September 5, 2024 • 31 mins
By the early 70s, most of America rejects the values promoted by the youth of what we call “the 60s.” Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, a follower of Charles Manson, aims a gun at Gerald Ford and pulls the trigger.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Rip Current is a production of iHeart Podcasts. The views
and opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those if the host, producers,
or parent company listener discretion.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Is it vie.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
Are California.
Speaker 4 (00:25):
Just before ten am on September fifth, nineteen seventy five,
President Gerald Ford walked with a security detail on a
path through Capitol Park on the grounds of the California
Capitol Building in Sacramento. The path was lined with members
of the public. State policemen were president at intervals along
(00:45):
the route. A small woman wearing a bright red dress
maneuvered her way through the crowd and approached the President
as he passed.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
She had a gun.
Speaker 4 (00:56):
Her name was Lynnette from.
Speaker 5 (00:58):
Good Evening in CALIFORNI you today. President Ford looked down
the barrel of a loaded automatic held by a red
haired woman in a long red dress. But the gun
didn't go off, and he's all right. The woman was
wrestled to the ground by a secret serviceman and the
President was hustled away. She is being charged with attempted
murder of the President. She is twenty six year old
(01:19):
Lynette Alice from nicknamed Squeaky.
Speaker 6 (01:25):
Less than three weeks later, on September twenty second, a
woman named Sarah Jane Moore stood in a similar crowd
assembled across the street from the Saint Francis Hotel in
San Francisco. The President emerged from the side entrance and
walked towards his waiting limousine. Moore fired a single shot
before she was wrestled to the ground.
Speaker 7 (01:46):
This is a CBS News special report.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Here CBS News correspondent Walder Cronkait.
Speaker 8 (01:52):
A woman fired a shot at President Ford in San
Francisco this afternoon, but a policeman deflected the pistol and
the President was not hit. The woman was in a
crowd across the street about thirty five or forty feet away.
As the President was leaving the Saint Francis Hotel to
enter his limousine to return to Washington. Witnesses heard the
sound and saw a puff of smoke. The woman, identified
(02:12):
by police as Sarah Jane Moore in her forties, was
immediately seized. When the shot was fired, the President was
shoved into his car and wished to the airport, where
Air Force one was waiting to fly him to Washington.
He was not hurt, and at the airport appeared calm
and unperturbed.
Speaker 4 (02:31):
In nearly two hundred and fifty years of United States history,
there are only two times that we know of that
a woman has tried to assassinate a US president. The
two attempts were separated by seventeen days and less than
ninety miles.
Speaker 6 (02:49):
I'm Toby Ball and I'm Mary Catherine Garrison, and this
is rip current.
Speaker 9 (03:00):
I saw a woman start to go down and her
arm go back, and I saw the gun, the big
black gun.
Speaker 10 (03:05):
I got it out of her hand, and she.
Speaker 9 (03:07):
Kept saying, easy fellas, Easy fellas.
Speaker 6 (03:08):
It didn't go off.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
It didn't go off.
Speaker 6 (03:12):
Episode one, it didn't go off.
Speaker 4 (03:19):
So the idea for this podcast came as I was
doing research on a related topic, radical groups in the
nineteen seventies. I was going down these different rabbit holes,
and at the end of one I came across Sarah
Jane Moore and from there Lynette From.
Speaker 6 (03:35):
I came to this story by way of Broadway. I
played Lynette Squeaky From in the original Broadway cast of
Stephen Sondheim's musical Assassins Charlie Dahn.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
As I dug into the research, I found that there
was a bigger story here than just a historical oddity.
This was the story of two women navigating the fringes
of radical society. How had they arrived at this place
in their lives? Why was California in nineteen seventy five
the setting for these attempts? Why target Gerald Ford? And
(04:14):
what can we learn from their stories? These assassination attempts
and the stories of the two women who tried to
kill President gerald Ford take place in the considerable shadow
of what we call the sixties. There's a public perception
about the sixties, Hippies, Woodstock, the civil rights movement, communes, Vietnam,
(04:36):
campus protests. It's an umbrella that includes people and movements
that embodied different ways of reimagining what America was, could
and should be. And these movements continued on into the
early seventies. But the popular perception of the sixties only
reflects a certain segment of the population at that time. Many,
(05:00):
even most Americans, found these new values and ideas threatening
or disturbing or simply un American. Much of the mainstream
press agreed with this assessment.
