• Manson To Enter Plea Today Along With 2 Followers

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Manson To Enter Plea Today Along With 2 Followers

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 22 – Charles Manson, accused leader of a hippie murder cult, will come face to face with two of his young female followers today for the first time since they were rounded up in Death Valley.

The bearded, 35-year-old Manson was scheduled to appear in Los Angeles County Superior Court to enter a plea in the slayings of five persons at the home of actress Sharon Tate and the killings the next day of a wealthy grocer and his wife.

Also due to enter pleas were Linda Louise Kasabian, 20, and Leslie Van Houten, 20, members of the weird “Manson family.”

Mrs. Kasabian has been named by another of the accused girls as having stood guard at the gate of the rented Tate mansion during the killings. Miss Van Houten is accused of being one of those who killed Leno LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary.

Judge William B. Keene was expected to rule at the same time on Manson’s request that he be permitted to act as his own attorney.

In Lawrence, Mass., the mother of Robert Kasabian, who, she said, was the husband of Linda Kasabian, reported her son missing Saturday.

Mrs. Carline Kasabian told police she hadn’t heard from him since May.

“I think my son is dead…I know it’s a mother’s intuition, but I know he’s dead,” she said.

“I last heard from Robert in May of this year when he phoned his sister Robin on her 13th birthday,” Mrs. Kasabian said. She said her son was in Taos, N.M., when she heard from him.

Linda Kasabian was apprehended in New Hampshire several weeks ago and was charges of murder and conspiracy in the Tate slayings.

The mother said she attended the marriage of her son and Linda in 1968. She said they moved to New Mexico, where Robert worked as a musician.

She said she last saw Linda and Robert on New Year’s of 1968 and she last heard from Linda in June.

Manson and 25 of his followers were arrested in an old camp in Death Valley in October on auto theft charges. Late in November, Susan Atkins told authorities Manson and his “family” had committed the Tate and LaBianca murders.

While they were under arrest in Independence, Calif., Manson and his male followers were kept separate from the girls in the lnyo County jail. Occasionally Manson would “yip” at his girls in their nearby cells and they would “yip” back at the leader.

Miss Atkins has told a grand jury the full story and has entered a plea of not guilty. She is expected to contend she acted under Manson’s hypnotic spell. Her trial, set for Feb. 9, may be held separately.

Two others accused in the murders, Patricia Krenwinkel, 21, held in Mobile, Ala., and Charles Watson, 24, in custody in McKinney, Tex., are resisting extradition.

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