THE FAMILY THAT STAYS TOGETHER

Their eyes revealing a horrifying emptiness, the members of the Manson family are once again haunting the headlines. The motley, mixed-up band today numbers about 100, fanned out in communes up and down California. Some Mansonites live in a three-story wood frame house about 30 miles east of Folsom prison where Manson was held for a time. The number of residents varies, but usually includes at least seven women, three men and up to ten children. Lynette ("Squeaky") Fromme and Sandra Good had lived there off and on until last spring.

The only visible hints of potential danger are the hunting knives that some of the women wear on their hips. They finance themselves with welfare and food stamps; one member until recently was garnering simultaneous welfare benefits under three names. They make regular "dump runs" to the rear of markets to scavenge for edibles. LSD may still be indulged in but the main trip now is marijuana.

The group's raison d'etre remains the glorification of Charles Manson, now 40. So intense is their devotion that family members have written an eight-page "bible" in which they pledge fealty to Manson as "Father and God to his children." Mansonites have signed their names and placed swastikas, inscribed in blood, alongside some of them. The group's most avid conversations center on his prison activities and the hoped-for day of his release. Despite the glaringly obvious differences between the two cases, Manson nurses vague hopes that one day he might win a reversal similar to the one granted Army Lieut. William Galley.

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California law officials have much evidence of a loose, long-standing conjunction between the Manson family and a close-knit, all-white group of 200 inmates spread throughout the California prison system called the Aryan Brotherhood, which shares with the family an intense hatred of blacks. The brotherhood maintains outside links with a profitable drug operation.

When Manson entered prison, he was looking for protection against such prison hassles as homosexual assault and beatings, which the brotherhood gladly provided. To earn the favor, Manson had the women of the family mail nude photos of themselves to members of the brotherhood, along with promises of sexual favors when the men were released. More important, the girls agreed to serve as messengers to the outside for the brotherhood. "Charlie wants to do easy time," explains a prison official. "He knew the brotherhood could protect him inside, and the communications link is very important to them." The ties are deep and dangerous. Two Manson girls and two members of the brotherhood were arrested in November 1972 for the murder of a young California couple, James and Lauren Willett. All have been jailed.

The pervasive violence terrifies those who have even minimal contact with the family. After conducting a few interviews, at least one journalist has simply given up writing about the group out of cold fear, and, for the same reason, a California photographer will not let newspapers that print her pictures of the group credit them to her. Since Manson's trial and imprisonment, a Manson cult of sorts has sprung up, making instant myth of his life of violence. A play by David Rabe, The Orphan, tried, with notable lack of success, to portray Manson as misunderstood victim, oracle and messiah. Author Norman Mailer, although acknowledging that brave people can have destructive qualities, has said of Manson: "As an intellectual, he was brave."

The followers' devotion to Manson goes on unabated. "If Charlie told a girl, 'Hey, baby, go out and snuff [kill] yourself,' she would do it," says a current friend of the family. The girls, he says, believe Manson's arrest was part of a grand design. "He told them that he would go underground and then rise again some day, like Christ," reports the friend. "They think his imprisonment is just that -a forced period underground. They spend all their time preparing themselves for the day he is released -the day he rises."

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