MONT VERNON, N.H., Mar. 14 – Linda Kasabian, once charged with seven counts of murder in the Tate-LaBianca slayings that rocked the nation in 1969, is still shackled to the ways of the flower children dropouts who crowd the alleys of her past.

Though Kasabian is no longer the gullible teenager drawn to a hippie lifestyle that brought her into the shadow of the California gas chamber, the commune is still her Camelot.

At 26, she finds herself on the fringe of the counterculture, twice divorced and living on welfare, sharing a dilapidated house here with a curious collection of consorts, including the boyfriend who fathered her last child.

Kasabian’s break with mass murderer Charles Manson and her decision to testify against him and his loyalists in the Tate-LaBianca case won her immunity from prosecution and, eventually, her freedom. That was in August of 1970.

She was freed a year to the day after the bodies of Leno LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary, were found butchered in a horrendous crime that followed by 24 hours the murders of actress Sharon Tate and four guests in her home.

Day after day, for hours on end, Linda sat on the witness stand at the Manson trial, recounting in minute detail what must have seemed one long, blue blur of bulging horror.

Though defense lawyers were armed with a 20-page summary of all Linda’s interviews with the prosecution, together with copies of all her letters to Vincent Bugliosi, the prosecutor, they could not trip her up or make her crack.

“She had been up there (as a witness) for 17 days — longer than most trials,” wrote Los Angeles County prosecutor Bugliosi, the author of the current best-seller “Helter Skelter,” which documents the bizarre story of the so-called Manson murders.

“… I was proud of her,” Bugliosi went on. “If ever there was a star witness for the prosecution, Linda Kasabian was it.”

After the trial Kasbian came back to Milford, N.H., and vowed to make a fresh start, to embrace a new way of life, to launch a new quest for the happiness that has always eluded her.

She wanted to put out of her mind forever the bloodbath that spanned two nights of savage slaughter in which seven persons – all strangers to their killers – died for no reason.

What kind of woman is Linda Kasbian?

That question leaps out to the millions now reading “Helter Skelter,” in which she is portrayed as a heroine whose testimony convicted Charles Manson and his disciple’s of the murders.

At 20, she was but a step or two this side of being beautiful – petite, shapely, light brown hair, delicately formed features, high cheekbones, bright eyes, a flawless complexion.

At 26, she is still good-looking, but in a kind of washed-out way. Her eyes have been robbed of their sparkle, and the roses are gone from her cheeks.

Kasabian is a woman with a capacity for mysterious shifts of moods and a talent for controlling them. She can be elated one minute, brooding the next, gay in the morning, unlaughing in the afternoon.

She can be disarmingly sweet to those whose friendship or favor she seeks. She can be querulous, bitter and suspicious of those she no longer has use of.

The publication of “Helter Skelter” has created fresh public awareness of Kasabian, triggering an invasion of journalists from as far away as Canada and California, all seeking interviews.

Most of them, unfamiliar with New Hampshire and its people, have been frustrated in their attempts to even find her bucolic hideaway. Those who have managed to locate her have been met with a haughty rebuff and the threat of a lawsuit charging invasion of privacy.

But Kasabian, inevitably, will continue to be the subject of public interest because of her involvement in the Tate-LaBianca case.

She is aware that the seven first-degree murder charges lodged against her were never dismissed as faulty or unprovable. She was simply given immunity from prosecution in return for testifying against Charles Manson, her one-time bed partner, and others in the tribe that had so recently claimed her loyalty.

Kasabian has been given no immunity from surveillance as a potential menace to the life of the President of the United States. Nor has she been given immunity from the curiosity of an outraged society still beset by a sense of lingering shock at the Manson murders, among the most ghastly in the annals of crime.

Charlie Manson wrote his own story in blood and, because Kasabian was there beside him, she was and always will be a part of it.

Kasabian has not read “Helter Skelter,” according to her mother, Mrs. Joyce Byrd of Nashua, who was asked recently whether her daughter would profit in any way from royalties.

“No she’s had no contact with anyone out there,” Mrs. Byrd said. “In fact, Linda hasn’t even read the book and neither have I, although a couple of the other kids have. Nobody out there is giving her anything.”

Is Kasabian bitter?

“No, she isn’t,” Mrs. Byrd said. “I’m more bitter than she is. All she wants is to live her own life and be left alone by people like you who make money writing about her.”