Speaker 11 (05:12):
When you read Time each week, you know more you understand.
Speaker 4 (05:17):
From before World War II until the rise of the Internet,
Time magazine was a powerful cultural force. Their annual Person
of the Year issue was a big deal. This was
the person or people Time deemed quote to have done
the most to influence the events of the year. On
January twelfth, nineteen seventy, Time magazine named Middle Americans as
(05:41):
its Men and Women of the Year for nineteen sixty nine.
Who were the Middle Americans?
Speaker 1 (05:50):
The American dream that they were living was no longer
the dream is advertised. They feared that they were beginning
to lose their grip on the country. Others seem to
be taking over. The liberals, the radicals, the defiant young,
a communications industry that they often believed was lying to them. This,
they will say, with an air of embarrassment that such
a truth need be stated at all. Is the greatest
(06:12):
country in the world. Why are people trying to tear
it down?
Speaker 4 (06:17):
Time Magazine took a sympathetic, though also critical view of
Middle Americans, those who saw the changes in the social, cultural,
and political landscape. Basically, the things we associate with the
sixties as threatening to create a country alien to the
one that they knew. There's racism, which shows itself in
concerns about the civil rights movement, but in other ways
(06:40):
as well.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
The article says, the rising level of crime frightens the
Middle American, and when he speaks of crime, though he
does not like to admit it, he means blacks. And
then the idea of sacrificing their own children's education to
a long range improvement for blacks appalls them.
Speaker 4 (07:01):
Time's comfort with a certain level of racism is jarring,
such as here talking about Middle Americans who voted for
the overtly racist, segregationist presidential candidate George Wallace.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
They are not extremists of the right, despite the fact
that some of them voted for George Wallace in nineteen
sixty eight.
Speaker 12 (07:20):
I say segregation, MA, segregation, the MA, and segregation forever.
Speaker 4 (07:29):
But the Middle Americans' concerns go beyond the impacts of
the civil rights movement. They're worried that the radical young,
as Time calls them, fundamentally challenge their belief in the
goodness of America.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
Middle Americans education does not dwell upon the agonizing moral
discrepancies of American history, the stories of the Indians or
the Blacks, or the national tradition of violence. He cannot
believe that the society he has come to accept as
the best possible on earth. The order he sees as
natural contains wrong so deeply built in that he does
not notice them. Middle Americans believe that the radical young
(08:07):
are operating on a fast misunderstanding of their nation.
Speaker 4 (08:12):
Time uses shorthand to get this point across.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
While the rest of the nation's youth has been watching
Dustin Hoffman and Midnight Cowboy, Middle America's teenagers have been
taking in John Wayne for the second or third time
in The Green Berets.
Speaker 4 (08:30):
Midnight Cowboy is the story of a male sex worker
and his pimp trying to eke out a living in
the sedious corners of New York City.
Speaker 13 (08:38):
Oh Hey, I'm a hustler.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
You didn't know that.
Speaker 4 (08:41):
It received an X rating due to quote the homosexual
frame of reference and quote its possible influence on youngsters.
In contrast, The Green Berets was an anti communist, pro
Vietnam War movie. Critics observe that The Green Berets reduced
the ongoing war into a simple conflict of good versus evil.
Speaker 14 (09:04):
Successful nation Mikey Yeah, but very gustly.
Speaker 4 (09:09):
Roger Ebert gave it zero stars, but Middle America apparently
ate up the raw patriotism. We'll continue to use these
terms Middle America and the Radical Young as a shorthand
to broadly describe these two political and social groups in
the US in the late sixties and seventies.
