LOS ANGELES, Jul. 31 – Charles Manson told her to kill a man in Venice, gave her a pocket-knife and demonstrated how to do it, the state’s key witness testified Thursday in the Tate-LaBianca murder trial.

Linda Kasabian, 21, placed the time as late Aug. 9 or early Aug. 10, 1969, the same night Leno LaBianca 44, and his wife, Rosemary, 38, were killed and a day after actress Sharon Tate and four others were murdered.

The story about the eighth victim — who escaped — came on Mrs. Kasabian’s fourth day of testimony about murders blamed on the Manson “family.”

Her credibility as a witness was immediately attacked on cross-examination because of her admitted use of LSD “about 50 times.”

The near-victim was an actor who had picked up a girl named Sandra and Mrs. Kasabian while they were hitchhiking earlier, the witness testified.

Mrs. Kasabian said the man took them to his apartment where she showered, had something to eat and made love to him. When she returned on Manson’s mission, she said she deliberately went to the wrong apartment to save the actor’s life.

Like the LaBiancas, the witness indicated, the man had been picked for murder almost at random.

After Charles (Tex) Watson, Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten had been dropped off next door to the LaBianca home. Mrs. Kasabian testified, she hid Mrs. LaBianca’s wallet in a gasoline station restroom, then drove to the beach, following Manson’s directions.

She said Manson asked those in the car — Susan Atkins, Clem Tufts and herself — whether they knew anyone at the beach and they replied “no.”

“And then he said, ‘What about the man that you and Sandy met? Isn’t he a piggie?” the witness quoted Manson as saying.

“And I said, ‘Yes, he is an actor.’

“And then he further questioned me and he asked me if the man would let me in.

“And I said, ‘Yes.’

“And he asked me if the man would let my friends in, Sadie and Clem.

And at this point I said, “Charlie, I am not you, I am not you. I cannot kill anybody.’

“And I don’t know what look place at that moment, but I was very much afraid.

“And then he started to tell me how to go about it, and I remember I had the knife in my hand, and I asked him, ‘With this?’

“And he said, ‘Yes,’ and he showed me how to do it.”

She indicated a digging motion.

“As soon as you enter the residence, the house, as soon as you see the man, slit his throat right away,” she quoted Manson as saying. “And he told Clem to shoot him.”

She identified a photo of the man.

His name was not mentioned in court, but the prosecution identified him as Saladin Nader, an Israeli actor. He is being sought as a witness.

“He (Manson) said that if anything went wrong, you know, just hang it up, don’t do it; and of course to hitchhike back to the ranch …” the witness said.

“And he drove off.”

Reconstructing the scene under questioning by prosecutor Vincent T. Bugliosi, Mrs. Kasabian said she, Clem and Sadie went inside the apartment house.

“And I knocked on the door, which I knew wasn’t the door, and a man said, ‘Who is it?’

“And I said, ‘Linda.’

“And he sort of opened the door and peeked around the corner, and I just said, ‘Oh, excuse me. Wrong door.’

“And that was it.”

After that, Mrs. Kasabian testified, she and her companions hitchhiked to a house near the beach at Topanga Canyon Blvd., smoked some marijuana there and thumbed rides to the area of the Spahn Movie Ranch in Chatsworth.

That same day, she said she began to make arrangements to leave the ranch and Charles Manson’s family.

Two days later, Mrs. Kasabian testified, she borrowed a ranchhand’s car, and — leaving her 18-month-old daughter, Tanya, behind — drove to New Mexico to find her estranged husband, Bob.

On the way, the car broke down and she left it in Albuquerque, hitchhiking on to Taos, she said.

With the help of a man named Joe Sage, who ran a Zen Buddhist macrobiotic retreat, the witness said, she returned to California, arranged for attorney Gary B. Fleischman to get back her daughter, who was in a foster home. Then she went back.

About three weeks later, according to her statement, she returned here, picked up her daughter, then hitchhiked from New Mexico to her father’s home in Miami, Fla.

“I tried to forget about all these things,” she said. “I didn’t want to remember it anymore. I just
wanted to forget about it, and I couldn’t, and I kept reading newspapers and seeing horrible things.”

At one point, she said, she thought of getting in touch with authorities or relatives of the victims but she said:

“I just couldn’t. I was too much afraid and too much pregnant, and I had Tanya with me. So I didn’t do it.”

Her father paid her way to Boston about mid-November, she recalled, and she went to her mother’s home in New Hampshire, where authorities found her.

She was returned and her second daughter, Angel, was born here.

Before releasing his star witness, Bugliosi asked her if she had ever used LSD. She said she had, about “50 times.”

But, the question and answer were only a prelude.

Defense attorney Paul Fitzgerald, who represents Patricia Krenwinkel, extensively explored Mrs. Kasabian’s use of LSD, peyote and “speed.”

The young woman readily admitted trying all of the drugs. She said her chief reason for taking LSD was for “God realization,” but, she said, “I realized you don’t have to take LSD or peyote to discover God.”

Fitzgerald asked if she had had delusions under LSD. She replied she thought she had, adding, “For one thing, I thought I could see God through acid. The acid told me it was God.”

However, she denied that she had ever told people the whole world was a dream, or that she had died under the influence of LSD and had been reborn.

Fitzgerald probed the story that Mrs. Kasabian had once called herself “Yana the witch” and claimed to have the powers of a witch.

She testified that when she was taken to the ranch, “Gypsy,” Catherine Share, told her that they all assumed names, and since all the girls there were known as witches, she became “Yana the witch.”

She said girls at the Spahn ranch told her they were witches, so she tried to become one.

“It just sort of seemed like just a little game,” Mrs. Kasabian said.

“You never saw anyone at the Spahn Ranch do things a real witch would do, did you?” Fitzgerald asked.

“A real witch?” asked co-prosecutor Aaron H. Stovitz.

Superior Judge Charles H. Older and the audience joined in the laughter.

Defense attorneys Irving A. Kanarek and Ronald Hughes were back in court Thursday after spending the night in jail for contempt of court.

“It was a good experience,” the bearded, balding Hughes said. ‘I would have paid another $75 to go through it.”

The attorneys were released at 6:15 a.m. Thursday.

By JOHN KENDALL