Mrs. Byrd portrayed her daughter as a church worker, a day-care volunteer, a young and loving mother supporting herself and her brood by dint of hard work and willing sacrifice.

“She grows her own vegetables, chops her own wood and all that kind of thing. She doesn’t bother anyone. Why does the press bother her?” her mother asked.

Linda is often described by friends as living in fear of violent retribution for her role in the Manson trial.

“Do you know how many threats she’s had against her life?” asked Lyn Marie Chavez, a particularly close friend. “Plenty.”

Police Chief Oswald B. Williams has never been told of such threats.

“I’ve only laid eyes on her once,” Chief Williams said. “That’s when she gave me hell for telling someone where she lived. Never had any other business with her.”

If Kasabian’s fears are real, anyone bent on locating her does not need a newspaper clipping to guide him. She is not really that hard to find.

Though she had her surname legally changed to Christian in 1972 before moving here from nearby Lyndeboro, none of her new neighbors were fooled. To them, she was still Linda Kasabian and no Probate Court in the world could change that.

She now lives in an 11-room, gray-painted colonial farmhouse on Old Milford road that was lovely once but has seen better days. It is necessary to drive over nearly a mile of potholed blacktop and rough gravel to get to it.

The porch is torn away, paint is peeling from nearly every clapboard, the windows are festooned with plywood, cardboard and even blankets where panes of glass are missing.

All the windows are covered, on the outside, with transparent plastic nailed on under thin slats of wood to preserve the warmth of a wood fire. There is no knob on the front door.

The buildings on the grounds include two garage-type structures, each with a wall partially knocked out.

Edward F. Hutchinson of Milford, who owns the property together with his wife, Ann, according to town records, is guarded in answering questions concerning the house or its occupants.

“Linda Christian lives there and that’s all can tell you,” he said. “I don’t know anything about anyone else. She pays her rent every month. I never go near there.”

Hutchinson is charging $160 a month for rental of the ramshackle farmhouse, according to a sworn statement filed by Kasabian in Hillsborough County Superior Court in connection with her divorce.

Who pays the rent?

The only thing certain is that the major share of it comes from welfare funds in the form of aid to families of dependent children.

When The Globe launched its research into Linda’s life style several weeks ago, five persons were living in the house, exclusive of children — three women and two men. A check of registration tags on vehicles parked regularly in the ample yard revealed that three of them belonged to the women — each of whom is separated or divorced, with young children in her custody.

All three of the women are on welfare, with one due to receive her first check later this month.

The other vehicle in the dooryard, a 1973 Dodge pickup, is owned by Joseph Thomas Paganucci Jr., 22, who, and, according to town records, is the father of her fourth child,
Pasquale.

Most neighbors are reluctant to discuss Kasabian or her lifestyle, particularly if they are to be quoted by name.

An exception is Roy Thomsen, a neighbor who at one time raised the question of whether the commune was a violation of zoning ordinances restricting one-family homes to use by a single family. The house had a larger population then than it has now, he said, and it seemed wise to seek some clarification on the point.

“I guess they claimed they were all one family and that was the end of it,” Thomsen said. “As far as their staying there goes, if they don’t bother me, I won’t bother them.”

In a sense, Linda Kasabian wrote the bestseller that has propelled her into the news again and made her name familiar to millions.

Had there been no testimony by Kasabian, there might have been no conviction of the Manson gang. Had there been no conviction, there would have been no “Helter Skelter.”

Now, while prosecutor/author Vincent Bugliosi is amassing a fortune through royalties, movie rights and speaking tours, Kasabian, his key to this treasure trove, makes do with a dole from the taxpayers.

Time is on nobody’s side and the last few years have not been kind to Linda Kasabian. She harbors deep resentment, which she sometimes displays through unprintable obscenities, toward Selective Service agents, police officers and newsmen — in roughly that order.

Kasabian, like all past and present Manson family members walking around loose, is regarded by the government as a potential threat to the lives of President Ford and other high officials. During Mr. Ford’s two recent visits to New Hampshire federal agents moved in on her, virtually making her a prisoner in her own home.

The agents said that they would like to be able to say they were with her at all times in case any attempt on the President’s life occurred.

And the New Hampshire State Police — four men in two cars — pulled up to her place one day around 1 p.m. and kept her under surveillance until the next morning.

