With her face partially obscured to protect her identity, Linda described the horror that took place at the Tate residence the night of the murders. (Linda's role in the murders was limited to driving and keeping lookout.) In this clip, she talked about the initial aftermath of the murders, and feeling remorse and fear.


Linda drove with the Family to the LaBianca's house on the second night, but did not stay for the murders. She decided that she needed to flee—with her baby daughter—in order to save her own life. However, she could not gain access to her daughter at Spahn Ranch, so she was left with no choice but to leave without her.


Forty years later, Linda is still deeply affected by the murders and her association with the Family. She says that she feels guilty that she was never punished, and received immunity in exchange for her testimony.

The clip above is from the 1973 documentary Manson, which featured interviews with some of the female family members, as well as footage shot by the family, in which they explain Charles' philosophy and the Family's way of life. (Squeaky Fromme, seen in the clip, had no involvement in the Tate/LaBianca murders, but was convicted of attempted assassination of the president, for which she served 34 years. She will be released on August 16. She is still believed to be a follower of Manson's.)

Susan Atkins
THEN: Atkins, aka "Sadie," was a 21-year-old mother of a 10-month-old baby the night she stabbed pregnant Sharon Tate to death, saying, "She asked me to spare her. I told her I didn't have any mercy for her," and that Sharon's whining got on her nerves. (Atkins' son, Zezozose Zadfrack Glutz, has since been adopted and renamed.) Also involved in the LaBianca and Hinman murders, Sadie was sentenced to death in 1971, (which was automatically commuted to life in prison after a 1972 California Supreme Court case that outlawed the use of capital punishment). Her cellmate said of her,"Sadie was so far out, even the bull dykes wouldn't mess with her." In 1974, she removed herself from the Family and became a born-again Christian. In 1977 she published her autobiography, Child of Satan, Child of God.

NOW: Atkins, now 61, has been married twice while in prison. She has been denied parole 17 times. In 2002, she filed a lawsuit with the federal court claiming she was a "political prisoner" due to the parole denials despite her suitability. Atkins is currently dying of cancer—and reportedly can only turn her head from side to side, and move one arm—and her husband has asked that she be released and allowed to die at home, arguing that it would save the state $10,000 a day in health care. Her next parole hearing is scheduled for September 2.

Leslie Van Houten
THEN: The onetime homecoming queen joined up with the Family shortly after graduating high school in 1967. At 19, she was the youngest defendant in the Tate/LaBianca murders. Having only been involved in the LaBianca murders (she stabbed Rosemary LaBianca 16 times), she said she wished she had been there the night of the Tate murders. Van Houten would giggle during testimony, thus lost the sympathy of the jurors. She was convicted of murder and sentenced to death, later commuted to life in prison. Three years after her imprisonment she fell away from Manson and the Family. She won a retrial in 1977 on the grounds of ineffective representation by counsel. While out on bail in 1978 she attended the Oscars with a friend, and wasn't recognized. She was later convicted again and sentenced to life in prison.

NOW: Van Houten, who will turn 60 this month, is in the California Institution for Women, where she's spent the past 39 years. While there, she's become a model prisoner. She's taught other illiterate inmates to read, stitched a portion of the AIDS quilt, made bedding for the homeless, and recorded books on tape for the blind, all while holding down various jobs as a clerk for different members of the prison staff. Of her remorse over the murders she says, "It's not easy. If anything, the older I get, the harder it is. I took away all that life." Filmmaker John Waters began what turned into a close friendship with Van Houten in 1985 when he attempted to interview for her Rolling Stone. Van Houten—whom Waters described "looked then, and still does, very much like actress Hilary Swank"—has been denied parole 18 times. During one parole hearing, a judge told her, "You've dug yourself quite a hole and it's going to take a little time to get out of it." Waters asks, "Can you ever dig your way out of that hole by trying to explain LSD to a parole board whose members have never taken a trip?" She is eligible for parole again this year.

Patricia Krenwinkel
THEN: Krenwinkel was 20 when she joined up with Manson. Two years later, she participated in both the Tate and LaBianca murders (specifically, stabbed Abagail Folger to death) and is the one who notoriously wrote in blood on the walls of the LaBianca home, "DEATH TO PIGS" and "HeaLter SkeLTter." She was sentenced to death, later commuted to life in prison.

NOW: Like Van Houten, Krenwinkel is active with prison programs. She's in AA and NA, and has also taught illiterate prisoners how to read, gives dance lessons, and participates in a service-dog training program. She has been denied parole 11 times.


Mary Brunner
THEN: Charles Manson's third wife, and mother of his child Michael Valentine Manson (aka "Pooh Bear"). She was arrested and jailed for credit card fraud the night of the Tate murders. She was later charged (with two other family members) for the July 1969 murder of Gary Hinman. She received immunity from prosecution in exchange for testifying against Atkins and Beausoleil. (She later repudiated her statements.) In 1971, Brunner—along with several other Family members—was arrested and convicted for taking part in the robbery of a gun store and subsequent shootout with the cops. She served six years in the California Institution for Women, where Leslie Van Houten, Susan Atkins and Patricia Krenwinkel were serving their time.

NOW: After her release from prison, she disassociated herself from the Family, regained custody of her son, changed her name and now lives in anonymity somewhere in the Midwest.

