Fromme: 'There Is a Gun Pointed'

"I wasn't going to shoot him," complained the prisoner in solitary confinement. "I just wanted to get some attention for a new trial for Charlie and the girls." Why did she take such a potentially catastrophic action to make her point? "Well, you know, when people around you treat you like a child and pay no attention to the things you say, you have to do something."

Calmly, almost casually, Lynette ("Squeaky") Fromme, 26, last week discussed her reasons for aiming a loaded Colt .45 automatic at President Ford in Sacramento, Calif. She claimed to have endangered the life of the President --and thereby revived the national nightmare of political assassination --solely to win a new trial for her master and mentor, Charles Manson. The psychopathic guru had been sentenced to jail for life, along with three of his women followers, for the sadistic slayings of Actress Sharon Tate and six others in 1969. Somehow the act of threatening Ford made sense to Squeaky Fromme. Referring to the Manson "family," a Department of Justice official said: "They think that the people will say 'Hey, they mean business. They kill Presidents. Let's free Manson so they won't go on killing Presidents.' "

Just how close Fromme came to killing the President became clearer when it was learned that she had known all along that she had to pull back the slide of her Colt .45 in order to fire the weapon --a procedure that she did not follow as Ford approached. A friend, who requested anonymity, reported that early last year Fromme was taken by a boy friend to the Sharp's Park rifle range in South San Francisco. Squeaky was said to have been afraid of the .45--she did not like its noise or kick--but she did learn to handle a .22 pistol that had a similar slide mechanism. Why, then, had she not pulled back the slide on her Colt? Says her friend: "Squeaky's a spacy girl, and it's just like her to forget to pull the slide."

Last week some 50 Secret Servicemen, FBI agents and California police were frantically trying to determine if Squeaky had acted in a plot with other members of the Manson family. They now number about 60 men and women, mostly in their mid-20s, who are living on the loose, mainly in California, and who are still convinced that the sly and Satan-eyed Manson is the second Christ. Searching for evidence, investigators carefully went through the attic apartment in downtown Sacramento that Squeaky had occupied with Sandra Good, 31, another Manson cultist. In recent months, the two women had been urging members of the Manson family not to give up the faith. They had also issued bombastic threats involving Ford that had been shrugged off by newsmen and officials as harmless rhetoric. But after examining the apartment and interviewing Manson himself in San Quentin, law officers reported that they had found no evidence of conspiracy.

Sugar Daddy. A federal grand jury in Sacramento learned that Squeaky had got her Colt automatic from another of the elderly men that the Manson family is accustomed to flattering and fleecing. Harold Eugene Boro, 65, is a thin, balding grandfather who was divorced some 30 years ago. A retired draftsman, Boro befriended Fromme and Good, who reportedly visited him at his Sacramento apartment. Rosette Rankin, a relative of Boro's, said that he "has money, and she [Squeaky] was taking him for everything." A state intelligence official agreed that Boro was a generous friend to the young women--" 'good old Sugar Daddy'--that's what they called him." One report had it that Squeaky stole Boro's gun; another that he had given it to her for "protection."

When Squeaky's day in court arrived, she appeared in the flamboyant "nun's habit" of the Manson sisterhood --bright red robe with a cape and hood that was similar to the one she had on the day that she leveled the pistol at Ford. She was even wearing red tennis shoes. Fearing that someone might try to attack her, guards frisked everyone entering the crowded courtroom, including newsmen.

Clean Up. After being charged with attempting to assassinate the President --the first person so accused under the federal criminal statute passed in 1965 --Squeaky demanded to speak. Federal Judge Thomas J. MacBride warned her that any statement might prejudice her case. "This is more important to me," said Fromme, who has a court-appointed lawyer but hopes to carry out her own defense. "I'm the one that has to sit in the cell and worry about it." Then, clearly and forcefully, she said, "There is an army of young people and children who want to clean up the earth." She called upon MacBride to order the Government to "buy up the parks. You have jurisdiction over the redwood trees. Cutting down redwood trees is like cutting down your arms and legs." When the judge tried to silence her, Squeaky declared: "There is a gun pointed, and whether it goes off is up to you all." With that, the judge had her ejected from the courtroom. "I didn't mean to be rude," said Squeaky.

She seemed to be threatening not so much MacBride as people who, in her opinion, were damaging the environment. But she has warned another man on the bench. Judge Raymond Choate, who passed sentence on Manson, reported that about two months ago Squeaky called him to say that "she wanted to talk to me because she was going to do something desperate. She specifically said she didn't mean suicide." Choate decided that she might be threatening him and his family and called the Los Angeles district attorney's office, which took the matter "under study."

There was also a report that the Manson family had made many death threats against former Governor Ronald Reagan and his family. One undercover agent said that the Mansonites had warned they would kidnap the Reagans and "torture and behead them one by one" until Manson was released. During his last year in office (1973-74), Reagan and his family were under especially heavy guard.

With Squeaky behind bars on $1 million bail, Sandra Good took over the leadership of the family with a vengeance. She began issuing bloodcurdling threats against people who she apparently felt were guilty of polluting the environment. Phoned by Rob Ruby, a reporter for a New Orleans radio station, she said that half a dozen leading businessmen in the South were targets for assassination, although some seemed to have no connection with environmental matters. Their wives, she said, would also be "terribly, terribly murdered." Later, Good gave the Associated Press a death list of 75 businessmen around the nation. The list also included such entries as "Pacific Gas & Electric--nuclear plants," "Fish and Wildlife Service. Kills animals" and "all automobile companies." Good told the A.P. that the assassinations would be carried out by what she called "the International People's Court of Retribution," which she defined as "several thousand people throughout the world who love the earth, the children and their lives."

Some individuals on the Manson family's "hit" list reacted with bewilderment and a sense of helplessness. Asked a California oil-company executive who was named: "What kind of precautions can I take? I don't plan to hide in the cellar."

No Crime. Frustrated Government law officials say that it would be next to impossible to charge Good with a crime for what she was saying last week. Under federal conspiracy laws, someone must perform an overt illegal act before he can be arrested, and under federal extortion laws, a person has to threaten to carry out a crime himself before he can be charged. Good's communiques have said that the attacks would be made by a second party, the International People's Court of Retribution.

California prosecutors are limited by similar requirements. Says Jack Winkler, an assistant attorney general who heads the state's criminal-law division: "We are most interested and concerned by what she has had to say. But mere words do not constitute a crime."

After being questioned by the FBI for three hours late last week, Good was subdued when she talked to TIME. Even so, she sat down at her typewriter and wrote out a statement in defense of the environment that declared, in part: "Any woman who allows her body to control or to sell products harmful to the people and the environment will be viciously murdered. Anyone who advertises or manufactures food or drugs injurious to people's health will be killed. The air, the water, the trees and the wildlife are part of the Manson family."

As Sandra Good launched her threats against the world, a woman claiming to be her mother told the San Diego Union that her daughter had once said that she had "finally reached the point where I can kill my parents." Sandra's mother requested anonymity; she is still afraid of her daughter. She recalled how Sandra had twice nearly died of respiratory ailments when she was a child. "Once I even left the hospital after they had told me she had died," she remembered. Then she added: "Why did she have to pull through?"

While dozens of men and women around the nation wondered why Sandra Good boasted that she was out to get them, Justice Department sources acknowledged that FBI agents are now keeping all known members of the Manson clan under surveillance. "We aren't going to try to throw them in jail," says one Justice Department official, "but, by God, we're going to know where they are, and if they are where the President is, they'll have a hell of a problem trying to get close to him."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.