Acquaintances say Kasabian bitterly resents what she regards as these churlish intrusions.

Kasabian also is thoroughly intolerant of newsmen, and hostile to the point of addressing them as “pigs,” generally with a colorful adjective or two. In her view newsmen are vile fellows, driven by unholy motives, bent on her persecution.

Notwithstanding her accustomed hostility toward reporters, Linda was subdued, courteous and well spoken in her first contact with The Globe a few weeks ago. But she refused to commit herself to a formal interview.

Then, in a telephone conversation, she explained: “I don’t trust you, no matter what kind of story you wrote about me before.”

The remark was in reference to a piece based on a lengthy interview with her mother on the occasion of her homecoming following her release from custody in 1970.

“That may have been a good story, but you’re still part of the media,” she said. “I’m tired of simply saying’ ‘no’ to reporters and seeing myself quoted on things I never said.”

Continued Globe efforts to report her story drew out another side of Kasabian’s personality.

She lunged at a photographer who had taken her picture as she emerged from Milford District Court, where she appeared in connection with three traffic violations. She spat on the hood of the cameraman’s car, then charged at him, spewing out a torrent of abusive language.

Kasabian then turned to a Globe reporter and shouted obscenities so shocking as to leave those in a small ring of onlookers in slackjawed disbelief.

The story of Linda Kasabian and the men and women around her is a story of broken homes and broken hearts.

It is a story which had to be drawn from bits and pieces plucked through a painstaking search of public records, conversations, with friends, neighbors and relatives, personal observations over weeks of probing.

All of the bits of fact fit together like a jigsaw puzzle and emerge as a portrait of pain — a mosaic in human tragedy.

Kasabian’s mother said more than five years ago that her daughter’s first mistake was marriage to Bob Kasabian.

“Her second mistake,” said a Milford neighbor who has known her since childhood, “was to go back to Bob Kasabian when she got out of jail.”

Robert L. Kasabian, now 28, is a Jesus freak with a fondness for walking barefoot, except in the coldest weather. He has been known to dye his hair and moustache glistening silver and leave his beard its natural color.

The couple was married at the City Hall in Lawrence, Mass., by Assistant City Clerk Charles F. Nyhan on September 20, 1967, according to municipal records.

Kasabian, who then listed her occupation as “saleslady,” gave her address as 327 Columbus ave., Boston, a run-down building then used as headquarters of the American Psychedelic Circus, a hippie commune. In applying for a license to marry Robert, Linda said under oath it was her first marriage, though it was actually her second.

Within two months after her 16th birthday, in 1965, Kasabian dropped out of Milford High School to marry Robert M. Peaslee Jr. of Milford. The two lived within a block or so of each other. The storm-tossed union lasted only six months, according to a divorce libel filed by Peaslee in Hillsborough County Superior Court.

Supported by medical testimony by Dr. Raymond P. Galloway, a Wilton physician, Peaslee won an uncontested divorce on grounds that his wife’s conduct was such as to endanger seriously his physical and mental health.

Her subsequent marriage to Robert Kasabian proved to be a sometimes thing, punctuated by lengthy separations, including the one forced by her arrest for murder.

At a time when she was home caring for her first child and trying to sort out her life, Robert Kasabian took her back into life outside society’s mainstream and set her on a course which led to the Manson family.

He called her at her mother’s Milford home in late June of 1969 after a separation, and proposed a reconciliation. She flew to the West Coast with her year-old daughter, Tanya, and found Kasabian living with Charles Melton, a wealthy hippie, at a trailer in Topanga Canyon.

Melton, who shared his inherited wealth with friends in a prodigal manner, had managed to bestow random gifts totaling $10,000 — about half the cash bankroll kept in the trailer.

Melton now proposed that the Kasabians, their tiny daughter and another couple ride with him to the tip of South America, there to purchase a boat and set sail for a trip around the world.

Linda Kasabian was not tempted by the prospect of such high adventure. It was then that she said goodbye to Robert and drifted into a life of sex, drugs and terror that would scar her for the rest of her life.

On July 4, 1969, only a week or 10 days after her cross-country flight to Robert’s side, she joined the Manson tribe at Spahn Movie Ranch, in the desert just outside of Los Angeles.

