Hi evreyone my name is Linda Darlene Drouin I was born on June 21, 1949 in Biddeford, Maine. While I was still young my parents divorced and my mother remarried. I never got along with my stepfather and perhaps my unhappy home life was what led me to drift as a teenager the small town of Milford, New Hampshire. I dropped out of high school and married at 16; soon that marriage was over and I married again to a young man by the name of Robert Kasabian (which is how I got my last name). The two of us delved further and further into the "hippie" lifestyle, dropping acid and visiting communes around the country. Our daughter Tonya was born in Los Angeles in March of 1968.
A rift in our relationship soon caused me to start wandering again. I was in Topanga Canyon, visiting an old friend, when I ran into Catherine Share, a Manson follower who told me about Charlie, saying that he was the man I had been waiting for. On July 4, 1969, Tanya and I came with Gypsy to the ranch, where I met Charlie and immediately became a loyal member of the Family, even following them on "creepy-crawl" missions in which they would break into people's houses and steal things.
On the evening of August 8, 1969, I thought that the group was going on another "creepy-crawl" when I piled into an old Ford with associates Tex Watson, Susan Atkins, and Patricia Krenwinkel. I was in for quite the surprise when the group pulled up at 10050 Cielo Drive. I watched in horror as five innocent people were savagely slaughtered, and was along for another murder mission the second night. I didn't have killing in my nature, though, and purposely sabotaged a Family murder attempt on a man who had picked up Sandra and me Good hitchhiking days before.
The experiences of those two horrific nights made me decide that I had to escape the Family at any cost. When Charlie asked me to deliver a message to partner-in-crime Robert Beausoleil in the LA County Jail, I instead drove towards Taos, New Mexico, where my husband was living with another woman. When he was unable to help me, I returned to LA to pick up Tonya, who had been left in foster care after a police raid on the Spahn Ranch on August 16. From there my mother and daughter hitchhiked first to Florida and then back home to New Hampshire.
When a warrant was issued for my arrest in December of 1969, I immediately turned myself in to Concord authorities. From the beginning it was very apparent that not still under Charlie's spell, as were my female codefendants. When approached by prosecutor Bugliosi to turn state's witness against the Family, the heavily pregant me readily agreed. My testimony matched all of the physical evidence in the case and was perhaps the single most important factor in the defendants being found guilty. I received immunity from prosecution in return for testifying.
While it is obvious that I was not cut of the same cloth as the Charlie's other girls, my life in later years has, unfortunately, not gone that well. Long since divorced from my ex-husband Robert Kasabian, I suffers from health problems and, a few years ago, my daughter and me were both busted for possession of drugs. I am now on probation and living in Washington State.