Speaker 6 (09:34):
Lynette From and Sarah Jane Moore's stories are very different
in many ways, but they share two fundamental similarities. Both
women had lived much of their lives in the culture
of Middle America, but their experiences there were difficult, and
then they suddenly, disorientingly became part of the most extreme
frontiers of the radical Young. For Sarah Jane Moore, this
(09:57):
meant immersing herself in the revolutionary philosophy the underground militants
in the Bay Area, including San Francisco. For Lynette From,
it meant joining a commune led by a guru whose
name would become synonymous with the darkest fears that Middle
America had about the Radical Young. Charles Manson on this
season of Rip Current, we'll look at Lynette From and
(10:20):
Sarah Janemore's lives in Middle America, their transformations as they
entered the world of the Radical Young, and the social
and political forces that led them to try to kill
the President of the United States in September nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
If you think American society of the twenty first century
or the twenty twenties was dangerous and.
Speaker 15 (10:42):
Violent, it's nothing.
Speaker 16 (10:43):
Compared to what California was in the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 6 (10:47):
Many, many people all of the world are due to
be assassinated.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
This is just at the beginning.
Speaker 15 (10:53):
What starts as a hippie love called transmigraphied into a
violent criminal enterprise.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Of course, would have been imber.
Speaker 17 (11:01):
The people will be shot on prevent any.
Speaker 12 (11:03):
Primate, any plague.
Speaker 11 (11:05):
The worst thing in that underworld is to be an informant,
a snitch.
Speaker 17 (11:11):
These people aren't just a bunch of mouths.
Speaker 11 (11:13):
They're perfectly willing to die for what they're doing.
Speaker 9 (11:17):
I'm not saying i'd try to take a shot.
Speaker 10 (11:18):
I didn't take a shot without a show in the chamber.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
I had two feet from him.
Speaker 17 (11:22):
I could have shot twice. I was the person in
the intent was exactly as I stated in court, to
wilfully and know.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Any assassinate Gerald off Or the Pressman of the United.
Speaker 6 (11:32):
States, Gerald Ford, the thirty eighth President of the United States,
arrived in Sacramento for the last stop of a two
day fundraising trip to the West coast. He had already
raised money in Seattle and Portland.
Speaker 10 (11:49):
It was September the fifth, nineteen seventy five, and it
was to be a red letter day in the city
of Sacramento. The President of the United States, Gerald R. Ford,
was to pay us a visit.
Speaker 6 (12:03):
This is senior US District Court Judge William Shubb speaking
at a twenty thirteen panel discussion of Lynnette From's trial.
Speaker 10 (12:12):
The town was all a bustle.
Speaker 7 (12:15):
In the morning.
Speaker 10 (12:15):
The President was scheduled to speak to a large group
of California business leaders at the annual host breakfast to
be held in the newly constructed Sacramento Community Center.
Speaker 7 (12:30):
Traditionally, the governor had always come and spoken to the breakfast.
Jerry Brown was in his first year as governor in
nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 12 (12:37):
The people in chacrament all the people in California and
out in the West, can make the difference.
Speaker 7 (12:41):
You don't even governor about eight or nine months at
this time, as a matter.
Speaker 17 (12:44):
Of fact, are you get out and vote on Tuesday.
Speaker 7 (12:48):
And invited him to come and speak, and he didn't respond.
He kind of put him off, and it angered the sponsors.
My name is Dan Walders. I'm a political columnist for
a non fuck with journalism group called Calmatters dot Org.
I'd been a journalist for over sixty years, and in
(13:09):
nineteen seventy five I had just begun covering the capitol
for the Sacramento Union. They were mostly Republicans. They kind
of angered him that this kind young snotnoas kid governor
wasn't coming in positive them. So that the head of
the committee at that time was a man by the
name of Carlisle Reed, who happened to be the publisher
of the Sacramento Union, and he was well connected in
(13:31):
Republican circles. So he decided, basically, I'll teach that young
son of a bitch a lesson. I'll get the president
to come to Sacramento instead and show him up, and
they did. He pulled strings and got a commitment from
Jerry Ford he would come and speak to the host breakfast.