Her induction into the Manson Family, she later said, was “as if the answer to an unspoken prayer.”

By her own witness during interviews with prosecutor Bugliosi and in her trial testimony, Kasabian launched her stay in this earthy paradise by having sex with Tex Watson; a Manson lieutenant, the first night she was there.

The second night in camp, Kasabian shared a bed with Manson himself. According to her trial testimony, she “eventually slept with all the men.”

Even before meeting Manson on the second day at Spahn, Kasabian left the dark retreat, under Tex Watson’s urging, to go back to the Melton trailer and steal $5000 from Melton, the man who had befriended her and her family.

The cash was turned over to Manson, to whom she had already made a gift of what few personal possessions she had.

The rest is history.

Kasabian had been a member of the Manson family for only five weeks before the Tate-LaBianca slayings on August 9-10, 1969. She fled the Manson company within a few days after the mass murder.

Kasabian hitchhiked to Florida for an extended stay with her father, who gave her plane fare to fly home to her mother in Milford for Thanksgiving. She was arrested in New Hampshire Dec. 2 on seven indictments charging first degree murder. Then, within only seven months, came the trial, immunity from prosecution — and freedom.

Upon her return to her Milford home following the Manson trial in 1970, Kasabian looked, talked and acted like a new woman.

It was a time for reunion with daughter, Tanya, now 2 1/2, and her infant son, Nathan, born in a jail hospital.

Kasabian throbbed with the joy of holding them close, and — to this reporter, who interviewed her at the time — there was in her face a radiance that only a young and loving mother can project.

She traveled about the countryside, reveling in the freedom she had almost lost forever, waving gaily to friends and strangers alike, as if pleading with the community not to judge her — not for the time being, anyway.

Kasabian forswore the nomad ways that brought her first into this commune, then that one, seeking happiness in shadowy places in which there was no happiness to be found.

She would find in religion, she said, the solace that had always eluded her. She could see happiness, at last, in a haven she had overlooked — the Milford home she had fled years earlier to move into a commune less than a mile away.

For Kasabian, her children, her mother, her two brothers, there would be no more sorrow, no tears. Kasabian said she liked the way her mother put it in The Globe interview.

“Others may cry tomorrow,” Mrs. Byrd said, summing it all up. “We cried yesterday.”

She became reconciled with Robert Kasabian, the man for whom her mother had expressed an intense dislike and had blamed for turning her daughter’s minor troubles into major problems. He apparently had shed his lust for such weird pursuits as sailing off with Charles Melton to an uncharted Hawaiian island, there to meditate in a cave.

According to prosecutor Bugliosi, Robert Kasabian also had displayed his devotion to his estranged wife by going to her side and proving himself a “bulwark of strength” during her long, withering ordeal on the witness stand.

The Kasabians seemed happy for a time, happy enough to have another child, a daughter, whom they named Quanu, and who was born in 1972.

She did her best to make it work, going out daily to toil as a baker-cook at the White Horse Inn, a Milford eating place.

Two months or so before the birth of their third child, the Kasabians went into Hillsborough County Probate Court to petition for a legal change of name.

According to court records, they argued that they had been made to suffer a “lack of privacy” and much “adverse publicity” because of the constant association of their last name with the Manson case.

Their petition — changing the name Kasabian to Christian in both instances, and changing Robert L. to just plain Bob — was granted April 5, 1972.

There was to be no end to Linda Kasabian’s unhappiness, however.

The attempt at reconciliation came to grief in April 1974 when the Kasabians, now known as the Christians, separated for the last time. She found herself pregnant in the fall of 1974 – not with Robert’s child — and finally sued for a divorce her husband did not bother to contest.

Gary Fleischman, the Harvard-educated Los Angeles lawyer who negotiated complete immunity for Linda in the Manson case, expressed no surprise at developments in the on-again, off-again marriage of Linda and Robert Kasabian.

Fleischman said the last time he heard from Linda Kasabian was several months ago when she wanted some help to buy a car.

“She’ll never change, I’m afraid,” he said. “That commune stuff is fun until you have to start buying Pampers. Then it gets sticky.”

Fleischman, contacted when The Globe was seeking an interview with Linda, offered to assist if he could.

“Linda listens to me, so why don’t you have her call me,” he said. “But, please, do it on your nickel. When I hear from Linda, it’s always collect.”

By JAMES STACK