Harold True (1940-2013)

Witness, Manson friend and LaBianca neighbor

Harold True

Harold True was born on August 5, 1940 in Los Angeles, California. He was the oldest of three children in his family and his father died shortly before he turned thirteen. Harold played football in high school and attended Los Angeles Valley College. After graduating he attended California State University, Los Angeles where he majored in medieval history.

In March 1968, Harold True was still enrolled in college when he had met Charles Manson in the spring months, while picking up a friend in Topanga Canyon. True said he picked-up Manson on the Pacific Coast Highway the day Manson was released from Terminal Island Prison.

According to trial testimony, Manson and other Family members had been to True’s rented home at least three times and once attended an “LSD” party at the home which was located in the Los Feliz section of Los Ageles at 3267 Waverly Drive (about a year before the murders), which happened to be the house next door to 3301 Waverly Drive Los Angeles, California, where the Manson family committed the Labianca murders in 1969. Also in trial testimony True stated that he lived at the address from the early part of 1967 until September of’1968.

True wound up becoming a trial witness for the prosecution in the case against Manson and his co-conspirators. True told Deputy District Attorney Aaron Stovitz in an interview that in March of 1968, Manson, Patricia Krenwinkel, Susan Atkins, and several other people who were with Manson, mostly girls, stayed overnight at the True residence.

True testified that in the summer of 1968 that Linda Kasabian and her husband visited him at his home at least once, however, Linda and her husband were not with Manson and his group. True testified that on four or five other occasions after the March 1968 incident, Manson visited him at his residence. On one of those occasions Manson stayed overnight. This testimony placed Manson, Krenwinkel, and Atkins right next door to the LaBianca residence, on occasions prior to the LaBianca murders.

“I had to go at those goddamned trials. And every time I testified, guess whose name got in the papers? I lost a job as a school teacher because of it. One time we noticed that an unusual amount of traffic was passing by our house, and when they came by, they all had their noses up at the window looking at us like we were freaks. To know Charles Manson, you had to be a freak also.”

Harold True died of natural causes on May 16, 2013.