LOS ANGELES, Dec. 16 — Charles Manson’s long day in court finally has ended and he has been taken under security precautions to Death Row at San Quentin, where he will probably spend the rest of his life for master-minding nine murders.

More than two years ago his arrest for the August 1969 slayings of actress Sharon Tate and six other persons, Manson formally was sentenced to life imprisonment Monday for the deaths of two others — movie stuntman Donald (Shorty) Shea and musician Gary Hinman.

He was condemned to death for the Tate-LaBianca slayings after the longest criminal trial in Los Angeles history — 10 months — and spent the last five months being tried for the Hinman-Shea killings.

Less than an hour after Superior Court Judge Raymond Choate formally handed down the sentence, the 37-year-old hippie cult leader was taken from the Hall of Justice to northern California.

Sheriff’s deputies said the bus carrying Manson was escorted by three other vehicles and a helicopter maintained watch overhead for part of the seven-hour journey. Some of Manson’s cult are now in jail for a gun battle with police that was called part of a plot to free him.

Officials at San Quentin said Manson arrived at night and gave them “no problems.” Choate called him a “whining, complaining delinquent no different from dozens of others who come into this courtroom each week.”

“It is this court’s observation that there is nothing mystical or hypnotic about Mr. Manson,” the judge said. “He is just another small time car thief, petty thief and forger with an aversion to work who attracted emotionally sick misfits and drifters.”

Three Manson family girls in the spectator section commented derisively, “He’s talking about us.”

Choate said Manson was “criminally oriented and would be a danger to any society. He should not be released from prison any time during his lifetime.”

“All you have to do now is keep me,” Manson muttered to Choate as he was led out.

Manson still is entitled to an automatic appeal of his seven death sentences to the California Supreme Court, and if he ever is executed, it probably will not be for several years, court observers believe.

In the meantime, he will be housed on Death Row, serving the first of three life terms for killing Hinman and Shea, and for conspiring to kill them.

The judge ordered him to serve one life term and temporarily stayed two others, noting that when the first has been served — or in other words, when Manson has died — the temporary stays will become permanent.