LOS ANGELES, Mar. 27 – The Charles Manson follower who six years ago calmly described to a startled jury in her murder trial how she “just started stabbing and cutting the lady up,” Monday will face a new jury in a new trial on the same charge — the killings of Rosemary and Leno LaBianca, victims of the Manson Family’s second night of murder.

This time, now-27-year-old Leslie Van Houten is expected to say just the opposite: “I did something horrible … and I don’t expect people to forgive me, but I hope they will give me a second chance,” she said in a recent interview.

A try at that second chance begins at 9 a.m. Monday in the Los Angeles Superior Courtroom of Judge Edward Hinz.

The one-time high school homecoming princess was convicted of the 1969 murders along with Manson and fear of his followers. She was not charged with the killings of pregnant actress Sharon Tate and four others the previous night, but the two cases were joined in trial.

The Monrovia High School graduate was sentenced to death, but that fell when the state’s death sentence was ruled invalid. Another California court saved the young woman a second time when it ruled that she should be given a new trial. The justices ruled that trial Judge Charles Older had erred in not severing her case when her attorney, Ronald Hughes, died in the middle of the case. A second attorney, Maxwell Keith, was appointed to represent her and argued successfully before the Appellate Court that she had not been given adequate representation because of Hughes’ mysterious death.

Meanwhile, as the young woman was preparing to face trial, one of her former friends, Sandra Good, in an interview from Terminal Island Federal Prison where she is serving a 15-year sentence for writing threatening letters to public officials, said she could not understand why her former Manson Family sister had become guilt-ridden.

“She was not wrong in what she did … she went to war for what she believed in, and war for a cause is not murder,” she said.

“Those murders were not senseless — there was a purpose. She did nothing for which she was guilty.”

Miss Good, the Family member with the least amount of prison time, said she could not understand why the girl “let her attorneys sell her a case …”

“How she could consider herself bad … or what she did wrong … is beyond us,” she said. “No one was killed for profit or for passion or for anger or for hate … She should understand that God uses people, and at times people don’t fully understand the whys and what-fors.”

The Terminal Island inmate, who plants flowers in the prison gardens during the day, said the Family went to war for “earth”.

“We went to war for what we believed in … the killings were basically a war. There wer millions of men from this country that went to war and killed during World War II and Korea, and we’re not charging them with murder. By United State standards, they were going to war for a cause.

“We went to war for a cause, and that’s not murder.”

Her former friend, she says, has apparently dedicated herself to money.

“But everything is hooked to money … people weren’t really interested in the whys of those murders … they weren’t really interested in why several young, upper middle-class women rose up and murdered. People were more interested in selling newspapers and books and that kind of stuff. The Family has been exploited … sold out for money.”

No one, she says, will know the truth behind the murders until Manson and the family are together again.

That, however, appears unlikely.

Those charged with the murders are under life sentences. Manson is at Atascadero State Prison, a mental facility; Charles “Tex” Watson is a hospital aide at a prison near San Luis Obispo; Susan Atkins and Patricia Krenwinkle are both at the women’s prison at Frontera. All have life sentences. The remainder of the family are imprisoned for an assortment of crimes ranging from murder to attempting to assassinate the president.

By MARY NEISWENDER