FRONTERA, Feb. 18 – The brutal Sharon Tate-LaBianca murders burned their way into the nation’s headlines in 1969 as a group of young followers of Charles Manson left a trail of blood and destruction across southern California.

Nine years later, Manson and his chief followers are behind bars for their crimes, and the story has been edged out of the headlines by more current horrors.

But life goes on for the men and women now serving life sentences for their part in the murders, and one woman of the group has found religion.

Susan Atkins, now serving a life sentence at the California Institute for Women, claims to have been born again over three years ago and is now living her faith behind bars.

Miss Atkins, who was 18 at the time of her association with Manson and who admits to taking part in the murders in the home of actress Sharon Tate, tells her story in a new book published this year by Logos International and written by former New York Times reporter Bob Slosser.

The book, called “Child of Satan, Child of God,” begins by tracing Miss Atkins’ life from her earliest memories through the death of her mother and her early shoplifting escapades to her first encounter with Manson in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury section in 1967.

Written in the first person, it describes the scene of the murders, the now-famous Manson trial and the young girl’s encounter with New Testament religion.

Slosser, who helped found the Christian newspaper The National Courier, which went out of business in late 1977, said that he first heard of Miss Atkins’ conversion when a stringer for The Courier wrote a short article about it.

He sent his associate, Jamie Buckingham, to California to talk with Miss Atkins, and then later visited her himself.

The result is the 290-page book, written by Slosser from hours of taped conversations with Miss Atkins and from notes made by her about her experiences.

After more than four years in prison. Miss Atkins says she began reading a Bible, which had been sent to her by a woman named Shirley Horvath soon after her conviction. She was influenced by letters and tracts sent to her by numerous persons, and finally, on the night of Sept. 27, 1974, she committed her life to Christ.

Since that time, Slosser says, Miss Atkins has been “just bubbling over with her Christianity.”

He claims that since “over two years of intensive Bible study and prayer” passed before she began talking and preaching about her faith publicly, there is credibility to her beliefs.

“Seven or eight years ago Susan was a broken-hearted little kid looking for two things —family and God. She found a counterfeit in both things (in Manson). She was weak. She was gullible,” he said.

But, Slosser says, these days she is “working her way out of her gullibility.”

“She prays a lot and she reads the Bible a lot. Everybody I’ve talked to — guards, prison officials — say she is for real.”

In an interview during a recent visit to Atlanta, Slosser said that Miss Atkins now has a large mail ministry and sends a newsletter to young people around the country who are searching for faith.

He said that when she looks back on her days with Manson “she realizes the enormity of what she did and feels very sorry about it. She regrets it, but she knows she’s been forgiven. I’ve never seen anybody who knows the forgiveness of God the way she does.”

The title of the book, he said, was chosen by Miss Atkins because she believes that there was a “demonic, satanic force” exercising power over her, and that now she is a child of God.

“She is very much a literalist in Bible terms. She believes strongly that Manson was demon possesses and that she was demon possessed,” Slosser said.

He attributes her conversion to the power of Christ and to the fact that several people were praying for her by name on a daily basis.

“I really believe in prayer and I believe she was set free by prayer,” he said.

Slosser also added that Miss Atkins is not receiving any royalties for the book. All of the money is being sent to the New Life Foundation of Cookville, Tenn., to help found a community to minister to young women in trouble.

By ALICE MURRAY