LOS ANGELES, Oct. 12 – A Superior Court jury Friday unanimously absolved the city of Los Angeles of false arrest and false imprisonment charges brought by William Etson Garratson, the caretaker of the Sharon Tate estate who was jailed for two days after the murder of the actress and four others on Aug. 9, 1969.

“I am very disappointed. Defeat is to much,” said Garretson, now 25, after hearing the verdict in the civil case before Superior Judge Thomas C. Yager.

He said he will return to Lancaster, Ohio, where he works for a glassware manufacturer. Robert Cohen, Garretson’s attorney, said they will consider filing an appeal.

Police arrested Garretson about 9:30 a.m. that Saturday morning after they found the bodies of Miss Tate, coffee heiress Abigail Folger, hair stylist Jay Sebring, producer Voityck Frakowsky, and a friend of Garretson’s, Steven Parent, at the secluded Benedict Canyon estate.

Garretson, who said he had heard no shots or screams during the night, was awakened by police in his guesthouse home. He was released the following Monday afternoon.

“We were convinced that the Los Angeles Police Department acted properly,” jury foreman John Rutherford explained the jury’s reasoning. “We felt (the arrest) was a logical reaction on the part of the police because of Garretson’s nonresponse to commands and because he was the only one alive on the estate.”

Officers testified during the two-week trial that Garretson appeared “dazed” and “in a stuporous condition” when they found him.

In final arguments, Cohen had asked $4,071.60 for lost wages and medical bills for Garretson and $104.20 for the humiliation and shock caused by the arrest and incarceration.

Rutherford said the jurors agreed the LAPD had detained Garretson less than the time allowed by law and for a reasonable period to complete their investigation of him, considering weekend work schedule.

He said the jury had “a great deal of sympathy” for Garretson, who had returned to Lancaster, his home town, after the Tate murders.

“We felt Garretson was the sixth victim of the (Charles) Manson murders,” Rutherford said. “But we feel he has made a remarkable recovery and that his life will be better as a result of what happened … We felt he would have continued in the same kind of life (using drugs). But now he is off of dope, holding down a steady job and married.”

(Manson, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, Leslie Van Houten and Charles Watson were convicted of the five murders and are serving life sentences.)

Dep. City Atty. Thomas Hokinson argued successfully that the police had probable cause to arrest Garretson.

Rutherford said Yager’s instruction on “probable cause” had “played a very strong role” in the decision reached by the four-woman, eight-man jury.

Cohen said he objected strongly to Yager’s admonition to the jury that it must find probable cause for the arrest if it decided these facts were true: That the police found the five brutally murdered victims Aug. 9, 1969; that blood on the walk and lawn led toward the guesthouse; that Garretson was the only living person found on the estate, and that the estate had only one entrance.

Cohen had argued that the blood did not point toward the guesthouse, and that Miss Tate’s maid, Winifred Chapman, also had been at the estate by the time police arrived, but was only questioned and not arrested.

Rutherford said jurors felt the brutally stabbed bodies and the presence of Garretson as the sole survivor were enough to cause officers reasonably to arrest the young man.

By MYRNA OLIVER