Speaker 6 (13:50):
Ford received a warm welcome from the group of businessmen
and gave a speech guaranteed to appeal to their political sensibilities.
Speaker 12 (13:58):
In recent years, a disproportionate percentage of new jobs has
come from the public sector rather than the private the
result has been the creation of a bureaucracy that contributes
very little to America's prosperity and productivity. It simply shares it.
Speaker 6 (14:23):
His message of reducing regulatory burden was well received by
the largely Republican audience. Here is an unidentified attendee reacting
to Ford's speech.
Speaker 18 (14:33):
Well, I think the President gave a very determined statement
on which he stated that we're raither going to become
free Americans again and cause our economy to grow, or
we're going to go further and further in the direction
of a planned, a socialistic type economy.
Speaker 6 (14:49):
Following the speech, Ford returned from the convention Center to
the Senator Hotel for a brief rest before heading to
the state Capitol to meet with Governor Brown and address
the state legislature. Here's Ford testifying about that day months later.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
And what time did you leave the hotel?
Speaker 12 (15:06):
Approxtantly ten am that morning?
Speaker 19 (15:11):
As I understand, you crossed the street and you were
proceeding along the walkway.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
Towards the state capital. Is that correct?
Speaker 12 (15:19):
That is correct. I left the hotel, walked across L
Street and up a walkway from L Street to the
entrance to the State Capitol on my way to meet
the government.
Speaker 19 (15:35):
And as you were walking you were exchanging cordialities.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
With the people and shaking their hands. Is that correct?
Speaker 12 (15:41):
That is correct? As I went along the walkway, the
crowd had been assembled on my left as I walked
toward the Capitol, and they were held back by a rope.
And as I walked toward the Capital, I was shaking
hands and speaking to people in this group on the
(16:01):
left hand side.
Speaker 6 (16:04):
As Ford moved along the route, he was accompanied by
Secret Service agents, city and state police officers, and a
group of journalists and camera operators, including Sacramento Television Channel
ten reporter Roger Lindberg.
Speaker 5 (16:16):
Beginning our series of reports on today's events in Sacramento
with a near assassination of the president.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Here is Roger Lindberg.
Speaker 17 (16:23):
Roger, Well, it is the sort of thing that you
hear about, but you never really believe you will ever see.
Speaker 14 (16:29):
Roger Lindberg, former KXTV reporter back in seventies. So my
assignment at the time was to be with the president
leaving the hotel, which was across the street from the Capitol,
and then go with him into the Capitol building. You
have to cross a major street, and then you walk
(16:53):
through this garden that is on the eastern side of
the Capitol building, and then you go up the step
into the Capitol. We come in the back door, not
the front of the Capitol. So that was my assignment
was to just be with him accompany him. I had
a camera crew with me at the time. It was
a big scrum. There were a lot of a lot
(17:14):
of cameras, a lot of reporters Secret Service.
Speaker 17 (17:17):
President Ford was smiling and shaking hands as he moved
across from the Senator Hotel.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
Towards the Capitol Building.
Speaker 17 (17:25):
It was crossing the street, walking up a path that
led to the back entrance of the Capitol.
Speaker 14 (17:30):
I remember it was an incredibly nice day. It was
bright and sunny, typical California day. We walked across the
street with him. We entered the park on the northern side,
and we were walking along a path at meanders between
big trees and rose garden, etc.
Speaker 6 (17:51):
There was a moment of confusion at the entrance to
the park. The security plan called for the Sacramento City
Police to aid the Secret Service and escorting the President
from the Senator Hotel to the park entrance. At the
entrance the city police were to give way to State
police officers who would accompany the President and his secret
Service detail through the park and to the back door
(18:12):
of the Capitol, But when the group reached the park
entrance there were only three uniformed state police officers on
the scene. A decision was made for one of the
city police officers to accompany the President and his entourage
into the park. Waiting amid the crowd was Lynette From.
