LOS ANGELES, Feb. 17 – Former Charles Manson follower Leslie Van Houten says she still has nightmares about the gruesome murders of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, for which she was once condemned to death and for which she will be tried again next month.

In a wide-ranging interview at Sybil Brand Institute, Miss Van Houten said:

“I know that I did something horrible … I don’t expect people to forgive me but I hope eventually they will give me a chance.”

She freely admitted her past domination by Manson but said “That’s over and has been completely over for about three years.”

“I’m embarrassed to say it now, but back then I really believed in Charlie’s ‘Helter Skelter’ plan to start a race war. Now, the hardest thing is to realize the crimes were so senseless.”

She believes she is now completely capable of putting Manson into proper perspective, saying:

“I really don’t think he has much power. His power was in us women and without that he isn’t much of anything … Since he has been in prison. I don’t know of anyone proclaiming him anything other than a man who is doing time.”

During the 75-minute interview, she talked about falling under the influence of Manson, her heavy use of LSD, Lynne (Squeaky) Fromme’s attempt to assassinate President Ford, her close family ties, and what she hopes will be a future as a writer.

Miss Van Houten was granted a new trial when the state Court of Appeal ruled that the case should have been severed from Manson’s and the other codefendants’ when her attorney, Ronald Hughes, disappeared in the middle of the trial.

Instead, Superior Judge Charles Older let her remain in the trial after appointing Maxwell Keith to take over her defense.

By agreement with her attorney, Keith, no questions were asked about the LaBianca killings. The couple were fatally stabbed in their Los Feliz district home in the early morning hours of Aug. 10, 1969.

In her testimony at the first trial, Leslie said, “I took one of the knives and Patricia (Krenwinkel) had a knife and we started stabbing and cutting the lady up.” An autopsy showed Mrs. LaBianca was stabbed more than 40 times.

Her husband, the owner of a grocery chain, was slashed to death in an adjoining room by Charles (Tex) Watson. The attackers left a fork protruding from LaBianca’s chest as they fled the scene.

The 27-year-old former high school homecoming princess from Monrovia expressed her feelings about what happened that night.

“I still have nightmares about it,” she said. “It is something I live with. There were times when I wondered if I could make it through the nights at the prison without my psychiatrist.”

Her demeanor during the interview was in dramatic contrast to her testimony at the first trial when Keith asked her if she had any sorrow or remorse and she coldly replied, “Sorry is a five-letter word.”

She said she is not necessarily optimistic about the upcoming trial, scheduled for March 28 before Superior Judge Edward Hinz Jr., but she added:

“I’m looking forward to the chance to go on the stand and really tell the truth. Before, my testimony was what Charlie wanted to try to get him out.”

During the penalty phase of the first trial, Miss Van Houten and codefendants Susan Atkins and Patricia Krenwinkel all testified that the motive for the Tate-LaBianca murders had nothing to do with Manson’s efforts to trigger a racial revolution.

Sharon Tate and four others were killed the night before the LaBiancas were slain. Miss Van Houten was not charged in the Tate killings.

They said instead that the killings were committed in an attempt to free another Manson follower, Robert Beausoleil, who had been jailed for the murder of Malibu musician Gary Hinman.

They testified that by committing gory murders similar to that of Hinman, complete with bloody writings on the wall, they could convince authorities they had the wrong man in Beausoleil.

Discussing that testimony in the first trial, Miss Van Houten said:

“That was all made up because we thought we could say that. There would be poor Charlie sitting over there in his innocent seat while all these people were calling him all these terrible things. That was the whole thing on that.”

She said Manson decided on this strategy, “about the middle of the trial or maybe a little earlier than that.”

At the conclusion of the penalty phase, the jury came back with death penalty verdicts for Manson and the three young women. Did she ever think she was going to die in the gas chamber?

“Oh, when the judge read it, something was clicking down deep inside of me amidst all of these crazy little things,” she said. “Yeah, it was pretty heavy. But, of course, right away we giggled about it …”

She said that at the time of the killings “life and death didn’t matter that much” because she and the others were convinced they were protected by Manson’s plan calling for them to find a hole in the desert where they would stay until the race war was over.

Manson cited the Bible and the Beatles to support his predictions, Miss Van Houten said.

“He pointed out a bunch of stuff in the Book of Revelations that supported what he was telling us, including the thing about the hole in the earth.

