Linda Kasabian July 1971 Interview

The July 24, 1971 edition of The Montreal Star, (Montreal, Quebec, Canada) carried an interview with Linda Kasabian. The reporter went through a lot of trouble to find Linda as noted by the editor of the Weekend Magazine, a once a week feature of the newspaper.

Vincent Bugliosi tended to keep a tight rein on Linda, Gypsy Share and Barbara Hoyt by controlling the narrative that they could discuss with reporters. The reporter, Bill Trent, somehow slipped by Bugliosi and Linda's efforts to ward off the press and their questions. To Linda's credit, at least in Bugliosi's eyes, she revealed very little of her time with the Family. She talks briefly about Manson. There is only one incidence of her vaguely alluding to her feelings about the Family. 

The "Old Man" now plots the course of her life

By Bill Trent Weekend Magazine

 "There is internal revolution ahead. Chaos in the world. Then final rebellion..."

Linda Kasabian, speed-freak turned Jesus-freak, is speaking and her words sound harsh in this old, low-beamed 19th century room that once was a chicken house.

But, she claims, Jesus is within her and The Old Man is up there somewhere, plotting the course of her life like an ethereal navigator.

The Old Man is God. Why Old Man? Because He's the oldest being in the universe. She doesn't use the term in a derogatory sense.

"Children will rise against their parents and parents will kill their children..."

It is a warm, sunny day and the windows are open, letting in the sound the birds and the smell of New Hampshire lilacs. She pauses to absorb the sounds and scents.

A "wonderful" woman who lives in the adjoining house has given her the refurbished apartment in the old chicken house. It's a place in the woods off a secondary highway, far, she hopes, from the glare of publicity.

It doesn't bother the woman that her tenant was once charged in connection with one of the most bizarre series of murders in the history of the United States.

On Aug. 9, 1969, movie actress Sharon Tate and Steven Parent, Abigail Folger, Jay Sebring and Voicyk Frokowski were murdered in a weird ritual in the star's Hollywood home. The following night, Los Angeles grocer Leno LaBianca and his wife were murdered in the same way. In all cases, the victims were stabbed repeatedly and in both homes the word "PIG" was written on the walls in blood.

Six people were charged with the murders- and Linda was one of them. The others were a bearded wild-eyed cult leader named Charles Manson, and Charles "Tex" Watson, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie van Houten.

Of the six, Linda was the lucky one. She gave state's evidence and her murder charge was finally dropped. Manson and the three other girls were tried, found guilty and sentenced to death. They are now on death row at San Quentin. Watson, first declared insane, awaits trial in Los Angeles.

"There is so much pain and sorrow in the world," Linda says. "How can anybody be happy seeing other people suffer?"

It's hard to believe the words coming from this very pretty girl with the long sandy hair. She sits curled up in an antique chair with the sun on her face. It accents the paleness of the face.

"This kingdom must be destroyed and peace must come..."

Linda is 22 but in her blue jeans and barefooted, she looks almost child-like. And when she talks of Jesus, there is kind of a childish excitement in her voice. Jesus, she says, has come to her and lives inside of her.

She once thought that Charles Manson was the Messiah. She and the other girls charged in the Sharon Tate and LaBianca murders lived with him as members of his commune family on an abandoned movie ranch in California's Death Valley.

Some of the things that Manson said out on the desert seemed to Linda to be "pure truth". He generated love and she returned his love. To Linda, it was the second coming of Christ.

She no longer considers Manson to be the Messiah. Christ, she says, will come to the world one day but he won't be a California cult leader. He will be someone beautiful.

"Maybe he will come in a great white cloud. He will be seen by all the people in the world. Then evil will be eliminated from the earth."

Her husband, Bob Kasabian, enters the room. He has black silky hair down to his shoulders. He wears overalls that don't cover the top of his underwear. He wears no shoes. He sits on a chair and strums gently on his guitar.

"Christ will come soon." Linda says. "Perhaps in my lifetime. Certainly in my children's."

She has two children, a three-year old girl names Tonya and a one-year old son, Nathan, whom according to her own evidence in court, may have been fathered by any one of five men, including Charles Manson. She later said she thought Nathan was actually Kasabian's boy. "I saw my husband in my child's face when he was born," she related at the time.

"The Old Man has been watching me all along," she says. "He charted my course. He put me on the drug route and let me make my own decisions about things. But it was all part of a divine plan."

She speaks with disturbing matter-of-factness. What happened and what is ahead is all a matter of pre-ordainment.

"Drugs, free love, the whole hippie bit... You see I had to make the entire hippie trip."

A condition of our interview is that I won't ask her to discuss her past, particularly where it concerns the trial.

But in the quiet of the room, she reminisces without any prodding from me.

"We lived in an old slum apartment in Biddeford, Maine. Our first house was on a hill near a grocery store. There was a Catholic parochial school there and I used to go through their garbage cans and pick out roses they had thrown out..."

Linda's father at the time was a construction worker named Rosaire Drouin, whose parents had gone to Maine from Quebec.

