Why didn't Linda Kasabian run like hell the night of the Tate murders, and call the police? She could of ran past where they parked the car, and knocked on ANY door to call the police. IF she would of done so, the LaBianca's murder would of been prevented. Of course, I know she could not have saved anyone at Cielo, but......well, I know there isn't too much to say about Linda Kasabian anymore, but thought I would bring it up. Tex Watson sure did seem to like her. In his ridiculous, self-serving book he described having a "moment" with Linda. I have never known what to think about her. She fit right in with the Family as soon as she got there, and had no problem participating in lots of anonymous sex with men, and women, partaking in lots of drugs, and stealing. A perfect match, if you ask me. So what do our readers think of Linda?
36 comments:
Linda sang and got off completely. Clem sang and has been free for years. I think I see a pattern emergjng.
Whats above in her the second picture? It almost looks like a swatiska(sorry for spelling, rushing while typing this). In Ed Sanders book, he claims Charlie trusted her a lot with certain tasks, which I find weird, considering that apparently she only came to the ranch in June 1969. Another interesting thing Sanders wrote about Linda: After they brought Garys car back to the ranch, Kitty, Mary and Linda did a garbage run. Wouldn't that mean that Linda and Kitty knew about the murders?
I don't buy the garbage-run tale. It doesn't make sense.
As with many things in life, presentation is a major element.
Linda could have tried to prevent the Cielo murders by bailing out of the car at a busy intersection, ‘accidentally’ hitting a phone pole or dumpster on the way there, or feigning a heart attack or some sort of seizure. I would have further enhanced the ruse by soiling myself, for that extra measure of authenticity. Once the murders kicked off, she could have laid on that car’s horn or ran screaming down the street. Linda managed to get her hands on thousands of dollars in cash, so she wasn’t some little Pollyanna, who but for a lack of better graces, found herself in that situation.
Linda just needed a good publicist and that came in the form of Bugliosi. He needed a state’s witness that did appear to be Pollyannaish. Well that is Pollyannaish on the Manson Family scale.
Who was the lowest on the malfeasance totem pole, wasn’t perpetually wrapped in a full blown psychosis, and could be presented to the public as somewhat normal? You are going to be picking the world’s tallest midget in this case and adding all the ‘spin’ you possibly can, while limiting their exposure to the outside world. Enter Linda.
One of the other rules in life is: Never believe your own press. Linda has very wisely followed this ethos by avoiding media and most interviews. When she appeared on Larry King, she was hip deep in revisionist recall, with Bugliosi constantly reminding Larry King how pure Linda was.
When asked about her criminal activity, Linda said she wasn’t a criminal. She later admitted that stealing money was criminal, just before she described going on ‘Creepy Crawls’, which is also known as trespassing along with breaking and entering. But she wasn’t a criminal.
Ultimately she leaves and goes home on the opposite side of the country until a warrant forced her next move. Far away from danger or threat, she could have called the cops but didn’t. She also didn’t sing in the court’s halls, shave her head or sport a swastika on her forehead. Again, it is presentation, what’s inside may not be all that different.
I think Tex drove to the crime scene, not LK. I always though that stupid driver's license story was just one of many lies she told. LK had a pea brain to begin with, and couple that with being on mind-altering substances, and you get a lot of different stories coming out of her mouth. Just an opinion.
I think she didnt want to call the police because if the family found out, her daughter may have been killed. I thought Linda was really just a hippie girl and she obviously did not want the murders to happen. But what was the answer to be certain her daughter would be safe. I think she picked the right path since she did get her daughter back safe and sound!
Not a saint, but not a murderer, either. I like to think she was basically in shock the night of the Tate murders (wouldn't you be?), couldn't believe this was happening, and scared shitless of what might happen to her daughter if she bolted. Still freaked out and afraid to say no on the second night and allegedly saved the life of an actor-acquaintance by knocking on the wrong door. Finally collected her wits enough to bolt on Day 3. Say what you like about Linda, I do believe the Bug was right that she was not cut from the same cloth as Atkins, Watson, Krenwinkel or Manson.
Lauren Webster said...
