Charles Manson follower who helped send him to prison
Linda Kasabian, a troubled young drifter who joined Charles Manson’s cult who served as the gang’s getaway driver during a Los Angeles murder spree and went on to become the star witness against the killers, died Jan. 21 at a hospital in Tacoma, Wash. She was 73.
A death notice for her ran this month in the Tacoma News Tribune, which identified her as Linda Chiochios, one of at least two names she used after the Manson trial. A death certificate from the TacomaPierce County Health Department did not cite a cause.
Kasabian was 20, raising a newborn daughter and reeling from the collapse of her second marriage, when an acquaintance introduced her to Manson in July 1969. He welcomed her into his commune of misfits and drifters, which called itself the Family and coalesced at a ranch outside of Los Angeles. Only later, she said, did she realize that he “was definitely the devil.”
As Kasabian told it, she was a reluctant accomplice in the rampage that occurred over two consecutive nights that August. Members of the group fatally shot and stabbed seven people, including 26-yearold actress Sharon Tate, the wife of filmmaker Roman Polanski, who was more than eight months pregnant. Collectively known as the Tate-LaBianca murders, the killings shocked the city with their brutality.
Kasabian did not participate directly in the murders but was present both nights, waiting at the car. She was initially charged with murder, alongside Manson and three others, but agreed to provide testimony that helped send her associates to prison for life.
“She never asked for immunity from prosecution, but we gave it,” Vincent Bugliosi, the Los Angeles prosecutor who won convictions in the case, said in 2009. “She stood in the witness box for 17 or 18 days and never broke down, despite the incredible pressure she was under. I doubt we would have convicted Manson without her.”
Kasabian said that after her husband left her in the summer of 1969, she joined Manson, who mandated group sex and drug use and led his followers on a practice called “creepy crawling,” in which they sneaked into homes, rearranging furniture and stealing people’s belongings.
On Aug. 8, 1969, Kasabian, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel and Charles “Tex” Watson, went to Tate’s home in Benedict Canyon, where Kasabian said she waited outside as her companions murdered the home’s occupants.
The next night, she drove Manson and a half-dozen others to a house in the Los Feliz neighborhood. Manson went inside and tied up a grocery store executive, Leno LaBianca, and his wife, Rosemary, who were then killed by other members of the group. As at Tate’s house, messages were left behind in the victims’ blood, including “Death to Pigs” and the misspelled phrase “Healter Skelter.”