Manson Family Member Linda Dies: Read Horrifying Tale of a Murderous Sex Cult that Changed America Forever

Linda Kasabian, a member of Charles Manson’s notorious cult that murdered film star Sharon Tate in 1969, has died at the age of 73. Her death was reported in the Tacoma News Tribune, but the cause of death was not revealed right away, said a report by the Guardian. Kasabian had kept a low profile since the deaths and had changed her name to “Chiochios” to disguise her identity, according to her death certificate.

Kasabian, aged 20 at the time, was a lookout when the so-called “Manson family” murdered Tate, the eight-month pregnant wife of film director Roman Polanski, and three others at a rented house in an elite Los Angeles neighbourhood in August 1969. The following night, she joined Manson and other cult members to the house of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, where the couple was murdered.

Prosecutors granted Kasabian immunity to testify against Manson and four of his followers in their famous 1970 trial in Los Angeles, despite the fact that he did not take part in the murders themselves. All five were found guilty. Ex-convict Manson had gathered a bunch of outcasts and runaways, including Kasabian, and built a makeshift commune at a derelict movie ranch northwest of Los Angeles.

Who Was Charles Manson

In the summer of 1969, Manson commanded his largely young, female followers to murder seven individuals as part of a scheme to create a race war, according to prosecutors. In 1969, Manson was condemned to death for the Manson Family murders and the murder of an acquaintance, Gary Hinman.

When the California Supreme Court deemed the death sentence unconstitutional in 1976, he was spared execution. In 2017, he died in prison.

Charles Manson was born in November 12, 1934 in Ohio. He was an American criminal and cult leader whose followers committed numerous murders in the late 1960s.

Manson was born to a 16-year-old girl and an unknown male. As his mother was imprisoned for armed robbery, he moved to West Virginia to live with an aunt and uncle. Beginning at the age of nine, he spent the most of his life in juvenile reformatory or jail for offences such as petty larceny, armed robbery, burglary, and auto theft, says a report by Britannica.

The savage crimes led by him and his cult of women, known as the Manson Family, symbolised for many the evil side of the hippie lifestyle that had grown in the 1960s, notably in California, as per a report by Times Live. Their actions marked the end of an era of hope and signalled the beginning of a much darker period in the American psyche, it argues.

Charles Manson’s Family

Upon his release from prison in 1967, Manson relocated to San Francisco, where he gathered a tiny but devoted following among the city’s bohemian youth culture. By 1968, he had become the leader of the “Family,” a community religious cult dedicated to studying and implementing his outlandish religious beliefs based on science fiction, the occult, and fringe psychology. He predicted an apocalyptic racial conflict that would destroy the United States and place the Family in a position of dominance.

The Family carried out multiple murders on Manson’s orders in 1969, illustrating Manson’s grip on his followers. The most well-known victim was actress Sharon Tate, wife of film director Roman Polanski, who was assassinated in her Los Angeles home with three guests.

The subsequent trial of Manson and his associates in 1970 drew widespread attention. Manson was sentenced to death in 1971, but after California abolished the death penalty in 1972, his sentence was commuted to life in prison. He became eligible for parole in 1978, but was denied both then and in following hearings.

Sharon Tate’s Murder

The up-and-coming actress and wife of director Roman Polanski was just 26, and eight and a half months pregnant, on August 8, 1969, when four people broke into her home and killed everyone inside. Manson directed his minions to a second residence in Central Los Angeles, this time owned by middle-class couple Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, to kill again the next night, trying to make the first wave of deaths appear to be part of a race war, said a report by Vox.

As per a report by Times Live, Manson was impatient with the failure of the racial war promised in The White Album’s claimed subliminal messaging. He then directed three of his family members — Tex Watson, Susan Atkins, and Linda Kasabian — to travel to the house at 10050 Cicelo Drive and kill everyone they found there.

Manson believed the residence was occupied by a record executive who had betrayed him. What he didn’t realise was that the exec wasn’t there and that the property had been rented to Tate and her husband, filmmaker Roman Polanski, who was away at the time of the killings.

The Jarring Facts About Manson

Manson relocated to San Francisco to seek a musical career, and his weird aura quickly drew a group of besotted and psychologically unstable individuals. Putting himself up as a guru of sorts, Manson attracted largely middle-class women from shattered homes, and announced that he was the Second Coming, as per a report by History Collection.

He instructed his followers to recruit male members through sex, and he quickly had a cult that accepted his pseudo-Buddhist spiritual teachings hook and sinker. They finally migrated to the Spahn Movie Ranch in exchange for free labour after years of drifting.

Manson attracted only the most weak and trusting members into the Family, and he wielded tremendous power over them. He persuaded them that they were reincarnations of the first Christians, with himself as Christ, and that the authorities were the Romans who had tormented them the first time, the report says. He barred members from possessing anything, even prescription glasses, and doused them with LSD while giving futuristic lectures. He made female members have sex with one another and forage for food in bins.

His Race War

Charles Manson had other messages for the Family besides the conventional ’60s peace-and-love aphorisms. He witnessed the simmering racial tensions between black and white people in the United States and concluded that a global race war was on the horizon. It would be started by black people who were tired of being oppressed, violently murdering white people, which would lead to retaliatory murders of black people. This would swiftly erupt into a global civil war, which black people would eventually win, exterminating all white people, who would then turn against one another and slaughter one another, the report by History Collective says.

Manson’s grand scheme was for them to hide with the Beatles in a secret city at the bottom of an abandoned mine shaft he discovered in Death Valley and wait for the world to end as promised. Once it was all done, they would emerge, and become the rulers of the victorious black race. He believed that black people were incapable of leading anything since they were born to serve, therefore he would gladly hand over power to the Manson Family and the Fab Four.

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