The Manson acolyte who turned on the cult
Linda Kasabian 1949–2023
Linda Kasabian once would have followed Charles Manson to the ends of the earth. As a member of the Family—the cult Manson ran on the grounds of a former Los Angeles film set—she believed, she later said, that he was “the second coming of Christ” who spoke “pure truth.” On Aug. 8, 1969, at age 20, she obeyed his instructions to accompany Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Charles Watson to the home of Roman Polanski and his wife, Sharon Tate. That was the start of a two-day murder spree that left seven people, including the eight-months-pregnant Tate, dead. But Kasabian didn’t kill anyone. Instead, she became the key witness for the prosecution. “I’m not you, Charlie,” she recalled telling him. “I can’t kill anybody.”
Born in Biddeford, Maine, Linda Darlene Drouin grew up with parents who were “permanently at war,” said The Telegraph (U.K.). After dropping out of high school at 16, she was soon dabbling in hallucinogens and free love, drifting with her hippie husband, Bob Kasabian, from state to state until he left her stranded with her infant daughter. A Manson acolyte brought her to Spahn Ranch, where Manson “sexually initiated her into his hippie Family.” Kasabian went along on “creepy crawls,” in which members would burglarize nearby homes, said the Los Angeles Times. The only cult member with a driver’s license, she stayed outside as lookout during the murders at Polanski and Tate’s house and the subsequent killing of two more people the following night. But Kasabian thwarted another set of planned murders by “deliberately knocking on the wrong door” and then fled to her mother’s house in New Hampshire. At the trial, she got immunity in exchange for her cooperation and testified for 18 days, speaking in front of Manson in court as he drew his finger across his throat in a silent threat to kill her. Manson and his followers received life sentences.
Kasabian spent her later years in Tacoma, working as an in-home caregiver, said The Washington Post. She “declined most interviews,” but in
2009 appeared in disguise on Larry King Live, expressing regret for the crimes of her youth. “I felt then what I feel now,” she said, “that it was a waste of life that had no reason, no rhyme. It was wrong. And it hurt a lot of people.”