On December 23, 1987, Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, a fervent admirer of notorious cult leader and murderer Charles Manson, made a daring escape from a federal prison.
Fromme became one of Manson’s earliest disciples after meeting him in 1967 in Venice Beach. At the time, she was just 19 and had found herself homeless following a fallout with her family.
Although her allegiance to Manson was unwavering, Fromme did not participate in the infamous 1969 murders of Sharon Tate and Leno and Rosemary LaBianca in Los Angeles.
Even so, Fromme, along with other followers who weren’t implicated in the crimes, camped outside the courthouse, persistently proclaiming Manson’s innocence. She was convicted for attempting to coerce other “family” members into silence.
In 1972, Fromme found herself on the fringes of another murder case. She traveled with two members of the Aryan Brotherhood who were responsible for the killing of James Willett in Stockton, California. Although she was detained for over two months, she was not charged, unlike four others who faced convictions.
The incident that ultimately led to Fromme’s long-term incarceration occurred on September 5, 1975.
She travelled to Sacramento’s Capitol Park in California, where US President Gerald Ford was shaking hands with bystanders as he made his way to a speaking engagement at the Capitol building.
Fromme, dressed all in red, moved in close to the president and as he came to greet her, she drew a Colt .45 pistol from a holster on her left leg, aimed it, and pulled the trigger.
Ford survived and even escaped injury when the gun did not go off. It later emerged there was no round in the chamber, though whether Fromme, through inexperience, had not known she had to slide the gun action back to load one, or whether her later claim that she intentionally ejected the first round before leaving her apartment that morning is true, the reason for it is unknown.
A Secret Service agent disarmed her and Ford continued on to his engagement.
At her trial, the court was told Fromme was worried about the extinction of California’s majestic redwood trees.
She was sentenced to life in prison for the assassination attempt.
But she briefly broke that sentence on December 23, 1987, when she slipped away from guards at the all-women Federal Prison Camp Alderson in West Virginia, where she had been transferred after attacking an inmate with a hammer at another facility.
Fromme was recaptured at a fishing camp two days later. She said she had escaped to be closer to Manson.
Fromme was eventually paroled in 2009.
In 2019, two years after Manson’s death, Fromme told the US ABC she was “still in love” with Manson, but acknowledged that many others saw him as the “epitome of evil”.
That same year, Fromme was portrayed by Dakota Fanning in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, Quentin Tarantino’s fictionalised reimagining of the events surrounding Tate-LaBianca murders.