After the break, the security accompanying President Ford as he
(18:54):
walked from the Senator Hotel to the California State Capitol was,
by today's standards, almost comically. Video of his walk appears
to show less than a dozen agents around the president.
The scene does not seem very secure. Inside the park,
about a dozen State Police officers were stationed along the path.
In the minutes before Ford's appearance. Lynette From approached one
(19:15):
of the officers. She asked the officer if the president
was going to take that path on his way to
the State House. The officer was evasive in his answer,
but a crowd of several hundred people were lining the
path from the park entrance to the east steps of
the Capitol, and it seemed clear that this would be
his route from wore a flowing sleeveless red dress with
the hem down at her ankles. Beneath the robe, she
(19:37):
carried an M nineteen eleven Colt forty five pistol in
a holster on her left leg. The presidential entourage made
its way through the park, with Forde shaking hands and
speaking with people lining the path. A man in the
crowd described to a television reporter what he saw next.
Speaker 13 (19:54):
I was about fifteen feet from where the president was
moving down the line of people shaking hands, and he
reached out to shake hands with a young woman. And
just about that time there was another person, a redheaded woman,
moved toward him.
Speaker 17 (20:09):
When he reached the halfway mark in the path, the
crowd suddenly shifted violently, and President Ford flinched back, his
hands thrust in front of him. Ford saw what few
others could. A woman dressed in a long red skirt
pointed a forty five caliber pistol at the president.
Speaker 6 (20:26):
Here is Gerald Ford again from his testimony, Where.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Was Lynette from when you first observed her?
Speaker 12 (20:32):
If you recall approximately halfway between L Street and the
State Capitol, I noticed a person in the second or
third row in a brightly colored dress, who appeared to
(20:54):
one who either shake hands or speak, or at least
wanted to get closer to me.
Speaker 19 (21:04):
Do you recall anything about the condition of her face
when you first observed her? Was it flushed, pale, weathered?
I know you've used the term weather before. Is at
your recollection?
Speaker 12 (21:14):
It looked weathered, but there were many faces that the
brightness of the dress attracted my attention, and then the
process of noticing the dress. I thought her face did
appear to be.
Speaker 6 (21:26):
Somewhat weather, though four doesn't mention it, and photographs taken
at the scene, Lynette is wearing a strange hat that
matches the red of her dress. The hat is made
of fabric and a shape like a cone, though most
of it is folded down like a limp, which's capped
to the right of her face. Her appearance was so
unusual that even as Ford moved through a crowd of people,
(21:47):
she stood out.
Speaker 12 (21:49):
I would say that she was three to four feet
from me when I first noticed her. She appeared to
want to come forward. I had the impression she did
come forward. I didn't see the precise movement. I stopped
because I had the impression she wanted to speak to
(22:09):
me or shake my hand, And as I moved to
either shake hands or speak to her, I then noticed
the gun as I indicated it in her hand was
approximately two feet.
Speaker 19 (22:24):
From where exactly, if you recall, was the barrel of
the weapon point.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
I could not tell.
Speaker 12 (22:32):
The weapon was large. It covered all or most of
her hand as far as I could see. And I
only saw it instantaneously because almost automatically, one of the
Secret Service agents lunged, grabbed the hand and the weapon,
(22:55):
and then I was pushed off by the other members
of the Secret Service detail.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Do you know who it was that grabbed a hold
of her arm?
Speaker 12 (23:04):
It was one of the Secret Service detail, mister Larry boondor.
Speaker 20 (23:10):
My position at the time was right at his left shoulder.
So he's walking along shaking hands. I'm concentrating on his hands.
Don't want to have anybody grabbed too long, take his
watch whatever.
Speaker 6 (23:25):
We tried to interview Larry Bundorff, who was long retired
from the Secret Service, but the Secret Service Press office
turned down our interview request. Boondorf was next to Ford,
keeping an eye on the hands reaching for the president.