"My mother and father fought a lot. My first recollection of childhood was sitting on a couch crying... My father finally left the house for good after we had moved to New Hampshire. My mother insisted he buy me some shoes before he left and he refused. But as he went out he slipped some pennies into my hand..."

She remembers her father driving around to the house to see her later. He aways had another woman in the car and Linda instinctively hated her.

"My mother and I grew close... She'd fix my banana curls and dress me in a pinafore and take me around showing me off to everybody...

"My father used to beat her on the behind as she stooped over the washing machine... But my stepfather was worse. Hiis name was Byrd and he had children of his own and he was always telling my mother how much better his kids were...

"I screamed at my stepfather one day, I said, "You hate me don't you?' He said, "Yeah, I hate you all right.' And I flipped. I just flipped..."

Linda remembers getting shipped off, during family arguments, to grandparents who lived in the country and kept horses.

"I always loved animals but I grew to like them more than people. I still do. Animals accept you as you are. They don't care what you've done before... They take you at face value, as you are right now...

"I talked to my grandparents' horses and I still talk to horses... It's not really talking. Do you know what I mean? It's communicating. You can communicate a lot without using words...

"I had this thing about all animals. I wanted to free all the dogs I saw chained up. I wanted to open up the cages at the zoo...

I kiss dogs. Did you know that dogs have the cleanest, most antiseptic mouths of any animals?

"In a sense, I suppose, I made love to animals..."

Linda recalls her school days with mixed feelings. She completed her elementary education and took a year of high school in Milford, the quiet little New Hampshire town in which she grew up. She was cheer leader in sixth grade and became her school's best athlete.

"We used to go down to the river and strip. There were boys and girls and we'd all roll around in the sand and feed the ducks and have a ball...

"But there was this kid, Larry, with the big bug eyes... He liked me and I guessed I like him, too. But we wouldn't let him come down to the river with us and this made him mad and one day he went to our teacher and then there was trouble...

"Then one day a girl I knew called me a dirty little river girl... But the boys liked me. Maybe because they thought of me as a river girl... None of those boys ever made it with me, though, and that damaged their egos..."

She remembers her disenchantment with the church:

"They told me God was a king. They told me about hellfire and damnation. The nuns told me after communion the non-Catholics went to hell. And I rebelled..."

At 16, she left her Milford home and went to Miami where she took her first drug.

"I was with this boy and we ran out of cigarettes and he gave me some marijuana... I didn't know what it was. But I liked the sensation. It was like walking on air. I wanted more..."

Linda travelled a lot after that- Boston, New York, California, Arizona, New Mexico. And she tried most of the drugs.

"I took acid one night in Boston. It wasn't a good trip...But one day in New York I got some fantastic acid. It wasn't the ordinary stuff you get. This was some pure pharmaceutical stuff...

"We were in this small apartment. The Rolling Stones were blaring away on the turntable. All of a sudden everyone was quiet. No one talked. And there was this marvelous silent kind of communication. I could feel it there in the room. It was like when I talked to horses. It's hard to describe unless you've had the experience..."

In 1967, Linda married Bob Kasabian and went west looking for a farm. They didn't find the farm but they came across a guru who moved in with them. It was the beginning of an experience.

"Bob thinks he's the first hippie to come out of his home town, Lawrence, Massachusetts. I think I was the first person who turned on in Milford... Anyway, the guru taught us how to sit and meditate. I started to get into myself. I began thinking of God. It was the opening of the door to the kingdom for me..."

Then things went wrong between Linda and Bob and they separated. Later he suggested a reunion and a trip to South America. Linda met him in California only to find he had changed his mind. There was another argument and another split. Then Linda ran into a girl with a tremendous idea. She knew a ranch in the desert where people could really communicate. It was run by a man named Manson.

There are no reminders of California in the Kasabians’ New Hampshire house. She never wants to see California again. But on the wall, there is a picture of a woman with some sheep. She is a Navajo. Linda clipped the picture out of the National Geographic magazine when she was in jail and pinned it to the wall of her cell.

“I’m still up-tight,” she says. “I blow up sometimes…”

She has blown up a number of times with newspaper reporters. She dislikes the press because she thinks it gave her a bad time during the trial.

But I have asked her if she has a message for young people on drugs, or contemplating going on thm, and she thinks the request is a valid one.

“Drug are a death trip… Mentally, physically and spiritually, they are destructive. I know. I’ve done the trip.”

Bob interrupts. “Don’t take the drug route,” he says, “Be A Jesus-freak.”

Linda suddenly remembers something:

“There was this beautiful little filly named Amber. She used to come across that meadow and sit in my lap and that was better than any acid trip I ever took…”

“We talk a lot about freedom,” Bob says. “Well, if freedom means being able to smoke hash in front of a cop, it’s not worth too much.”

“Freedom is a union with that man,” Linda says. She points to a picture of Jesus above the mattress that serves as their bed.

“She was a speed-freak,” Bob says.

“If I had taken it much longer, I would have been destroyed,” Linda cuts in.

