The Closing Argument...

Linda Kasabian. As you know, of course, Linda Kasabian originally was a defendant with these defendants and was charged with these murders in the grand jury indictment. Now, you heard the term "star witness for the prosecution" on television and in movies. However, independent and in addition to Linda Kasabian's testimony, the prosecution offered a massive amount of evidence connecting each defendant with these murders, completely apart from Linda's testimony. But Linda obviously was the single most important witness whom the prosecution called to the witness stand. At the start of Linda's testimony, I asked her why she was going to tell everything she knew about these seven murders, and she replied, "I strongly believe in truth, and I feel that truth should be spoken."

Linda was on that witness stand, ladies and gentlemen, for eighteen days. An extraordinarily long period of time for any witness to testify in any case. I think you will all agree with me that during that eighteen days Linda Kasabian and the truth were companions. Linda testified that she was born on June the twenty-first, 1949, in Bitteford, Maine. That would make her twenty-one years old now, twenty years old at the time of these murders. Her first marriage was at the age of sixteen and quickly ended in divorce. Then she married her second husband, Bob Kasabian, in September of'67. They had two children, a girl Tanya, and a boy Angel.

On July the fourth, 1969, a girl named Gypsy-her true name is Katherine Share-a member of the Family, came to visit Charles Melton. Linda had never met Gypsy before, nor had Linda ever been out to the Spahn Ranch. They got to talking to each other, and Gypsy told her that there was a beautiful man that they had all been waiting for. Gypsy told her that they were living there like a family, and that she would be accepted. Pursuant to Gypsy's invitation, and in view of the fact that she had been, in her words, rejected by Bob, Linda left her husband on July the fourth, 1969, and went to Spahn Ranch and started to live with the Family.

more on the closing argument