SAN JOSE, Calif., Nov. 15 — Priscilla Cooper bore an illegitimate child at 19 and danced topless before she was 20.

Today, at 21, she shares murder charges with two other women who bear the “X” scar of the Charles Manson cult on their foreheads.

“I can’t blame her for what’s happened,” her mother, Oleta Cooper, 47, said in an interview Tuesday.

“She got mixed up with the wrong crowd. I blame the schools and police for messing her up.”

Mrs. Cooper, wife of a $500-a-month San Jose shoe salesman, said her only daughter “started drifting” five years ago after dropping out of high school.

Her drifting ended this week at a Stockton, Calif., house where she, two other women and two men were arrested and charged with murder in the fatal shooting of Lauren Willett, 19, whose body was buried in the basement. Another man was charged later.

The body of the slain woman’s husband, James Willett, 26, of Los Angeles, was found decapitated and buried last week in Guerneville, 110 miles northwest of Stockton.

Willett apparently was killed because he knew about robberies committed in the Los Angeles area and linked with Manson family members, Sonoma county District Attorney John Hawkes said Tuesday.

The men named in murder complaints filed by Hawkes are Michael Lee Monfort, 24, James Craig, 33, and William Goucher, 23, all ex-convicts.

“Willett doesn’t seem to have been involved in the crimes but he knew about them,” Hawkes said.

He said Willett and his wife shared a resort cabin with the men.

Investigators think Willett was killed about a month ago. They theorize that the victim’s wife had traveled with the group since then without knowledge of her husband’s death, along with her eight-month-old daughter, Heidi.

San Joaquin District Attorney Joseph Bakers said she apparently was killed to keep her from going to authorities about her husband’s death following the discovery of his body by a hiker.

The daughter, who was found in the Stockton home along with her mother’s body in the basement, marijuana, two shotguns and three pistols, is in the custody of county juvenile authorities.

Mrs. Cooper, who takes care of Priscilla’s illegitimate son, said she first heard of her daughter’s arrest while watching television.

“It was a shock,” she said. Later, her daughter telephoned her from the Stockton jail.

Although not identified as a clan member, Miss Cooper has an “X” scar on her forehead like those Manson’s followers carved after he inflicted one on himself during his murder trial.

The other women charged are Nancy Laura Pittman, 24, and Lynnette Alice Fromme, 24, both of Los Angeles. Miss Pittman was a key defense witness at the trial in which Manson and three women followers were convicted of the slaying of actress Sharon Tate and six others.

Mrs. Cooper said her daughter got into trouble for “minor things” like truancy, tardiness and fighting at Theodore Roosevelt junior high school in San Jose.

“Every time she’d get into trouble, the school would call police and they would haul
her off to juvenile hall without telling us why,” she said.

Although Priscilla was a “brilliant student,” the mother said, it was no surprise when she dropped out of school.