian to remain outside the residence, and she stood by the car while Watson, Atkins, and Krenwinkel entered the house and killed Jay Sebring, Wojciech Frykowski, Abigail Folger, and the eight-months pregnant Sharon Tate.

Linda Kasabian testified that at one point she heard the "horrible screams" of the victims and left the car.

Linda Kasabian tried to stop the murderers by claiming that she heard "people coming" onto the Tate property, but Atkins insisted that it was "too late".

Linda Kasabian testified that, while in a state of shock, she ran toward the car, started it up, and considered driving away to get help, but then became concerned for her daughter back at the Spahn Ranch.

The next night, Manson, Leslie Van Houten, and Clem Grogan joined the quartet because, according to Linda Kasabian, Manson felt the deed the night before had been performed sloppily.

Linda Kasabian was offered immunity from prosecution in exchange for turning state's evidence.

Linda Kasabian, who was then pregnant with her second child, agreed to the immunity offer.

However, though Linda Kasabian had been an accomplice to the murders, and she had not prevented the crimes or contacted the police or the sheriff afterwards, she had not entered either residence nor was she thought to have physically participated in any of the murders.

When taken back to the Tate residence to help reconstruct the crime there, Linda Kasabian reportedly suffered an emotional breakdown.

Linda Kasabian related to the trial jury all that she had seen and heard during her stay with the Manson family and during the commission of the murders.

Linda Kasabian's testimony was considered to be the most dramatic segment of the very long trial, and it received an unprecedented amount of news media coverage.

Linda Kasabian apparently hoped that this stunt would result in a mistrial, which the defense argued for but lost.

Linda Kasabian shortly returned to New Hampshire with her husband and her children, seeking to escape the glare of the media and raise her children quietly.

Linda Kasabian lived on a commune of hippies for a time and later worked as a cook.

Linda Kasabian was called back to Los Angeles County several times after the first trial: she was a witness against Tex Watson in his separate trial in 1971 and against Leslie Van Houten in her two retrials in 1977.

Linda Kasabian was later detained for numerous traffic violations until an automobile accident left her partially disabled.

Linda Kasabian was the target of scorn from the few remaining Family members.

Linda Kasabian's only appearance between 1969 and 2008 was an interview with the syndicated American television program A Current Affair in 1988.

Later, Cineflix, a production company in the United Kingdom and Canada, produced a docu-drama called Manson, in which Linda Kasabian appeared, telling her story in complete detail for the first time.

Linda Kasabian told Larry King during the interview that after the trial she had been in need of, but had never obtained, "psychological counseling" and that during the previous 12 years, she had been "on a path of healing and rehabilitation".

Linda Kasabian died in Tacoma on January 21,2023, at the age of 73.