Oct. 10 – Patricia Hearst. Lynn Fromme. Sara Jane Moore.

Names of three women, the names of three real women written about in the newspapers so that everybody who reads one knows who they are. Or do we — really?

On television this week, there was another woman named Katherine. An electrifying story, a sad story, this story of Katherine.The birth and growth and death of a young revolutionary of our times.

But she wasn’t real and so all we have left is the fiction-story we saw acted out on the TV screen. And the fiction of newspapers and newsmagazines in a hurry — replete with instant analysis and non-depth neon-lighted slick technicolor.

Where is the real woman?

Sometimes I despair for my compatriots in this profession called journalism.

In New England, there is a young woman who could have told us who some of these women are and why they did what they did — through her own experiences, her own self.

She is Linda Kasabian, and she lives in Milford, New Hampshire.

But she probably won’t talk again to anybody connected with newspapers or magazines or television. Because she was dredged up by a reporter like a hunted animal; found, pushed, snowed, pressured, exposed and finally left so frightened she crawled into a secret lair and may never come out again.

Linda Kasabian was a Manson woman. (One question, for instance: what makes women
Follow certain men into violence or near-violence? Fromme by Manson too; Hearst by Cinque; Moore by a rightist gunseller?)

Linda Kasabian stood up in a California court and told everybody how she had driven the car that night, stayed with the car, heard the screams of Sharon Tate as she was being sliced into murder, and drove off with Charles Manson and the others afterwards.

The bloody trail led to prison for Manson. It left Linda out of prison but haunted. She came back home to New England, a government witness, absolved for her testimony that put others behind bars. And she lived quietly with her four children in Milford until President Ford came to visit a few weeks ago.

She was hard to find, even for the Secret Service. They managed though, and she was placed under surveillance for everybody’s safety-sake.

The editor of the local paper laughed when he told me.

“They’re really quite nice about it. Surveillance means the agent sat in her kitchen and drank coffee with her during the time the President was in the state.”

The editor told me a number of press people bird-dogged Linda after she got home from California. Only one of them has found her.

“He was from Newsweek magazine. He wouldn’t give up. I don’t know where she lives and I never have, although I’ve talked to her on the phone. The Newsweek man came to my office and told me he’d found her. He said he went up to the door and asked if she was Linda Kasabian and that he recognized her, but she said no, there was no one in the house by that name. He said he went away and came back with his photographer and told the photographer to shoot from the hip with his camera when a woman came to the door.

“He asked us to develop the film, and as a courtesy we did it for him. But I didn’t know whether it was her or not. A couple of days later, Linda called me and asked if I knew anyone at Newsweek and I said I did and she asked me to call and to please ask them not to use the location, the home where she lived, in the story.

“She asked me if she’d have to run all her life. If they print where I am have to move, I’ll have to leave town, she said.

“So I called a fellow I know down there and told him and he said they wouldn’t but they went right ahead and printed the story and where she lived.”

He paused, remembering: “And so I don’t really think she’ll talk to you — even if you’re a woman and you want a different kind of story. She’s too angry and scared and I don’t blame her.”

Linda Kasabian did have to move, at least once that the editor knows about. And the scars and fears of the search are still with her, and the small town editor said, yes, it was too bad one guy spoiled everything for everybody else, that he’d thought of doing — not a sympathy piece for goodness sake — but the story of a woman, a Manson woman and what makes that kind of life so appealing for some people and what kinds of things can lead to their conversion and convictions.

The editor didn’t say outright. But he strongly hinted that New England news people are maybe that extra-mile more human and considerate, and that our stories and our people ought to be left to us.

Presuming we can build a sort of trust so they want to talk to us.

It is safe to say, that by now, Linda Kasabian does not.

By MARYLINE WHITE