Earlier today, statements announcing the release of Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme from prison were sent out to the press. Fromme, the once – and seemingly current – Charles Manson follower had been given a life sentence 34 years ago after she had been tried and found guilty for pointing a gun at then President Gerald Ford. While she had been quickly apprehended by the President’s Secret Service, it was later found that there was no bullet in the gun’s chamber. However, the gun was loaded.
At the time her attorney John Virga defended her saying, “My argument to the jury was, if she wanted to kill him, she would have shot him. She’d been around guns. And let’s be realistic: We know the Manson family, at least some of them, are killers.” This defense, though, did not prove convincing and Fromme was sentenced to life in prison.
Now that she’ll be released on parole, some are asking whether or not she has any remorse. After all, from an interview taken in 1987, she had been asked if she felt any regret and she had replied, “No. No, I don’t. I feel it was fate.” She also mentioned that she was surprised she was arrested at all and that she found the sentence “excessive” and that she didn’t think she’d ever do anything like that again. Then again, she said that she still respected her also imprisoned leader, Charles Manson, the man responsible for the Manson Family killings in the late sixties.
Fromme will be released on August 16 from the Federal Medical Center in Carswell, Texas.
This woman sounds confused, and very young, yet she’s sixty years old now, it’s weird. I guess spending your life in jail doesn’t help you mature or develop. Not too surprising.