Linda Kasabian
THEN: Kasabian had the only valid driver's license of all the Family members, so she was ordered to drive the group to the Tate residence, and the LaBianca residence. (It's bizarre that they cared about traffic laws.) She later turned state's evidence against the Family, and testified at their trials.

NOW: She has refused an media interviews in the past, aside from one for A Current Affair in 1989, but on September 7, as a way to mark the 40th anniversary of the Tate/LaBianca murders, the History channel will air a special on the Family, featuring a new, and extensive interview with Kasabian.

Manson's lasting legacy: 'Live freaky, die freaky' [CNN]
Restoring Sharon Tate [LA Times]
Manson Family Women Seek Parole After Decades Behind Bars [ChattahBox]
40 Years Later, Manson Murders Remembered [ABC News]
Leslie Van Houten: A Friendship, Part 5 of 5 [HuffPo]
Manson Family member interviewed for special [Reuters]

There is a jealousy that creeps in whenever I watch Stand by Me. The relationships shared between the boys seem so real, so true. You forget that you're watching young actors; you feel as if you really get to know what it's like to be an adolescent boy. Yet there isn't really an equivalent for girls: I suppose the closest thing we have to a female version of Stand By Me is the 1995 film Now and Then.

Now and Then is a sweet little film about four friends growing up in the suburbs in the 1970’s. It is also a stereotypical mess. The four friends each represent a different female standard: there is the tomboy, Roberta, who is raised by her father and chooses to hide her sexuality by taping her breasts to her body; the eccentric, Sam, who turns to science-fiction in the wake of her parents’ divorce; the goody-goody caretaker, Chrissy, who worships Marcia Brady, and calls her vagina her “flower”; and Teeny, the sex-crazed daughter of rich, absent, flighty parents, who seeks–what else?–fame and fortune.

Now, I know those descriptions sounded a bit harsh, but sincerely, I do like Now and Then, a lot. The issues I take with it, I suppose, only come about after I watch something like Stand By Me, where the characters, who have also been through some serious trauma, relate to each other not as stock versions of childhood stereotypes, but as honest depictions of little boys. In Now and Then, we move between the characters as adults and the characters as young girls; the most frustrating aspect of the film is that the characters barely grow or change at all. The tomboy grows up to be a doctor played by Rosie O’Donnell, the sci-fi geek grows into a chain-smoking, black-wearing, bitter writer played by Demi Moore, the fame-seeker becomes a celebrity played by Melanie Griffith, and the goody-two-shoes ends up a pregnant house wife played by Rita Wilson. They are, essentially, older, taller versions of their 12 year old selves. What they want in life hasn’t changed. How they define themselves hasn’t changed. The film ends with all four women meeting up at their treehouse, after the birth of Chrissy’s baby. I think we are supposed to find this moment very sweet and endearing, but I always saw it as very sad.

It is fairly evident that the girls in the flashbacks have grown apart; watching them interact as women is sort of like bumping in to your best friend from high school who you don’t talk to anymore. It’s not because you two had a fight, or because you no longer like each other, it’s just because life got in the way, and whatever bonds you had were broken by time and distance and that strange transition from adolescence into adulthood. You remember the endless supply of inside jokes and stories you once shared, but you’re afraid to bring them up, because she might not remember, and even if she does, she might not think they’re funny anymore, or that the whole thing is just forced and painful. If the two of you had a time machine in 1999, and saw yourselves as you are today, you would never believe it. It’s a very peculiar thing when you grow up and your friends become complete strangers.

I guess that’s why I prefer the ending of Stand by Me. Gordie lays it out as bluntly as possible: the boys grow apart in junior high. More tragedy strikes. Life, however, goes on. Despite the loss of the friendships, Gordie is able to look back on them with a heartbreaking fondness that rings so true it almost hurts. Typing at his desk as an adult, he delivers one of my favorite lines of all time: "I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?"

I don’t know if there will ever be a film that really captures what it is like to be a 12 year old girl. There are too many factors running against it: in order for a film about young girls to be successful, it seems, you need to have some kind of marketing deal, some type of sexed-up pop-star princess tie in that gets the kids excited. Maybe the movie shouldn’t be made for children, but made for adults, the way Stand By Me, with its Rated R rating, was. Perhaps there already is an equivalent out there that I’m missing. If so, you guys should fill me in.

Or maybe it is impossible to make a film about us, because it is easier for the world to watch boys come-of-age than to watch girls do it; god forbid we grow up, in this culture of eternal youth and princess glory. But the world, I think, is missing out on something. There was a very quiet beauty in growing up, and though parts of it were awful, and parts of it were strange, I think there is a period in every woman’s childhood that stands out as the time when she began to figure out who she was and where she was going. And though we may not have a “classic” film to represent or explain that time to others, we wear the scars and carry the lessons always. And whatever we learned on playgrounds or kickball fields or at sleepover parties or roller rinks somehow plays a part in the decisions we make today. You may not be friends with the girls you told your secrets to, or had adventures with, or wondered about the future with, but they are somehow always around, even if you’ve forgotten their names, their faces, the sound of their voices; they were, at one time, the vaults you locked the best parts of yourself in. They were the people who liked you for who you were, even if you didn’t know who that person was yet.

Maybe nobody does have friends like the ones they have at 12. Or maybe we seek out the best kinds of replacements, the types of friends who, at any age, will take your secrets to the grave and stay up with you on a Saturday night, laughing and laughing about nothing at all.

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