She quit speed (amphetamines) when she first became pregnant. She takes no drugs at all now, she says, and would like to quit ordinary cigarettes, too.

“She won’t take a contraceptive either,” Bob says.

“The Pill is a form of murder,” she says. She pauses. “Abortion is murder, too. We follow the rhythm system- but do you know why? We don’t use it to avoid procreating. We use it to have children…”

Linda’s dog, half-shepherd, half-husky, runs in and licks everyone. Her name is Hopi, after the Arizona Indians with whom the Kasabians once lived.

“You can’t fool a dog or a child,” she says. “They can always spot a phony.”

Hopi brings a new turn to the conversation.

“There has been so much hypocrisy,” Linda says. “You see, the kids listened to people like John Lennon and their followers. The kids believed so much, you see…”

Bob plays softly on the guitar. Linda doesn’t talk now about Lennon. She speaks of anonymous people behind the scenes, the promoters she calls them.

They talk of peace and love and flowers and it was hypocrisy… They spoke of love- and prepared for violence…”

Bob interrupts: “They wanted to revolt against the system. But they wanted to set up another political system that was as bad.”

Later we go down the dark stairs of the one-time chicken house and into the big garden. Linda motions for quiet. In the distance there is the sound of running water. There is a dam nearby. Suddenly, I realize how remote you can be in New Hampshire.

“They chased us out of Marlborough,” Bob says. “Not exactly chased. But they found our shack in the woods and condemned the place.”

“They may chase us out of here,” Linda says. “But we’re set for that if the time comes.”

She shows me the pickup truck she and her husband bought. He does handyman jobs in the area. That truck got Linda back in the news briefly. She failed to have the vehicle inspected and was hauled into court and fined $15. The newspapers, of course, picked up the item.

Linda collects lilacs in the garden and Bob gets water from the spring. He pours some into paper cups and it is ice cold.

“What we really want is a log cabin way off somewhere, away from everything,” she says as I prepare to leave. “One that we made ourselves. And we want a big meadow where the animals can run free. We’d have sheep and shear the wool. And chickens for eggs. And I’d have a spinning wheel and loom som I could make my own clothes…

“And someday, when the Old Man thinks I’m ready, He’ll call. And I’ll know a oneness with Him and the universe.”

Maury Povich's Linda Kasabian Interview 1988

 

The Grogan File: Something is Missing.

 When I was a little kid my brother and I and our cousins used to walk about five blocks from my grandparent’s house to a little store on a main avenue in Detroit. We were not allowed to walk on the avenue, so we had to cut through a narrow alleyway to get there. 

In the back of the store the owner had some toys. More importantly he had this bin of boxes containing individual toy soldiers. These guys. 

 

The owner let us dig through the bin to our heart’s content as long as we bought something before, we left. If we didn’t find anything in the bin we would buy baseball cards. I always got crappy ones; you know, some unknown rookie or one of the Mets. But sometimes I found a pirate in the bin. 

 

The anticipation I had walking to that store back then returns every time I receive a notification from Cielodrive of a new document post. Sometimes it’s one of the Mets but sometimes it is a pirate. Thank you, Cielodrive. 

 

This one, I think, is a pirate. This is the file related to Grogan exposing himself to children. 

 

The_Grogan_FilePDF Document · 10.3 MB

 

What does the official narrative say about this incident? Well, that narrative would be the book, Helter Skelter and here is what Vincent Bugliosi had to say. 

______

 

Grogan had been observed exposing himself to several children, ages four to five years. “The kids wanted me to,” he explained to arresting officers, who had caught him in the act. “I violated the law, the thing fell out of my pants and the parents got excited,” he later told a court-appointed psychiatrist. After interviewing Grogan, the psychiatrist ruled against committing him to Camarillo State Hospital, because “the minor is much too aggressive to remain in a setting which does not provide containment facilities.”

 

The court decided otherwise, sending him to Camarillo for a ninety-day observation period. He remained a grand total of two days, then walked away, aided, I would later learn, by one of the girls from the Family. 

 

His escape had occurred on July 19, 1969. He was back at Spahn in time for the Hinman, Tate, and LaBianca murders. He was arrested in the August 16 Spahn raid, but was released two days later, in time to behead Shorty Shea.

 

******

So we had virtually nothing on Clem. 

 

In going through Grogan’s file, I noticed that one of his brothers had made application for the California Highway Patrol; I made note of this, thinking maybe his brother could influence Clem to cooperate with us. DeCarlo had described Grogan in two words: “He’s nuts.” In his police photograph—big, wide grin, chipped front tooth, moronic stare—he did look idiotic. I asked Fowles for copies of the recent psychiatric reports. 

 

Asked, “Why do you hate your father?” Grogan replied, “I’m my father and I don’t hate myself.” He denied the use of drugs. “I have my own bennies, adrenalin. It’s called fear.” He claimed that “love is everything,” but, according to one psychiatrist, “he also revealed that he could not accept the philosophy of interracial brotherhood. Quotes supposedly from the Bible with sexual correlation were given in defense of his attitude.” 

