Early Life
Born as Linda Darlene Drouin in Biddeford, Maine, Kasabian was raised in the New England town of Milford, New Hampshire. She was the eldest child, and her mother Joyce Drouin has remarked that with so many younger children to care for she was not able to devote the necessary attention to her teenage daughter. "I didn't have time to listen to her problems. A lot of what has happened to Linda is my fault."
Linda Kasabian was described by friends, neighbors, and teachers as intelligent, a good student, but a "starry-eyed romantic". She was known as kind and shy but "forced to grow up too soon". Kasabian dropped out of high school and left home at the age of 16 due to increasing problems with her stepfather, who she claimed mistreated her and her mother. She headed to the western states, looking "for God". She married, divorced, remarried, and gave birth to a daughter in 1968. When her second marriage, to Armenian American Robert Kasabian, began to sour, Kasabian and her baby daughter, Tanya, returned to New Hampshire to live with Linda's mother. Later, Robert Kasabian contacted Linda and invited her to meet him in Los Angeles. He wanted her to join him and a friend, Charles "Blackbeard" Melton, on a sailing trip to South America. Kasabian, who has said that she was hoping for a reconciliation, returned to Los Angeles to live with Robert in the Los Angeles hippie hangouts of Topanga Canyon.
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