Whats above in her the second picture? It almost looks like a swatiska
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It could be a swastika but I'm thinking it's a Hindu symbol. In Hinduism a right facing swastika celebrates the evolution of the universe. I found this while researching why Jorma Kaukonen of the Jefferson Airplane was wearing what looked like a swastika necklace at woodstock.
I agree with you there!!
That's a Navajo blanket. As in many cultures, the Dine (Navajo) use the sunwheel as a positive symbol.
A.C. Fisher Aldag said...
That's a Navajo blanket. As in many cultures, the Dine (Navajo) use the sunwheel as a positive symbol.
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I have also seen the swastika used by the Hopi and Paiute tribes as a migration symbol both clockwise and counter clockwise. This was done centuries before it was used as a Nazi symbol. It too was a positive symbol relating to friendship.
I am less sure why Manson chose to use the symbol as with many of actions they can be interpreted a number of ways.
Linda was but a promiscuous and bored girl from New Hampshire - anyone who grew up there as I did knows what boredom is - who also had a prediliction and interest in the dark side. She was perfect fodder for Charlie and the California free love spiel. If you want to read something interesting and illuminating about her go over to Cat's I think it is where there is a story penned by a Harvard guy about being picked up hitchhiking in New Mexico by Yana the Witch right after the murders.
I don't doubt for a second that Linda had some serious evil in her and was capable of violence. The intensity of Cielo just freaked her out is all. But no way she went on the second night simply out of concern for her daughter. No way.
I think she was fearful about her daughter being safe. I'm not making excuses for her.
It's my view that if Susan Adkins hadn't recanted her original testimony that Linda Kasabian would be in prison today. She's on record as driving to the Tate house and accompanying the party to the LaBianca's.
Bug would have fed us Linda as a demon and Susan as an angelic bystander trying to protect her kid. In other words, she lucked out.
Kasabian never stabbed anyone, so she doesn't get labeled as a stabber, something we can't say about any of other others involved those two nights. But she absolutely was guilty as an accessory and should have done time. I can see the logic of a cooperation deal with her, but why was a total get-out-of-jail pass necessary? From outside the Tate house it wouldn't have taken her long to get to the first two houses just past the gate. She would have been safe from the murderers, the Polanski baby may have survived, and the LaBiancas would have lived out their natural lives.
I've always thought Linda's excuse of protecting her daughter was a real possibility. And if we believe she was under the assumption Tate was a creepy crawl until Parent was shot, as she had said, then it is possible she froze in fear for her daughter's safety as well as her own. None of us know how we would react under such circumstances until put there.However, I have always thought Linda was not that much into being a mother anyway at the time and her story had holes in it. As for Charlie and the Swastika, doesn't Schreck say it was his embracement of Abraxis?
And does anyone know this Linda pic is from her time at the Taos commune?
Linda was a pile of crud and still is. The swastika was used by virtually every culture and religion and still used vastly in Eastern countries to this day. It symbolizes everything from purity, inner strength, fertility, peace, love, the sun to good luck, prosperity in hunting, and divinity. it was vastly used in America my Natives and popular culture especially cowboys. Swastikas can still be found throughout America on buildings, bridges, lamp posts, and such. The swastika was also used in Judaism and Christianity. Manson claimed he took the symbol from a Native, as far as I am told. There's a news clipping where he tells the judge (who asked him to remove his swastika collared shirt) that it was an "Indian" symbol for peace.
Exactly, Ole JC. And that story of a hole in the desert is an old Paiute legend so I would be the least bit surprised if Manson did tell the judge it was an Indian symbol. Manson liked to be provocative and a symbol like that was sure to stir up people yet could be interpreted to be quite innocent.
'Ol J.C. said: "Linda was a pile of crud and still is."
^This.
And hey, speaking of Linda's daughter- how is 'ol Lady Dangerous these days? Y'know I don't think I've ever seen a picture of her or any of the other Yana-munchkins.
if bugliosi had prosecuted kasabian does anyone think he would have a death penalty conviction against her as well?
I want to know more about Linda's life since then. I find her fascinating. I don't think she seems quite as evil as the other girls but if I had a daughter I probably wouldn't have left her alone with Clem, so it makes me question how great of a mom she was/is. Who really knows, though? She should have done some time, for sure. Oh, our legal system...