 

Other quotes from Clem: “I’m dying a little every day. My ego is dying and knows he’s dying and struggles hard. When you’re free of ego you’re free of everything…Whatever you say is right for yourself…Whoever you think I am, that’s who I am.” 

 

The philosophy of Clem? Or Charles Manson? I’d heard the same thoughts, in several instances even identical words, from the girls. If the psychiatrists had examined one of Manson’s followers and, on the basis of such responses, found him insane, what of his leader?

 

Bugliosi, Vincent; Curt Gentry. Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders (p. 173-175). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.

 

______

 

The records confirm Helter Skelter. Grogan’s brother was indeed trying to get into the California Highway Patrol. The psychiatrists even confirm DeCarlo’s comment. Grogan was considered to be mentally unstable, receiving a diagnosis of schizophrenia. 

 

Grogan, as you know, was never charged with the LaBianca murders even though he was as guilty as Susan Atkins and the exact evidence that convicted Atkins of conspiracy to commit murder and thus murder would have also convicted Grogan. Certainly, this diagnosis could have influenced any DA to hesitate to charge Grogan on LaBianca. Grogan had a defense of insanity or diminished capacity confirmed by state psychiatrists and that just might influence the jury as to all of the defendants and especially Charles Manson, as Bugliosi noted. 

There is also something missing in the records that also caught Bugliosi's eye. He noted it: "The philosophy of Clem? Or Charles Manson?". Where is the Charlie Says (to borrow a movie title)? No mention of Manson appears in these records or in Grogan's comments. That's not what Bugliosi wants, or needs.

 

But something else is missing. Its not that something is missing from he file. The file is complete. But there is definitely something missing from Bugliosi’s narrative.

______

 

When I was in law school long ago, I had a first-year law professor who had been in the real world as a litigator for many years before some health issue forced his retirement. Even though his class had nothing to do with litigation (it was Contract Law), practically every class he would give us a tidbit about being a trial lawyer. He once pointed out that someday many of us would ‘troop into court’ with our witness outlines eager to begin our ‘scintillating cross examination’ of a witness. He then said “Stop! Listen first. What a witness does not say is more important than what they do say. Once you find that ask them ‘why’. Any jackass can answer who, what, when or where but ‘why’ is the tough one to answer and sometimes the answer reveals motivation.”

 

So, what is missing? Bugliosi knew precisely who the family member was who helped Grogan escape. We know that because he quotes the same documents we now have more than once. That family member was revealed, right here.

 

It was Linda Kasabian. She signed as Linda Drouin (her family name). She used Dennis Wilson’s address and listed herself as Grogan’s girlfriend when she visited him on July 19, 1969 about two weeks after she joined the Family. 

This too may also have something to do with why Grogan wasn’t charged. In the hands of a competent defense attorney this page pokes a hole in one of Bugliosi’s main themes: that Kasabian only went along on two nights of murder because she had a valid driver’s license. You know, the innocent hippy chick theme.

 

This document suggests, instead, that Kasabian was much closer to the inner circle of the Family pretty quickly after she got to Spahn Ranch and was at least involved in planning and executing Grogan's escape.  This made me rethink that courtroom comment "when are you going to tell your part" just a little.

 

Now, one could try to argue that the only reason she went to see Grogan is, again, because she was the only one who had a valid driver’s license. I hope Cielodrive will put this issue to rest for me but until he does, I don't think she had one. 

 

This is from a New Hampshire newspaper from May 1969. I used it in a post a half dozen years ago. The cite is there. I don't have it anymore. She wasn’t charged with driving without a license: ‘Oh, I must have left it at home’. She was charged with driving without a valid license. She pled guilty. She didn’t say ‘wait, here it is” when she got to court. She paid the fine. 

Now maybe she fixed that before she cut out to California a few weeks later. But I don't think she did.  

 

Deb reminded me of this. Thanks Deb. Remember that detective named Deemers? Remember his list? 

Deb: "Regarding Kasabian's driver's license, look at Deemer's list. While it is true that not a lot of Family members have driver's licenses there were members with licenses. Kitty Lutesinger, Dianne Lake, Tex, Nancy Pitman, Mark Ross, Claudia Smith aka Linda Baldwin, Leslie Van Houten to name a few of the inter-circle members. 

But if you look at Linda Kasabian's entry on Deemer's list, no DL#. 

I figure Deemer's list was compiled in November or early December 1969. You will notice that Tex is listed under the name Charles Montgomery. They still hadn't quite gotten the names straight. There're a couple other people who are listed by their alias and not their true name."

Kitty Lutesinger from the list: 

 

Deemers listed her Missouri address and noted the Missouri driver's license. 

And Kasabian: 

Deemers got her New Hampshire address right but something else is missing. Where is the "DL#"? 

Even in the unlikely event that her license was valid, that fact might explain her driving or riding along to visit Grogan, while Manson drove and a member of the inner circle like Brunner went inside to talk to Grogan but it does not explain why she was the messenger. Someone told her the escape plan or she already knew it and she was the one to pass it on to Grogan and probably even waited for him to make his break. 

