SAN JOSE, Nov. 15 — Priscilla Cooper’s mother cannot recall her only daughter without a mixture of bitterness, bewilderment and pain.

Priscilla’s latest “mess,” being charged with murder along with two “Manson women” in Stockton, hurts as much as if the 21 year old woman had not been gone for eight years.

Sitting in a modest home in central San Jose where she and her shoe salesman husband take care of Priscilla’s 2 year old son, Mrs. Oleta Cooper, 48, does not know whom to blame.

Her daughter, who was big for her age, became a fighter at Roosevelt Junior High School, lashing back at taunts about an eye lid that drooped uncontrollably due to an undeveloped nerve.

By the time she had completed one semester at San Jose High School, Priscilla had been taken to juvenile hall so many times, she was placed in a foster home.

“She just got involved with a bad crowd,” said Mrs. Cooper, who said school officials would not cooperate and called police instead of her when Priscilla got in trouble.

The last time she had heard from Priscilla, before her daughter called her from jail in Stockton, a topless dancer job had ended four months ago.

She became involved with James Craig, 33, one of her co-defendants in the murder case, in 1968 when he was a motorcycle gang member. They moved to Long Beach and lived there during the Charles Manson gang trial.

Drug charges here and in Long Beach began to be piled on top of her juvenile record.

But Mrs. Cooper remembers Priscilla as a brilliant student who suffered because the school “would not I pay any attention to her.”

“I cannot really blame Priscilla,” she said, adding regretfully. “Maybe we all could have done a little more.”

By DON WEST