(been busy, will try to have more for you even though there doesn't seem to actually BE very much new)
So I am more convinced than ever than ever that Linda Kasabian knows more about what happened than she is letting on. And I theorize that she maybe did NOT know when the case was happening but that she knows now. Through the trials. Through the coaching of the BUG. Through just living the lie.
Think about it. Remember we all were shocked when Bug openly coached and corrected her on Larry King last summer? How obvious and fucked up was that?
But if you are going to sell the lie, as BUG did , then you need to make sure that the liars go along with the lie. And at some point that means they need to learn the truth. Otherwise how can you avoid it?
Amirite? I mean, when you tell your mom you weren't out all night you do so fully knowing what you WERE doing.
Long time readers know I think she should have gotten the chair like the rest of them. That there isn't an honest bone in her body. But in order to be successfully DIShonest doesn't she have to know at least some of the truth?
15 comments:
Yana the Witch !!
I never really bought the whole " she went because she was the only one with a license" story. Since when did that stop any of them from driving all over and back and forth to death valley etc etc... Also- she was sneaky enough to steal from her ex husband and associates. So she was not the innocent hippie " angel" bugs wanted her to be either...
But... I'm not sure that she was smart enough, or connected enough to be a part of the type of stuff I think may have went down. She was fairly new to the scene, and came from the east coast, so she didn't have the same local ties the rest of them did, or time around the rest of them to make them. What would Bugs have to gain by telling her anything other than " Go along with what I say and you will not pay like the rest of them" ? I do agree totally she became his puppet, and no doubt he directed her every step of the way... But Kasabian as a double agent, or being smart enough to play both sides?????
Also- right before Susan Atkins checked into the more permanent prison she is at now, she wrote an updated version of her story( yes it changed again lol) on her website, and aside from the usual stuff there was one good point buried in there. If she didn't stab Sharon Tate ( and who knows there have been so many stories from all of them) but if she didnt...
She actually has a better case than Kasabian. They both did almost the same thing both nights- and Linda drove- so she would have had more of an impact of actually getting Tex and Katie who did almost all of the real damage to the location than Susan did. The second night Susan would have been as culpable as Clem was for also being a passenger- and Clem didn't get charged for TLB at all.
But Linda Kasabian got the free pass, and maybe there is a reason for that beyond what we know????
As far as culpability is concerned I've never understood all of this either. Why did Clem get a pass on TLB? It would have been a slam dunk to try him with CM & the girls and get an easy conviction.
Instead he only gets time for the Shea murder and gets parole. Why? He's as culpable as Leslie for sure. He was too drugged out and stupid to be a state's witness, so why give him a pass?
Linda was/is a follower, so it was easy to cut a deal with her given the fact that she DEFINITELY didn't fire a gun or swing a blade. Susan may have. There has always been conflicting stories on that. I personally don't think she killed Sharon. Tex did. But, she held her down. Plus, she acted batshit crazy in jail. Linda didn't, making her an easy and coachable witness for BUG.
But Clem???? Still a head scratcher to me.
Looks like cielodrive.com is getting a facelift (and hopefully updates). Site says it will be relaunched August 9.
Matt....
Why do you think a TLB conviction for Clem would have been a slam dunk and why do you think Clem was 'as culpable as Leslie for sure?'
I think a LaBianca conviction for Clem would have been a slam dunk simply because he was in the car. When CM sent Tex, Leslie & Pat into the LB house, he (Clem) drove away with Sadie, Charlie & Linda to kill Linda's actor acquaintance. To me that seems open & shut.
Susan was charged & convicted in the LB killings, but for some reason Clem was not. In the eyes of the law, I feel he should have been charged equally.
Sorry I wasn't clear on "as culpable as Leslie". Clem participated in at least one murder. He whacked Shorty in the back of the head with a wrench which was the first blow in his slow painful murder. He also helped dispose of his body.
Leslie stabbed Rosemary LaBianca. She participated in at least one murder, just not the same one as Clem.
During that crazy summer his crimes were at least as horrible as Leslie's but she rots in prison while he has been free for decades.
He wasn't charged in the LaBianca murders because the only thing against him at the time was Susan saying he was in the car. It wasn't til later that Linda told about her actor friend. So someone saying he was in the car really wouldn't have been enough for a first degree murder conviction.
Unlike Susan...Susan had been blabbing how fun it was to stab Sharon Tate, and she knew a lot about the LaBianca murders from the killers.
Plus the crazy thing...they thought he was nuts.
Look at Charlie...he actually was in the house, he set those people up to be butchered and his conviction wasn't a slam dunk.
I understand what you're saying comparing Leslie's time for participating in the LaBianca murders to Clem's participation in Shorty's murder. He killed him. He only told where Shorty's body was years later so they'd see his head hadn't been cut off...still Shorty's murder was very brutal, he clubbed him from behind and stabbed him in the chest, and all those years he said nothing about Shorty's remains, so only 15 years...when he'd been sentenced to die til the judge said no on that...doesn't seem like much. But I think a better comparison would be to Bobby. By the time Bobby is eligible to apply for parole again, he will have served 45 years for killing Gary Hinman...30 years longer than Clem served for brutally murdering Shorty.
seems to have turned out o.k. which is funny because...
Clem was considered the most crazy and he lived a fairly productive life to date, and Linda was considered the one with the best conscious and the least dangerous, and she turned her free life into a huge mess...
So who knows????