I think all of the arguments in defense of Linda go out the window the minute she didn’t grab her kid and run after what she witnessed at Cielo. Instead she proceeds to join the merry band on another adventure the next night.
Bugliosi bent over backwards to make her seem a sweet, lost little hippy in the wrong place(s) at the wrong time, but it was for self-serving reasons. He wanted to justify why he gave a totally free pass to an accomplice to horrific murders.
To the question about Bugliosi shooting for the death penalty had Kasabian not cooperated, I think he most certainly would have. She was as legally guilty as the others. Perhaps not quite as morally culpable, but that's a distinction her counsel would have tried to make, not the prosecutor.
Linda's job was to be a lookout. After the shooting of Parent, Tex figured someone might have heard the shots, and told Linda to keep watch outside.
She didn't run because she didn't want to run.
She wasn't inside the house because she was told to wait outside.
Had Parent not been shot, Linda would have been inside that house slicing people up.
I thought that Tex DID drive to Cielo and drove back for that matter...wasn't it Linda who threw the weapons and clothing out from the passenger window?
I've always seen the swastika as a convenient symbol for Manson, since it enabled him to tie in elements of the hippy movement with his own penchant for violence and racialism. The hippies idealised Eastern & Native American traditions, which made use of the swastika. Manson came over time to somewhat idealise the Nazis, who also used the swazi, and cleverly drew links between Nazi philosophy and the hippy movement.
I think at first Manson's use of the swastika may well have been intended as merely the same as its traditional use- a symbol of peace, harmony, etc. As the racial ideas and 'helter skelter' gradually took precedence in his mind it probably came to symbolise a lot more- a philosophical link between the Nazis, the counterculture, and himself. This isn't too crazy if you think about it:
National Socialism in practice and as a philosophy was strongly 'green', idealised a rural/peasant lifestyle, and was opposed to rampant & destructive capitalism. Some currents of the NS leadership were also deeply pagan and made sort-of 'pilgrimages' to India and Tibet in search of 'traditional Aryan' lifestyles/practices. All of this has much in common with core elements of the hippy movement. If you took away the devotion to 'peace & love' and replaced it with violent racialism there would not be too many great differences between the philosophical roots of hippies and Nazis, apart from their attitudes towards authority and recreational drugs (although, Goering was a morphine addict, and LSD was first synthesised in a Nazi-occupied country..).
I'm not trying to suggest that hippies were just closet Nazis, or that the counterculture's ideals are evil because of some similarities with National Socialism. 'Peace & love' was a huge aspect of hippydom, after all, as was (usually) non-violence and a distaste for most forms of discrimination. I'm just trying to make the point that you /can/ draw parallels, and Manson did. Manson was able to make his followers believe that their 'hippyness' owed much to the Nazis, justifying his tactics of violence and his racial ideals. To be fair though, the centrality of race (as with Manson's enviornmentalism) only seemed to really attain a huge prominence in his philosophy /after/ he was jailed... beforehand I think it was much more vague and nebulous, though still there. There's a reason after all that neo-Nazi James Mason described the Family as "an attempt at creating a racial-socialist utopia", or some such thing. And Squeaky did say something like, "Where George Lincoln Rockwell [US neo-Nazi] stops, manson begins."
Apologies for this hugely ranty essay, but this is a subject that fascinates me. Much of this is probably supposition on my part, but it is drawn from reading information on the ATWA website, Schreck's first book and accounts of the Family (like Sanders' and Little Paul's books) which mention Manson's racist attitudes and his use of the swastika.
For more info on how German volkish nationalism influenced the hippy movement: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wandervogel
Being a part of that time in history A time when we did not know about cults A time when young people where looking for a different life style.Its sad to think of the many young people that came into contact with Manson and the hardcore members of the family that were not like that but were forever changed.I think of Brooke Poston he seemed like such a gentle soul.
A larcenous psychopath looking out for #1, able to clean up well, and play her part convincingly in Bugliosi's narrative.
Marlene Ful said: "Being a part of that time in history A time when we did not know about cults"
It amazes me how unaware or ill-informed the pre-information age was. It's funny because one would think, "well we're not gullible and stupid like that anymore because we have google, wikipedia, et. al." But then we still have so many New Age cults, extreme Christian cults, etc.
