Linda Kasabian

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Linda Darlene Kasabian (born June 21, 1949 in Biddeford , Maine as Linda Darlene Drouin ) was a member of the Manson Family led by Charles Manson and a key witness in the Tate - LaBianca murder trial.

Life

Linda Kasabian comes from a broken family, her parents divorced in her early childhood. Kasabian fled his parents' house at the age of 16. She dropped out of high school and hitchhiked to California to join the hippies . In loose succession she either lived on the street or lived in several hippie communities and soon became involved in drug deals. She married several times; including a young man named Robert Kasabian, whose name she kept.

In 1968 she gave birth to their daughter Tanya. Pregnant again, she left her husband and came into contact with the Manson Family through Catherine Share . In early July 1969 she arrived at the Spahn Movie Ranch. Kasabian experienced the first few weeks in the community as a personal sexual liberation , whereby LSD and simultaneous frequent sexual intercourse with changing partners played a decisive role. To gain recognition in the group, she stole $ 5,000 from her husband , which he had kept for a friend, and gave the sum to Manson.

Murders

Linda Kasabian was the driver of the car in which Susan Atkins , Charles Watson and Patricia Krenwinkel drove to the property of Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski on Cielo Drive in Bel Air on August 8, 1969 , and murdered those present. She later denied in court that she was directly involved in the murders and testified that she was only a guardian during the murders. Kasabian testified that Charles Manson did you just ordered to take a knife and do what would Watson tell her, "for it is now the time for, Helter Skelter come '" (a term that Manson in his ideology a same name Song borrowed from the Beatles ).

All but Kasabian entered the house through a window. Waiting outside, a little later she heard screams, then bloodied Wojciech Frykowski staggered out. Watson followed him and killed him there. She also saw Abigail Folger run outside and get stabbed by Krenwinkel and Watson. She was unable to follow the other processes in the living quarters.

The next night the murders of the merchant Leno and Rosemary LaBianca occurred . Watson, Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten were ordered by Manson to be killed in the La Bianca house, Kasabian was ordered to drive to Malibu Beach with Atkins and Steve Dennis Grogan and there to kill the Lebanese actor Saladin Nader, the Kasabian Days had previously met on the beach. According to her statement, she deliberately rang the wrong doorbell to prevent the last-minute murder. Linda Kasabian fled the family's ranch a few days after the murders , initially leaving her daughter Tanya behind. When asked by the court why she did not prevent the other murders, Kasabian said: "I was just afraid of Manson and his cult members ..."

Linda Kasabian was charged on December 2, 1969 for the murders of Tate, Folger, Frykowski, Sebring and the LaBianca couple, but was paroled as the key witness in the trials. Kasabian's detailed account of the crimes found Charles Manson, Susan Atkins, Charles Watson, Leslie Van Houten, and Patricia Krenwinkel, all of whom were sentenced to death. The sentences were later, after the abolition of the death penalty in California , in life sentences converted.

According to the processes

After the trial, Linda Kasabian disappeared from the public in the mid-1970s. She changed her name and moved to New Hampshire . Disabled in a car accident, she became unemployed and started trading drugs again. She and her daughter were arrested in 1996 for possession of drugs and weapons.

TV film and TV docudrama

Linda Kasabian was portrayed by Marilyn Burns in the television film Helter Skelter - Night of the Long Knives (1976). Kasabian told her story in 2008 in the Canadian television docudrama Charles Manson: Myth of a Murderer . Based on exclusive interviews with Kasabian and other members of the “Manson Family”, archive material and eyewitness reports, the fiction documentary tells how the series of murders came about. Kasabian is portrayed by Maya Hawke in Quentin Tarantino's feature film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019) .

Trivia

The British rock band Kasabian named themselves after her after guitarist Christopher Karloff read an article about Charles Manson.

literature

  • Ed Sanders: The Family: The Story of Charles Manson . German translation by Rowohlt, Reinbek 1995, ISBN 3-499-19644-1 .
  • Carol Greene: The Charles Manson Case. Murderer from the retort . EIR 2001, ISBN 3-925725-13-X .
  • Vincent Bugliosi , Curt Gentry: Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders . WW Norton & Company, 2001, ISBN 0-393-32223-8 . (English)
    • German edition: Helter Skelter - Charles Manson's murder frenzy . Riva Verlag, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-86883-057-6 .

Web link

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kasabian's court testimony.
  2. ↑ Gerhard Mauz : The happiness with Linda . In: Der Spiegel . No. 32 , 1970, pp. 80 f . ( online ). (further source: Ed Sanders: The Family , p. 297).
  3. ^ Kasabian biography laut.de.
personal data
SURNAME Kasabian, Linda
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kasabian, Linda Darlen; Drouin, Linda Darlene (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American criminal and member of the Manson Family
DATE OF BIRTH June 21, 1949
PLACE OF BIRTH Biddeford , Maine , United States