$Will You Die for Me? by Charles Tex Watson$

She drove with Watson, Susan Atkins and Patricia Krenwinkel to the secluded Benedict Canyon estate where Tate lived with her husband, director Roman Polanski, who was out of the country filming. MaA previous version of this article referred to Charles “Tex” Watson as “Watkins” in three instances.

Kasabian returned to Topanga the next day and absconded with the money, which she turned over to the clan along with most of her belongings.Ĥ:24 p.m. County deputy district attorney who led the prosecution of the Manson killers, wrote in his bestselling book about the case, “Helter Skelter.” He talked Kasabian into stealing $5,000 from her husband’s friend in Topanga, justifying the crime by telling her “that she could do no wrong and that everything should be shared,” Vincent Bugliosi, the L.A. On her first night at the ranch, she slept with Charles “Tex” Watson, a high-ranking member of the Manson clan. “I was like a little blind girl in the forest,” Kasabian said in her testimony at the 1970 trial, “and I took the first path that came to me.” Stranded with her 1-year-old daughter, Tanya, and pregnant with her second child, she was excited when a new acquaintance, Catherine “Gypsy” Share, invited her to Spahn Ranch, a sprawling, remote property in the San Fernando Valley where “this beautiful man named Charlie” had established a commune.

In the summer of 1969, she went to Los Angeles to reconcile with her husband, Bob Kasabian, who was staying at a friend’s trailer in Topanga Canyon, but he wound up leaving her. Like many of the era’s youthful seekers, Kasabian drifted around the country taking drugs, living in communes and practicing free love. The Times obtained a copy of her death certificate, which identified her as Linda Chiochios, one of various names she used after the Manson trials. 21 at a hospital in Tacoma, Wash., the Washington Post reported. Kasabian, who went on to serve as the chief prosecution witness in the sensational 1970 trial that sent Manson and three followers to prison for life, died Jan. Actress Sharon Tate and six others were killed under orders from Manson during a two-night rampage that would terrify Los Angeles and bring the 1960s to an abrupt and grisly end. Just weeks after joining his ragtag “family” of lost and damaged souls, Kasabian was entwined in the brutal bloodbath that became known around the world as the Tate-LaBianca murders. In 1969, 20-year-old Linda Kasabian came to California to find God.