Her visit is the same day he skipped out: July 19^th. The hospital noted their belief someone left Grogan a car. Tracing Linda Drouin would lead to Wilson's house and, of course she would not be there. But maybe they/she waited for him. How many cars did they have at the ranch? 

This page shows Kasabian as an active participant in the organization, planning and execution of Grogan’s escape (a crime by the way). I do not think Bugliosi wanted that to be part of the record, any record, including his own version when he did everything in his power to distance Kasabian from any such role including, specifically, disarming her at Cielo Drive.

 

I think Ms. Kasabian was a little more involved, a little closer to the throne so to speak, than we were led to believe by Mr. Bugliosi. I also think Bugliosi knew that and that is why he didn’t name the "one of the girls from the Family" who helped Grogan escape. “One of the girls from the Family” makes you think of someone other than Kasabian, doesn’t it? 

 

I tried to find where Bugliosi eventually identified this ‘girl’ in Helter Skelter. I searched the terms Grogan, Clem, escape, Camarillo, hospital and even Kasabian and Drouin and found nothing. If it is there somewhere I couldn’t find it. 

 

But even if I missed it and it is there, one could still ask ‘why didn’t you name her right there on page 173? I think the answer is obvious. 

 

Pax vobiscum

 

Dreath

Linda Kasabian Has Passed

The Seattle based News Tribune lists Chiochios, Linda Darlene, of Tacoma 73, as having passed on Jan. 21.

https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/article272541349.html

UPDATE:

A copy of Linda's death certificate.

What Linda Kasabian Read

Linda Kasabian was a very good witness. Before every trial I tell my witnesses several things: tell the truth, treat the judge like Christ, don’t argue with opposing counsel, and answer only the question you are asked. Listen to the question and answer only that. After I do that I pick some recent event like a football game and say to the client something like ‘Hey, did you see that catch last night?’ Invariably they will respond ‘Wasn’t that an amazing catch?’ I will then respond ‘That’s not what I asked you.’ And to her credit, Kasabian is a very, very good witness in this regard. 

Here is what she said under the less than scintillating cross examination of Daye Shinn. 

Remember, most of what Kasabian read or saw before December 5, 1969 is irrelevant. Until Susan Atkins testifies before the Grand Jury almost everything she read was, factually inaccurate, and not likely to have had any impact on her testimony. 

If we assume Kasabian was either coached or picked up her story from the official narrative that narrative does not exist until Susan Atkins testifies before the Grand Jury or her story makes it into the press. We can quibble on when Atkins told Bugliosi her tale but as a practical matter until that story comes to light there is very little to fill in those missing memory jigsaw pieces.
_____


Q (Shinn): Now, before you talked to anyone about this, did you read about these two events in the newspaper?
A (Kasabian): No, I don’t think so.
Q: You did not read about it in the newspapers, in New Mexico or Miami or Boston?
A: Oh, yeah, when I was in Miami I saw something about Sharon Tate.
Q: Did you read it?
A: Yes, I think I did.
Q: Were there any pictures in the newspaper?
A: Yes.
Q: Did you look at the pictures very closely?
A: It was just a picture of Sharon Tate when she was pregnant.
Q: Did it show pictures of the house?
A: No, just Miss Tate.
Q: Did you see this on TV?
A: No.
Q: Did you not see these events on television?
A: When I was at the ranch?
Q: At any time.
A: When I was at the ranch I did, yes.
Q: And what did you observe on TV as to the Tate incident?
A: Just their names and faces.
Q: Did it show the house?
A: It probably did, yes.
Q: Now, do you recall what part of the house they showed?
A: No.
Q: Is that the only time you saw it on television?
A: Yes.
Q: And you did not see it on television any other place?
A: No, no.
Q: How about magazines, did you read about this in magazines?
A: Yes, just before I turned myself in.
Q: What magazine was that?
A: Life or Look,
Q: Is that the edition where it had Charlie’s picture on the front?
A: No, it was just a small article and it had a small picture of Miss Tate.
All I remember is that they thought it had something to do with homosexual killing, or something.
Q: And is it your testimony that is all the news you read about?
A: Yes.
Q: About these two incidents?
A: Yes.
Q: only the two items?
A: Yeah.
Q: Are you sure or you don’t remember?
A: I think I’m pretty sure, yes. 

(Testimony of Linda Kasabian, Cielodrive.com)
_____

We thus have three occasions where Kasabian admits seeing something about this crime.


1.    The TV the day following the Tate murders.
2.    Something she read in Life or Look magazine that had a small image of Sharon Tate and discussed a ‘homosexual’ angle to the case shortly before she turned herself in.
3.    Something she read in Miami Florida that had an image of a pregnant Sharon Tate.  

[Aside: There is a fourth media exposure identified by her mother when her mother showed her the headline of a newspaper that indicated she was being sought by the authorities after her indictment. Kasabian in that same article responded that she had heard the news on the radio. Mother Tells How Linda Kasabian Changed, San Antonio Express, August 30, 1970.) 

