She was present at both the Tate–LaBianca murders committed by the cult members in 1969, but received legal immunity for her testimony as a key witness in District Attorney Vincent Bugliosi's prosecution of Manson and his followers.
She was the eldest child, and her mother Joyce has remarked that with so many younger children and stepchildren to care for, she was not able to devote the necessary attention to her teenage daughter.
[2] She dropped out of high school and ran away from home at the age of sixteen due to conflict with her stepfather, Jake Byrd, whom she claimed mistreated both her and her mother.
When her second marriage, to Armenian American Robert Kasabian, began to sour, Linda and her baby daughter Tanya returned to New Hampshire to live with her mother.
[5] Through Melton she met Catherine Share, who told Kasabian about an idyllic ranch outside Los Angeles where a commune of hippies were establishing a "hole in the earth" paradise to escape an anticipated race war which they referred to as "Helter Skelter."
In early summer, 1969, she decided against attending a July 4 Malibu "love-in" and instead—daughter Tanya in tow—joined Share and traveled to the Spahn Ranch in the Chatsworth area outside Los Angeles, where she met Charles Manson and soon became a member of his "Family".
[5] Kasabian was welcomed by group members, who greeted her with professions of peace and love and assurances that she and her daughter would be cared for, provided she proved loyal.
"[4] She began joining family members on their "creepy crawls", quietly sneaking into random homes in Los Angeles to steal money while the occupants slept.
Kasabian stated she saw Watson shoot and kill Steven Parent, a teenager who had come to visit the caretaker, William Garettson.
Kasabian said in her testimony, "There was a man just coming out of the door and he had blood all over his face and he was standing by a post, and we looked into each other's eyes for a minute, and I said, 'Oh, God, I am so sorry.
[4] According to Watson and Atkins, Kasabian stood rooted to the front lawn, watching with a horrified expression as her companions committed murder.
[9] Kasabian testified that, while in a state of shock, she ran toward the car, started it up, and considered driving away to get help, but then became concerned for her daughter back at the Spahn Ranch.
Her testimony was considered to be the most dramatic segment of the very long trial, and it received an unprecedented amount of news media coverage.
During the trial, unjailed members of the Manson family led a campaign of intimidation against Kasabian in an effort to prevent her from testifying.
Manson ran a finger across his throat, glaring at Kasabian as she testified, an act he repeated during the testimony of other prosecution witnesses.
[10] During Kasabian's cross-examination, Manson's defense lawyer Irving Kanarek showed her large color crime-scene photographs of the Tate murders.
[10] Manson and Krenwinkel's defense attorney Paul Fitzgerald later asserted that Kanarek's tactic—meant to discredit Kasabian—was a grave error that completely backfired and exonerated the state's primary witness.
[10] On January 25, 1971, the defendants were found guilty on all counts by the jury, leading to the penalty phase of the trial, which decided the punishments of the convicted.
Over the years, these accusations have been publicly repudiated by many of the former Family members who originally offered the tale, including Catherine Share (in 1997),[13] Susan Atkins (in 1977),[14] and particularly Tex Watson, who in 1978 described those allegations as "patently ridiculous.
"[15] The news media coverage of the Manson trial had made Linda Kasabian a well-known figure by the time the sentences had been handed down, with opinions about her ranging from sympathetic to hostile.
Later, Cineflix, a production company in the United Kingdom and Canada, produced a docu-drama called Manson, in which Kasabian appeared, telling her story in complete detail for the first time.
She told Larry King during the interview that after the trial she had been in need of, but had never obtained, "psychological counseling" and that during the previous 12 years, she had been "on a path of healing and rehabilitation".
In his 2016 book Sharon Tate and the Manson Murders, author Greg King recounted an October 1996 police raid by the Tacoma, Washington police department where Kasabian and her daughter, Quanu, had been arrested after "rock cocaine and a large bundle of cash in a dresser drawer" were discovered along with a semi-automatic handgun and ammunition.
According to King, Kasabian's daughter was tried and found guilty of possession of controlled substances and sentenced to serve time in a Washington state prison.