Assassination!: The Brick Chronicle of Attempts on the Lives of Twelve US Presidents (28 page)

Hoping to spark an apocalyptic, genocidal race war, in August of 1969, Manson ordered his followers to carry out the gruesome Tate/LaBianca murder spree, attempting to leave behind false evidence that the murders were committed by African Americans.

Fromme had not participated in the murders, but when Manson and others were arrested and brought to trial, she joined fellow Family members who shaved their heads, carved x’s on their foreheads, and held constant vigil outside the courthouse.

Once Manson had been sent to prison for life, Fromme and another Family member moved to Sacramento and began wearing red-robed outfits, considering themselves nuns awaiting the release of their Lord. In the early ’70s, Fromme dedicated herself to combating one of the evils that Manson had warned about: industrial polluters.

Forming what she called the International People’s Court of Retribution, Fromme made plans for Manson followers to carry out grisly murders of the CEOs of major polluters and their wives. She wrote letters and made phone calls urging others to action but soon realized such plans could not succeed without Manson to lead them.

Fromme was desperate for a way to get Manson back into a courtroom to explain himself to the world when she found out that President Gerald Ford would be visiting Sacramento. On the morning of September 5, 1975, Ford left the Senator Hotel to walk the short distance to the state capitol.

From amid the crowd gathered to see the president, twenty-six-year-old Fromme pulled out a borrowed .45 caliber semiautomatic pistol she had strapped to her leg under her robes and aimed it directly at the president’s crotch.

“It didn’t go off!” shouted Fromme repeatedly as she was wrestled to the ground by Secret Service members. It is unknown whether Fromme intended to shoot Ford. The pistol was later found to be loaded, but there was no bullet in the chamber.

When the judge denied her request to represent herself and call her own witnesses, Fromme completely refused to participate in her own trial, at one point telling the judge, “Your Honor, I feel all the laws were broken when Manson was put in prison.”

After a lengthy trial, Fromme was convicted of attempted assassination. When US Attorney Dwayne Keyes recommended severe punishment because she was “full of hate and violence,” Fromme removed an apple from under her robe and threw it at him, hitting him in the face and knocking off his glasses.

While in prison in 1979, Fromme injured a fellow inmate when she struck her in the head with the claw end of a hammer as the two were tending a garden on the prison grounds.

In December of 1987, Fromme managed to escape from prison after hearing that Manson was dying of testicular cancer. The rumor turned out to be false, and Fromme was caught two days later just two miles from the prison.

Having served thirty-four years behind bars, Fromme was released on parole in 2009 at age sixty and took up residence in Oneida County, New York, where to date she has had no further run-ins with the law.