TV The Morning After

We know the killers and others watched the news the morning following the Cielo Drive murders. We don’ know which channel or what they watched. At that point no one reported anything of substance about the crime so it is highly unlikely that would have had any significant impact on her later testimony.

Life or Look Magazine Before She Turned Herself In

The article she describes appeared in Life Magazine, November 7, 1969. It is set forth below. There is nothing in the article that could have influenced her testimony because, again, the ‘facts’ discussed in the piece predate the Grand Jury and are inaccurate. There is only one image and as she testified that is a very small image of Sharon Tate. 

Something She Read in Miami

Although the exact dates that Kasabian was in Miami are unclear, she was there sometime after the murders and arrived in New Hampshire (via Boston) before December 1, 1969. 

In an effort to find this article I scoured every newspaper archive I could access from Key West to Tallahassee. This included both the Miami Herald and the Miami News. I looked at every article that mentioned Sharon Tate or any search term I could think up related to Sharon Tate or the murders. I did not find any image of a pregnant Sharon Tate. 

I then shifted to New Mexico and finally California. I chose the former thinking she got the location wrong and the later because it has the most articles and any UPI/AP article that I might have been unable to access in Florida I thought would likely show up in California. My search ran from August 8, 1969 until December 5, 1969. These dates, obviously predate the murders and extend past Kasabian’s stay in Florida. 

I found nothing. Now, that does not mean I didn’t miss something and if someone knows about this article I’ll add it. But my search revealed no images of a pregnant Sharon Tate in any newspaper. 

The contemporary images of a pregnant Sharon Tate originate from two sources. One is the film in the camera found at Cielo Drive and taken a few days before the crime (left). The other images, such as the two to the right, were taken by Terry O’Neill in England in early July 1969 shortly before she returned to the United States, arriving in Los Angeles on July 20th. Some sources claim they were taken “days before the murders” or on “August 6, 1969”. That, of course, is nonsense.  

Then I reread Ms. Kasabian’s testimony. Notice Shinn never directly asks her where she saw the image. He should have asked that. This entire line of questioning exists because Shinn has some vague understanding that her testimony could have been influenced by outside sources. Actually, that’s giving him too much credit. What he was trying to create was the impression that Kasabian had read the story of the crimes in the press and made up her testimony. He would have been better served

following the ‘false memory’ chain. 
_____

Q: You did not read about it in the newspapers, in New Mexico or Miami or Boston?
A: Oh, yeah, when I was in Miami I saw something about Sharon Tate.
Q: Did you read it?
A: Yes, I think I did.
Q: Were there any pictures in the newspaper?
A: Yes.
Q: Did you look at the pictures very closely?
A: It was just a picture of Sharon Tate when she was pregnant.
_____

Notice that Shinn assumes it was in a newspaper. All Kasabian does is indicate she saw “something”. Kasabian previously indicated that she had not read the newspapers. But she does say she saw something. said it wasn’t. 
_____

Q: Shinn: Now, before you talked to anyone about this, did you read about these two events in the newspaper?
A: No, I don’t think so. 
_____


I don’t believe it was in the newspaper, in part, because I couldn’t find it and in part because it doesn’t make sense to me. I don’t think Terry O’Neill would have turned his photographs over to the daily press. In fact, this is the most frequently appearing image of Sharon Tate at the time which I think tells us something about the press. But he did turn them over to others and that is where I believe Ms. Kasabian saw the image. 

I found two possible sources. Both contain an image of a pregnant Sharon Tate. 

Kasabian previously indicated that she had not read the newspapers. Well, she at least pulls the dodge of saying ‘I don’t think so’. And, to her credit, what she read wasn’t in the newspaper. Shinn is the one who places it there. Kasabian doesn’t do that. 

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[Aside: As to the Screenland article since I could not find a complete or readable image of the article. It is set forth in full at the bottom of this post.]

I don’t think Kasabian would have read Screenland, even if she could find it in Miami. But, since she read Life I believe it is likely the Polanski returns to Cielo article is what she saw. After all, she read the other article in Life. The Polanski returns article was joined by Life’s coverage of Woodstock and that may have triggered her interest. 

I believe Kasabian is referring to this Life magazine article about Polanski. But I also don’t think she lied when she said it showed no images of the house. I am aware it does show images of the house.  I believe the only memory of the article that she held onto was the image of a pregnant Sharon Tate, which may have stayed with her because of the shock of realizing/seeing who she actually helped to murder. 

Notice, unlike the other Life article she doesn’t mention the content. Remember she too was pregnant. Given what she had experienced all of that is consistent with how eyewitness memory works. But, if I am right, it does make her testimony, inaccurate on this fine point. 

Another problem with her testimony on this issue is another Shinn problem. Notice he doesn’t set any timeframe. He never bothers to specifically ask her the simple question if she read anything after December 5, 1969 and like a good witness she doesn’t offer anything. 