He would not have been expecting when that thrusting forward
a gun, but he acted immediately.
Speaker 20 (23:42):
As he's shaking hands. Suddenly I see this hand come
up with something in it, and it wasn't At that time,
didn't know it was a weapon, but I stepped in
front of the President to stop the hand from coming
up because I didn't want him to get.
Speaker 11 (23:55):
Hit with whatever it was.
Speaker 20 (23:57):
The minute I hited it, I knew it was a gun,
so I yelled out, gun. All my very best friends
that are with the President, they leave. She's screaming in
the crowd. Its screaming, and I got hold of her
hand and I got the gun. I got the gun
here pushing right. Didn't have my vest on, So I'm
thinking that I don't know if there's more to this
(24:18):
than it's going to happen, but I know I'm not
letting go older.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
Hey, you heard Bundorf yelling a lady with a gun?
Speaker 2 (24:24):
Forty five.
Speaker 6 (24:26):
This is retired Secret Service agent Doug Duncan, who was
part of President Ford security details, speaking at a commemoration
of the assassination attempt the.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
President Duck and I looked over his shoulder and I
could see that Larry had the gall in custody. He
had his hand over the gun pointed at the ground.
His left hand was around her, so he had her
under control.
Speaker 6 (24:50):
All of this happened in front of the assembled crowd.
To some it appeared to be just a commotion. Others
who were closer saw more clearly what happened. Dan Walters,
we had a.
Speaker 7 (25:00):
Reporter out there by the name of Vita fied Rigi
and I saw Vita and I said, what happened? She said,
what she tried to kill Ford or something like that,
and I said, you've got it right.
Speaker 6 (25:09):
This is Vita being interviewed by local news immediately after the.
Speaker 9 (25:13):
Attempt, And all of a sudden, I was standing maybe
three feet from Ford, behind two people. All of a sudden,
I saw the Secret serviceman right behind Ford just reach
out and push, and I saw a woman start to
go down and her arm go back, and I saw
the gun, and I didn't watch what Ford was doing.
And they wrestled through the ground and were slapping cuffs
on her and this big black gun. They got it
(25:33):
out of her hand, and she kept saying, easy fellas,
easy fellas.
Speaker 6 (25:36):
It didn't go off.
Speaker 16 (25:37):
It didn't go off.
Speaker 11 (25:38):
The president right after it happened, turned around and kind
of looked back at the spot, and it was clear
to me at least that he was aware of what
had happened. He seemed to me was done be will
they something like that, and it was clear that he
(25:58):
knew what had happened.
Speaker 6 (26:02):
Six Secret Service agents forced the president into a crouch
and hurried him the remaining hundred yards to the capital's
rear entrance and inside to safety. Meanwhile, Larry Bundorff and
others brought Lynnette to a tree to isolate her from
the crowd.
Speaker 16 (26:17):
Roger Lindberg, the Secret Service hustled her to a large
tree that was in the garden, and I think because
of my age, wearing sunglasses and having a suit on,
which was unusual for reporters, I.
Speaker 14 (26:33):
Ended up just standing right next to her and I
started interviewing her. I started talking to her. Her words
to me were, damn it. It didn't go off. The gun,
it didn't go off. I was scribbling notes as quickly
as I could, and then the Secret Service realized that
I wasn't Secret Service and got me away from the tree.
Speaker 17 (26:57):
Woman I didn't find as Manson Paul Lynn Allen Squeaky
from of Sacramento was held by Secret Service and police
while the President continued on to the Capitol. Witness has
heard Miss Brown say at one point it didn't go off.
Can you believe it didn't go off?
Speaker 6 (27:14):
An eyewitness told a local television reporter that Lynette kept
talking even after Roger Lindberg had been moved away. What
was she saying when they got her tied behind this tree?
Speaker 18 (27:24):
She kept saying that he's not a public servant.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
He's not a public servant.
Speaker 6 (27:29):
From was taken to Sacramento Police headquarters, where she was questioned.
At four o'clock, she appeared at the Sacramento Federal Court.