My honest feeling about Linda and the rest of them is that there were two psychopaths among them and that was Tex, and Kaite. When Clem/Susan/Linda were left alone without Tex, or Katie- they obviously weren't in a huge rush to hurt anyone, and Leslie had to be egged on to do anything either- I visualize Leslie being like a little kid on the side of a road poking a stick into a dead frog ( Sorry for the cold hearted comparison) at the prodding of her older siblings.. Not that any of them should be excused, but I personally think that Charlie had very few who would actually go through with his ideas when they crossed a certain line- and almost all of the violence involved those few. Linda was not any more violent than most of the others, but she was also no less a liar, and a person who chose a very promiscuous and responsibility free life. She was one of the settled, and the least responsible. No mother on earth would have left there child in that environment knowing what she knew. But she went around doing whatever was best for her, and running from guy to guy, and stealing from people who trusted her to help other people- who she then screwed as well when that suited her. Karma that her life turned out the way it did-
No????
Moving around from place to place with her infant. Moving from one guy to the next- with no chance to let the baby get attached to anyone father figure... Abandoning the baby... Charlie must have seen alot of his own mother in Linda...
just wanted to say thank you for this new post
You're kinder toward Leslie than I am...I don't see Leslie as someone that needed prodding. I know she's always said that she was staring in the hallway while Tex killed Rosemary and that afterward he handed her a knife and said do something...but one or two stabs later and she was pretty good at it...16 times into dying Rosemary's backside.
Plus she needed no prodding to go along that night, she was more than willing, and aware of what was going to happen...she believed invading a private home and butchering the occupants was something that 'had to be done.' She had no problem walking into the house...no one dragged her up the driveway, and no problem helping herself to the knife drawer in the kitchen. She got right to it.
Along with Pat, she took Rosemary into the bedroom...by most accounts it was Leslie that put the pillowcase over Rosemary's head and tied her down with a cord around her neck...imagine the screaming and hysteria, the fighting and shoving as she held Rosemary with Pat stabbing at her, and when they couldn't do it, she called in Tex ...to kill her like he was killing Leno. She wiped off fingerprints and helped herself to clothes and food. Not a little scaredy cat in the corner.
Just saying...she says things like she stood in the hall staring into the next room while Tex killed Rosemary and minimizes tearing up Rosemary's backside with 'i felt she was dead' but her actions in the car, in the house, and inflicting 16 stab wounds to Rosemary don't seem like actions of an unwilling participant.
hey Col, glad to see you are posting again! as per usual, though, I still think you are off-track when it comes to Kasabian and case secrets. If any shenanigans were going on behind the scenes with the attorneys, they would have been hidden from her so as not to risk having her questioned about it at trial. Bug wasn't coaching/correcting her to LIE on Larry King. He was being annoying and aggressive and controlling, but it was more about advancing the "story" of the facts because she wasn't presenting it in a media-friendly manner. Too soft-spoken and simplistic in her descriptions. He's a camera-hungry media whore, she is not. He knows how the fast-paced media game of soundbytes is played, she does not. He was pushing her, but he wasn't correcting her, or telling her to lie. The Larry King setting wasn't right for her to be interviewed. In contrast, she seemed perfectly natural, fairly eloquent, and quite credible during that other History Channel documentary interview, without dumb Larry asking dumb questions and without Bugliosi goading her. That is probably similar to how she sounded on the witness stand 40 years ago.
A lot of the stuff you guys are slamming her for are things that thousands of lost hippie kids were doing at the time (roaming, drugs, irresponsible parenting). Obviously I'm not referring to the matter of being a party to murder and such. But I think you're barking up the wrong tree when looking to her for the secrets, lies, and the deeper hidden answers. her story ends where it ends. There might be deeper things to this case but they have nothing to do with Kasabian, just a dumb, lost druggie girl follower, acting irrationally under extremely irrational circumstances, and coming to her senses a little too late.
I just had to pipe up!
Looks like cielodrive.com is mostly a rehash of it's former self except now it's selling books. Oh wait, Squeaky was released!
Im personally not knocking Linda for doing what everyone else back then was doing- I just pointed out that with her gift of freedom- she apparently never stopped doing it...
Leslie was and is guilty of everything you point out Marliese- I just wonder if without the " prodding, or influence" of the more aggressive ones- she or a couple of the others would have actually put the violent actions to the violent ideas... But they did, and they are wrong- no argument here on that.
Just remember one thing, and this is no excuse- but a fair thing to point out...
There were ALOT of people in that group vying for attention. alot of people looking for ways to please the others. When you are that age, and under those conditions, and in Leslie's case- one of the younger ones- talking a good game is very very common, and how many teenagers say things and do things that they might normally want to do to " fit in" now this is very extreme- but so were the circumstances, and the choices a person has to make are directly proportionate to the situations they find themselves in when they have to make them. So the decisions that some of them had to make to fit in, were alot more dire and drastic than we are used to...
Again- not an excuse- but just something to think about. Many of them Still decided not to cross the line, so it cant be used as a excuse and I get that...
Thanks for the posts Col and everyone ! We need to keep it going even if there isn't anything new.
I am afraid that with the exception of passing away notices, and parole denials- there wont ever be much new...
The only chance for anything new of interest, in my opinion, would be Bobby's book. He has always maintained his integrity, and he may be the only one who actually looks at the situation ,and says " the hell with it, Im never getting out of here, so let me tell it like it really was". At least as much as he knew. That might reveal some interesting stuff that was not confirmed or revealed before, but what else is there going to be?? Charlie released the first of four new albums this week called Air- the others will be named after the rest of the ATWA acronym.. there is some typical new news lol...
The only other chance to get anything new would be to dangle a carrot in front of Bruce about his parole- get him talking..
Im off to San Fran- see you all when I get back :)
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