EUREKA, Oct. 20 — Reports of ties between a southern Humboldt County commune farm and both the Manson family and Symbionese liberation Army were exaggerated, but a gang of criminals with links to several radical movements in California has used the farm as a retreat, authorities said Friday.

The commune surfaced last week when two of its members were arrested after a jail escape in Seattle where they allegedly drove getaway vehicles.

They were identified as Lawrence Bailey, 27, also known as Larry Jones, and William Dunne, 26. Both were friends with Artie Rae Baker, one of the escapees.

Baker was captured with six other prisoners as well as Dunne and Bailey. One was killed. On Thursday a judge sentenced Baker to life in prison for the murder of a U.S. border guard last May 24.

“Basically, all we are aware of is that persons who own property in the Honeydew area were associated with the Bay Area revolutionary group called the Tribal Thumb,” said Capt. Peter Vanderklis of the Humboldt County sheriff’s office.

Vanderklis said the Sheriff’s Department “knows no criminal activities” to have taken place at the 130-acre ranch, purchased in February 1976, by persons associated with the Tribal Thumb, a radical commune once active in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The newly-surfaced group is known as the Wellsprings Communion. It is known that some of its members sprang from the Tribal Thumb.

The group owns a Folsom Street restaurant in San Francisco, called the Well Springs Communion Vegetarian Restaurant. The purpose of the Humboldt County ranch, according to documents filed when it was established, is to grow vegetables for the restaurant.

Little has been heard of the Tribal Thumb in the Bay Area since the death of its leader, Earl Satcher, who was killed in a 1977 shootout which authorities said involved rival exconvict groups.

Bailey is a former follower of Charles Manson and was a resident of the Humboldt County ranch of the Wellsprings Commune. He was a member of the Manson Family reportedly present when Manson announced his plan to go on a murder rampage in Southern California, which resulted in the Tate murders for which Manson is now in prison.

Dunne, was convicted in July 1972 in Orange County for second-degree murder. He was paroled last year after serving time in Deuel Vocational Institution, Tracy, where Baker and Bailey also were prisoners.

Philip Guthrie of the California Department of Corrections said the three men were there at the same time. He also said: “We know that, according to intelligence sources, the Tribal Thumb