The one page complaint charging her with the assassination attempt
was read, and then US Magistrate Esther Mix asked From
if she had any statement before bail was set. From
replied no in a barely audible voice. She was then
(27:50):
sent to the Sacramento County Jail, where she was confined
alone to a cell. For his part, Ford continued with
his schedule, meeting with Governor Jerry By and then, an
hour after the attempt on his life, addressing the state legislature. Ironically,
the speech which was written before his visit centered on crime.
Speaker 12 (28:10):
Serious crime rose eighteen percent for the nation as a whole.
Speaker 4 (28:18):
After the speech to the Legislature, Ford left for McClellan
Air Force Base, where Air Force one waited on the
tarmac to take him back to Washington.
Speaker 17 (28:27):
Ford boarded the plane directly from the limousine.
Speaker 18 (28:30):
The President paused.
Speaker 12 (28:31):
Only at the door of the craft to wave a
warm goodbye to the people.
Speaker 5 (28:34):
Tonight, President Ford is enrud back to Washington, and apparently
he will continue his campaign schedule, including a return trip
to California in about two weeks.
Speaker 4 (28:51):
Though President Ford had left Sacramento unscathed, authorities and the
public were left with pressing questions. Who exactly was Lynette
from six years after the arrests of her guru Charles Manson,
What had compelled her to attempt an act of sensational violence,
and why had she targeted Gerald Ford next time on.
Speaker 12 (29:15):
Rip current.
Speaker 10 (29:17):
Was very good person.
Speaker 18 (29:22):
Manson did things so much on instinct of how to survive.
Speaker 15 (29:26):
I always felt like Glynnette was kind of this right
hand woman, and she was also.
Speaker 6 (29:31):
Very very dedicated to him. We did not have sex
orgies and drug orgies or cult.
Speaker 11 (29:38):
Eating five persons, including actress Sharon Tape were found dead
at the home of Mistape and her husband, screen director
Roman Polotsky.
Speaker 15 (29:46):
When Manson was arrested, Lynette essentially emerged as the recognized
leader of the group.
Speaker 17 (29:52):
Manson told his followers that this would be a bloodbath
in the streets of every American city.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
Was created and written by Toby Ball and developed with
Alexander Williams. Hosted by Toby Ball with Mary Katherine Garrison.
Original music by Jeff Sannoff. Show art by Jeffney as
Goda and Charles Rudder. Producers Jesse Funk, Reema O'Kelly and
Nolas Griffin. Supervising producer Treviie Young, Executive producers Alexander Williams
(30:21):
and Matt Frederick. Recorded at In Your Ear Studios, Richmond, Virginia,
engineered by Paul Bruski and Spotland Productions Nashville, Tennessee, engineered
by Ben Holland. Here episodes of RIP Current early completely
add free and receive exclusive bonus content by subscribing to
iHeart True Crime Plus only on Apple Podcasts. For more
(30:44):
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows and visit our website,
ripcurrentpod dot com.
Speaker 12 (31:00):
Thank you very much.
Rip Current is a production of iHeart Podcasts. The views
and opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those if the host, producers,
or parent company listener discretion.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Is it vie.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
Are California.
Speaker 4 (00:25):
Just before ten am on September fifth, nineteen seventy five,
President Gerald Ford walked with a security detail on a
path through Capitol Park on the grounds of the California
Capitol Building in Sacramento. The path was lined with members
of the public. State policemen were president at intervals along
(00:45):
the route. A small woman wearing a bright red dress
maneuvered her way through the crowd and approached the President
as he passed.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
She had a gun.
Speaker 4 (00:56):
Her name was Lynnette from.
Speaker 5 (00:58):
Good Evening in CALIFORNI you today. President Ford looked down
the barrel of a loaded automatic held by a red
haired woman in a long red dress. But the gun
didn't go off, and he's all right. The woman was
wrestled to the ground by a secret serviceman and the
President was hustled away. She is being charged with attempted
murder of the President. She is twenty six year old
(01:19):
Lynette Alice from nicknamed Squeaky.
