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Where Is Linda Kasabian, the Key Witness in the Charles Manson Murder Trial, Today?
Manson Family member Linda Kasabian was the driver and lookout during the group's two-night killing spree.
At the 1970 trial of Charles Manson and his followers, Linda Kasabian’s testimony helped put the cult leader and four members of his "Family" away after the Tate-LaBianca murders.
Peacock’s three-part docuseries Making Manson, streaming now, shines a spotlight on Kasabian’s key role during and after the two-night murder spree in August 1969 that left pregnant actress Sharon Tate and six others dead.
Fifty-five years later, where is Kasabian today? Learn more about the woman who went from being part of Manson’s Family to the star witness for the prosecution at the cult leader's trial.
Who is Linda Kasabian?
Born in 1949 in Maine, Kasabian met Manson in Los Angeles when she was 20. At the time she was pregnant and already the mother of an infant daughter, according to Biography.
Kasabian soon fell under Manson’s thrall. She was a driver and lookout at the L.A. murders that claimed the lives of actress Sharon Tate, hairstylist Jay Sebring, coffee heiress Abigail Folger, producer Wojciech Frykowski, and Steven Parent, as well as Leno and Rosemary LaBianca.
“Linda Kasabian should have been tried with all the rest of them,” journalist Linda Deutsch said in Making Manson, which includes recorded audio jailhouse conversations with Manson and interviews with former family members, reporters, and attorneys.
“She drove the car both nights,” Deutsch added. “That is the key to felony murder. She was a participant. She brought them there and she saw them kill people. But Linda Kasabian had a great lawyer.”
What Linda Kasabian said at the Manson trial
Kasabian’s attorney went to prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi and informed him that she was willing to testify against Manson in exchange for immunity.
“She was in custody when she testified and after her testimony was over, she was set free,” trial prosecutor Stephen Kay said in Making Manson. “You have to determine the credibility of people and Linda Kasabian was a very credible witness. She was devastated by these murders.”
Deutsch, who covered the sensational true-crime saga, offered another perspective.
“Under normal circumstances she would not be a reliable witness,” she said, “because she was trying to save herself.”
At trial, Kasabian provided detailed accounts of the events and the dynamics within the Manson family, which helped law enforcement build a case against Manson and his followers.
Where is Linda Kasabian today?
After testifying, Kasabian was asked by the media if she ever wanted to see Manson and his family members again.
Kasabian’s response, included in Making Manson, distanced herself from the cult. “I'd like to see them fall on their knees and beg for forgiveness,” she said.
After the trial, Kasabian moved to New Hampshire and changed her surname to Christian to avoid attention. She worked as a cook and raised four children. She later moved to Tacoma, Washington, where she used the name Linda Chiochios and worked as an in-home caregiver, Tacoma News Tribune reported.
In 2009, she told Larry King in an interview that she thought about the killings every day and had tried to live a normal life, according to the Tacoma News Tribune report.
“I’ve been on a mission of health and rehabilitation,” she told the talk-show host.
Kasabian died in Tacoma on January 21, 2023 at the age of 73.
Making Manson is now streaming on Peacock.