Pax Vobiscum

Dreath
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Screenland - November 1969 Interview with Sheliah Wells by Marcia Borie

Sharon Tate

"She Was So Generous, So Trusting, She Never Shut Her Door To Anyone."They tell you that Sharon Tate was involved in a sex cult. Or a drug cult. Maybe it was the hippies. Or maybe it was witchcraft. Whatever-the Sharon Tate of the headlines is a little bit lurid and very far out.

But somewhere there was a real Sharon Tate. What happened to her during her years in Hollywood? Why had she ended tragically, so grotesquely? What was Sharon Tate really like? We turned to her closest girlfriend, actress Sheliah Wells, for the answers.

We think this exclusive interview is the truest, most loving thing you'll ever read about Sharon Tate."Sharon Tate was my best friend. Once, we were roommates. She introduced me to my husband. She was the godmother to my baby daughter who is named for her.

"In the six years time that I knew her, she never said an unkind word about anyone. In all the thousands of words that have been printed about her since her death, none really told about my friend - about the Sharon Tate I knew.

We were introduced six years ago by a man who was my agent as well as hers, Hal Gefsky. We got along so well that the first week we met we decided to try and find an apartment together. And that's how it all started - our friendship.

The place we shared was a nice one-bedroom apartment on Clark Drive. It was tastefully decorated in early actress. And there were all these people always dropping in. Sharon really loved being hospitable.

From the beginning, my friends used to tease me. 'How can you wake up in the morning and look at that face of hers?' It was a good question. Sharon was so over overwhelmingly, so incredibly beautiful that anyone not knowing her might think it took a lot to live with such a beauty. But you see that was another thing about Sharon. With all her beauty, everyone loved her. I never heard anyone say a bad word about her, not even another actress. And in this town that's not only a rarity, it's an impossibility!

I think the greatest thing I could say about Sharon was that she was for real. I mean really for real. Like I said, I haven't heard any stories or news reports that tell about Sharon the way she really was. Even I, who loved her, find it hard to say what I mean so that she doesn't come out sounding all spun sugary. Sharon was the type of a girl who had no defenses, no pretenses, she was just herself all the time. Like if a friend said, 'Hey, that brand of toothpaste you're using is no good. It hurts the enamel.' Most people would answer back, 'Well, maybe you think so, but my dentist recommended it, so there.' You know, on the defensive. But if you said the same thing to Sharon, she'd say, 'Oh really? No kidding? Gee, bad for the enamel? Then I guess I'd better change brands.' It was this incredible talent of hers for believing everybody, for being so easily persuaded, that may have eventually done her more harm than good.

She was so trusting, so eager to accept people as they were, so generous. Why, there were times, this past year or so, when a whole bunch of people would be at her house and she'd come up to me and say, 'Hey, I wonder who so and so is.' Just like it wasn't her house and she wasn't entitled to know. Sharon never shut her door to anyone.

Anyway, we shared an apartment for a year. Then Sharon left. For a while she dated Jay Sebring and then she went off to Europe to make a film. She met Roman over there.

You know something funny. I've never seen Sharon on film. I know that sounds strange but I just never did, even as close as we were - or perhaps because we were so close. It's like if a friend said to you, 'I did something yesterday and it wasn't very good, so don't tell.' If you were a close friend, you wouldn't. Well, that's how Sharon felt about her movies. Always she'd tell me, 'Oh, Sheliah, the movie I just made was so awful, don't bother going to see it.' And because I had such love and respect for our friendship, I never did.

As far as Sharon and her relationships with people, she always had a way of finding such goodness in others. If someone hurt her, she'd say, "Oh, Sheliah, I'm sure they didn't mean to.' She'd always make excuses for others. Sharon was just totally loving and also totally vulnerable. She was just a remarkable person, she never gave up on anybody.

Sharon used to say that Wende Wagner and I were her two closest friends. Wende is married to Jim Mitchum. She's a darling girl. Both of us, I think, represented a kind of security and stability that Sharon never seemed to find. We were her touch with the real world. Both Wende and I make up our minds to do a thing and then go ahead and do it. But Sharon was always so easily persuaded, so vulnerable. I keep using that word but it's one that fits her so well. Vulnerable.

There's one thing some people have wondered about. Whether or not the baby could have been saved if the police had come in time. I don't know about that, but all I can tell you is that Sharon wanted that baby more than anything else in the world. That baby belonged to her. Now he will always be with her. They will have a headstone together. It will say: Sharon Tate Polanski and Baby Son Paul Richard Polanski. Yes, they gave the baby a name. He was named Paul for Sharon's father, and Richard for Roman's father.

As far as Sharon's marriage was concerned, all I can tell you is that Sharon and Roman were in love. They were a combination of beauty and genius. She tried so hard to please him.