“And he would have as listen to a Beatles record over and over, saying ‘Can you hear it? Can you hear it? They are speaking to me.’ We got so we thought we really did hear it.”

How did Manson achieve such domination over her and his other followers? She admits to being a little at a loss to explain it now but she says that LSD had a lot to do with it.

“By the time I went to the ‘family’ at Spahn Ranch, I was really into acid … and for eight hours solid Charlie would do things on acid. I didn’t know at the time what he was doing to my mind but it was really a trip to watch him.

“He used to be good with cards, you know, play tricks with cards. And when you take acid, your eyes will sort of hallucinate. Charlie would put something in our mind and because he was quick with his hands and wit, we would sort of think we had seen a miracle. I did believe he was a special person brought here.”

One of the most vivid scenes she recalls of Manson during an LSD session was “Charlie going through the crucifixion, with contortions of pain and everything.”

Her return to her “own self”, as she puts it, came about in several ways.

“First, we were isolated from him, then much of what he predicted just wasn’t happening, and I got a lot of help from another woman who was on Death Row with us and from a really nice psychiatrist at the prison. Somewhere in all of this, I grew up quite a bit.”

Is there any danger to her or the general public from the Manson family at this time?

“Well, first I’ll tell you the Manson family was never as big as the news media made it. There really were only about 10 girls and three guys although people came and went.

“Now, I think Squeaky and Sandy (Goode) are the only two he has left and they are locked up. I’m not worried and I don’t think hysteria should be injected to the public by my new trial.”

What was her reaction when she heard that Squeaky had tried to shoot Ford?

“When it happened, I just figured, ‘Well, that figures.’ I don’t think it was any accident the gun didn’t go off.

“I think, on her part, she wanted to do something that Charlie would he proud of, but she never really wanted to take that chance of having to live with her conscience…”

Miss Van Houten said that during the month before the assassination attempt, prison authorities had come to her asking for help in deciphering letters written by Squeaky and Sandy.

“All of a sudden the administration was getting all of these weird letters that indicated Lynne and Sandy were going to do something.

“It surprised me to be questioned by the authorities because all of us at Frontera had stopped writing to the girls or accepting their letters.

“We had cut off contact at least a couple of years before. Their letters weren’t making any sense at all.”

Leslie thinks that Fromme and Goode remained Manson followers for so long because they became addicted to the publicity they got. “They really got sick behind all that attention,” she said. “I think Charlie did, too.”

Miss Van Houten said she still has a “wonderful relationship” with her family, mentioning with obvious pride that her mother has visited her “every Sunday for seven years.”

“I didn’t drift away from my family because of any alienation,” she said. “It was partly out of curiosity that I left home and, of course, I was madly in love with this boy and wanted to go with him. That was long before Manson but the boy started me on LSD. Now he’s gotten his master’s degree in art.”

She said, “I realize all of this has been hard on my mother and father, and even my sisters and brothers, because they worried that somehow I ended up here because of something they did or didn’t do. None of it is their fault.”

She said for both her own sake and her family’s sake, she hopes the news media will stress that she is a past not present follower of Manson.

Concerned about how she would be treated by the media, she has granted only this interview, conducted by The Times jointly with Linda Douglass of KNXT, and another session by satellite with ABC-TV’s Barbara Walters.

What does she feel the future holds for her?

“First, of course, is the trial. I know that if something good does happen at the trial, it will be because it is the right thing to have happen, according to the law, etc.

“If I have to go back (to prison), then that also will be the right thing to have happen.

“I’ve learned one thing and that is that I’ll never accept forever. I’ll always try for a parole. But if I have to go back and do years, I hope I can get into something to occupy my mind. Something that I can do and be proud that I’m making a contribution of some kind.”

Whatever happens, she says, she wants to pursue a writing career. “I’d like to do plays because I think I’m best at dialogue but obviously I need some refining of my talent. I was editor of the prison newspaper such as it was.”

Then with a wry smile she added, “If I go back to the joint, I’ll have a lot of time to work on my writing.”

When she eventually gets her freedom, she wants to fade into oblivion, at least as Leslie Van Houten. She plans to change her name.

“I’m looking forward to the day when I could just go somewhere and hear people talking about all this and just sit there and agree — without them having any idea who I am.”

By BILL FARR