You have to wonder what's the thing in some people to make them want to belong so badly, or find something new and miraculous, or want to turn their back so quickly on what their parents taught them.
Deep thoughts. I wonder what Linda would say, ha.
hmm.. Big idiot.. BIGGER Criminal.
Further, she didn't keep her mouth shut. She told Joe Sage. Yet she told Bug that she knew "Tanya would be safe, if I didn't talk." After she told Sage, he rang Spahn ranch and spoke to Charlie about it! If you were Charlie, you had to assume she would tell the cops, at least a possibility. Hadn't Linda just endangered Tanya? Once Linda knew Sage had called Charlie, why not go at once to the cops? "You just couldn't wait to open your big mouth, could you?" Katie said to her. Linda KNEW that Charlie knew she had blabbed!
According to all who saw her, Linda was 'very happy" and "high" between leaving Spahn and going into custody. She talked of Spahn and Charlie as a wonderful place. She displayed no signs of emotional shock. She displayed zero signs of a mother in an agony of fear for a child left in a den of paranoid proven killers. Tex, for example. If you'd been she, wouldn't you have feared for Tanya at Tex's hands?
In sum: we have a hard case, well experienced since her mid teens in communes, and orgies and drugs, totally unafraid of hitch-hiking around and getting in with any strangers. A thief, who went on creepy-crawls. A mother who dumped her child at once on the family without question and left her behind. A grass, who never told the cops until she had to, when she turned on her friends at the optimum moment. And after the trial, went on to a useless and criminal life of meth, bringing her daughters into the whole lifestyle as well. She has also never expressed any remorse for her part in the killings, sanctimoniously declaring that her friends should "get on their knees and pray for forgiveness".
I can't find anything good to say about her at all.
She didn't need to run, she had the car keys. She had already started the car when the killers arrived back at it. To drive off and get help she said.
I say, yeah, right. None of her story adds up.
She let a nice tit-bit slip when she revealed she had got in the car and taken Parent's wallet. She entered the house while the killings were going on, took in the scene and walked out again.
She said that she ran back to the car after seeing Voytek killed "all of a sudden, they were there." All of a sudden? There was still Sharon to kill and more wounds to inflict. Nonsense. She went back and waited and got the car fired up and did her job of disposing of the clothes.
She claimed the others were laughing and joking. According to Susan, they were in deep shock and Susan's description rings more true. "Patricia was very silent. I almost passed out. I felt like I had killed myself"
The following night, she was able to forget the murders going on and happily confide her pregnancy in Charlie. What kind of mind does she have, that can compartmentalize like that?
Both Susan and Charlie say Linda actively suggested Nader as the next victim. Linda "chickened out", Susan said and led them to the wrong door. Maybe so, maybe not, they have no reason to love Linda.
Yet, look at who she was. Alone since 16, wandering from commune to commune. Since 16! Already married twice. After one day with the Manson family, she stole a lot of money for them as cool as a cucumber. She also found nothing amiss at Spahn Ranch (this certainly doesn't gel with accounts that one month before the killings, there was a lot of paranoia and violence in the air). She used drugs with abandon.
Is it feasible Linda fingered the Tate house? I always thought the story of them burning her for MDA sounded so reasonable. And there is a lot of evidence to show Linda was involved with Tex. Kanareks cross-examination brought out interesting points.
It's also clear that the stories of Charlie's iron control are simply lies. People came and went as they pleased. You don't do that in a cult. Tex set up the Lotsapoppa deal on his own. Susan would go off and "come running back with her trick behind her" (Manson). Therefore it is entirely plausible that Tex and Linda set up a deal with Voytek and were ripped off. There were lots of rips going on. Tex of Lotsapoppa, Jay Sebring and his coke...even Gary Hinman...the dealer who suffered the whipping...a rip-off culture was in evidence.
Would she have been capable of getting involved in a rip-off? A girl who had robbed her own husband and friend? Who wandered around on her own? Who walked off on her daughter after attending two nights of killing? Who showed no emotion over it till she "shivered and wept" with Bug at the Tate house?
Yes, she would.
The whole business with leaving Tanya is senseless. Linda left...what for, if not to alert the authorities? Why did she go? She never said the only real explanation, to save her own life. The fact is, that a mother left her own child in the hands of those who had murdered a pregnant woman.
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