You know it's funny, but all the time we were roommates, Sharon and I never went out on a double date. Sharon liked one kind of boy, I liked another. In fact, all the time we shared an apartment Sharon never tried to fix me up on a date. Then one day, after she'd moved out, I was really surprised when she called and wanted to introduce me to someone. She had been working on a film called 'Don't Make Waves' with Robert Webber. They'd had lunch together with an actor friend, Fred Beir. Suddenly Robert and Sharon decided that Fred and I would be perfect for each other. Fred and I fell in love on our first date. We were married in January, 1967. Sharon and Roman were married a year later, in January, 1968. My baby, Amanda Tate, was born March 16, 1969. And five weeks later, Fred and I started to have serious problems.

Although Sharon was in Europe at the time, she heard about Freddie and me. So when she came home, just three weeks before she died, Sharon called Freddie and invited him to come up to her house. He went over and she talked to him. That was Sharon. She was always going out on a limb for everyone. Everyone but herself.

There was an ethereal quality about her. She had this thing I sometimes wished I'd had, even though I knew that eventually it might be bad for me. Do you understand? She had this kind of beauty and fragility, and you just knew she was bound to get hurt because of it. But still you couldn't help but admiring that quality in her. She was just such a special person.

Early on the night she was murdered, my phone rang. It was Sharon. She asked me to come over. I told her I couldn't, that I was having a few people in for dinner. Then she said, 'Can I come over to your house?' I said, sure, of course, come on over. But a little while later she called and said she wasn't coming. She was too tired, she said. She'd decided just to go over to a local drive-in and get a hamburger. I told her that was silly. In the time it took her to drive to the restaurant she could come over to my place. And I asked her to spend the night. But Sharon said no. She had to do her hair. She thought she'd better stay home. She was so lonely, she said, she missed Roman and she was so tired. She decided not to come.

The next morning my phone rang. It was a girlfriend of mine named Mary Ann Gordon calling. She had met Sharon and she knew how close we were. She just said, 'How are you?' But I could tell she had been crying. I said, 'I'm fine. What's the matter?' She couldn't talk. She handed the phone to her boyfriend. And he told me.

I couldn't believe it. I just hung up and I was totally in shock.

Fred and I went to the funeral together. When the day was over, we talked about our problems and discovered that they were nothing compared with our love for each other. Without saying it in so many words, both of us realized how precious life together was. And how precious our baby was to us. It was Sharon's death which brought us closer. It was almost as if, in death, she was telling us all how much it meant to be able to live.

I never really stopped to think about it until now, but for the past six years so many good things have happened to me were because of my friendship with Sharon. She was always there. When I went to the hospital to have the baby, Sharon was the first person to come see me. She was so thrilled when I asked her to be the godmother and when she knew the baby's middle name was for her.

And when I got home, Sharon sent so many things for the baby. Come, I'll show you." Sheliah took me into Amanda Tate's nursery. She pointed to the mobile over the crib, a big candy clown standing on a tiny white table, a stuffed dog. "There's just so much of Sharon here." She opened the bottom drawer of the baby's dresser and pulled out a tiny yellow-flowered outfit. She took it. 'See it has bells on it that jingle. Sharon brought that over just two weeks ago. She got it for the baby in Europe.

The same day she brought the baby's dress, she came loaded down with swatches of fabrics. She was decorating her own baby's nursery. She wanted me to look at the colors she had picked out. She had selected red, white and blue.

She was just so anxious that everything be right for her baby. That's all she talked about. She used to kid about it. She's say, 'Won't it be terrible if the baby is born with my brains and Roman's looks!' Then we'd giggle"

The red, white and blue nursery colors reminded this reporter of reading about the murder scene and how there was an American flag draped over Sharon's sofa. I asked about it. Sheliah nodded. "Yes, it's true, there was a flag draped over the back of the sofa. It had been there ever since Voityck and Gibby (Abigail Folger) moved in. It belonged to them. Whenever I went over to Sharon's and I'd see the flag there, I'd tell her it wasn't right. She'd nod and say she knew, but that Gibby and Voityck thought it was funny.

That was Sharon. She knew that the others were making fun of the flag, of the establishment. She didn't go along with it, but felt she might hurt them if she took it away.

That's what I mean about Sharon being so impressionable, so vulnerable, so easily swayed. She'd just accept people for what they were. She got involved with some very odd types because she thought she could help them. But all the while it was Sharon herself who needed the help.

You know, in just the last few months Sharon was beginning to come into her own. She never cared about being beautiful. She never even really cared about acting. She just wanted to love and be loved. And have her baby.

I know that if she'd lived and had the baby everything would have been different for her. Because that is what Sharon really wanted. She was just a little girl from Texas who was so incredibly beautiful that she got swept up in all of the Hollywood nonsense. But all she ever wanted was what every woman wants - a man to love and a baby of her own.

I can't believe that the murderers knew her. To know Sharon, to really know her, was to love her. There is just no way that anyone who knew her could have hurt her so.

Sheliah picked up little Amanda Tate and walked me to the door. She hugged her baby tight. "You know, Wende Mitchum has a little baby, and I have Amanda, and all Sharon was waiting for was the day when the three of us could bring our babies up together. They would have been friends, close friends. Just like we were.