Speaker 6 (01:25):
Less than three weeks later, on September twenty second, a
woman named Sarah Jane Moore stood in a similar crowd
assembled across the street from the Saint Francis Hotel in
San Francisco. The President emerged from the side entrance and
walked towards his waiting limousine. Moore fired a single shot
before she was wrestled to the ground.
Speaker 7 (01:46):
This is a CBS News special report.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Here CBS News correspondent Walder Cronkait.
Speaker 8 (01:52):
A woman fired a shot at President Ford in San
Francisco this afternoon, but a policeman deflected the pistol and
the President was not hit. The woman was in a
crowd across the street about thirty five or forty feet away.
As the President was leaving the Saint Francis Hotel to
enter his limousine to return to Washington. Witnesses heard the
sound and saw a puff of smoke. The woman, identified
(02:12):
by police as Sarah Jane Moore in her forties, was
immediately seized. When the shot was fired, the President was
shoved into his car and wished to the airport, where
Air Force one was waiting to fly him to Washington.
He was not hurt, and at the airport appeared calm
and unperturbed.
Speaker 4 (02:31):
In nearly two hundred and fifty years of United States history,
there are only two times that we know of that
a woman has tried to assassinate a US president. The
two attempts were separated by seventeen days and less than
ninety miles.
Speaker 6 (02:49):
I'm Toby Ball and I'm Mary Catherine Garrison, and this
is rip current.
Speaker 9 (03:00):
I saw a woman start to go down and her
arm go back, and I saw the gun, the big
black gun.
Speaker 10 (03:05):
I got it out of her hand, and she.
Speaker 9 (03:07):
Kept saying, easy fellas, Easy fellas.
Speaker 6 (03:08):
It didn't go off.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
It didn't go off.
Speaker 6 (03:12):
Episode one, it didn't go off.
Speaker 4 (03:19):
So the idea for this podcast came as I was
doing research on a related topic, radical groups in the
nineteen seventies. I was going down these different rabbit holes,
and at the end of one I came across Sarah
Jane Moore and from there Lynette From.
Speaker 6 (03:35):
I came to this story by way of Broadway. I
played Lynette Squeaky From in the original Broadway cast of
Stephen Sondheim's musical Assassins Charlie Dahn.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
As I dug into the research, I found that there
was a bigger story here than just a historical oddity.
This was the story of two women navigating the fringes
of radical society. How had they arrived at this place
in their lives? Why was California in nineteen seventy five
the setting for these attempts? Why target Gerald Ford? And
(04:14):
what can we learn from their stories? These assassination attempts
and the stories of the two women who tried to
kill President gerald Ford take place in the considerable shadow
of what we call the sixties. There's a public perception
about the sixties, Hippies, Woodstock, the civil rights movement, communes, Vietnam,
(04:36):
campus protests. It's an umbrella that includes people and movements
that embodied different ways of reimagining what America was, could
and should be. And these movements continued on into the
early seventies. But the popular perception of the sixties only
reflects a certain segment of the population at that time. Many,
(05:00):
even most Americans, found these new values and ideas threatening
or disturbing or simply un American. Much of the mainstream
press agreed with this assessment.
Speaker 11 (05:12):
When you read Time each week, you know more you understand.
Speaker 4 (05:17):
From before World War II until the rise of the Internet,
Time magazine was a powerful cultural force. Their annual Person
of the Year issue was a big deal. This was
the person or people Time deemed quote to have done
the most to influence the events of the year. On
January twelfth, nineteen seventy, Time magazine named Middle Americans as
(05:41):
its Men and Women of the Year for nineteen sixty nine.
Who were the Middle Americans?
Speaker 1 (05:50):
The American dream that they were living was no longer
the dream is advertised. They feared that they were beginning
to lose their grip on the country. Others seem to
be taking over. The liberals, the radicals, the defiant young,
a communications industry that they often believed was lying to them. This,
they will say, with an air of embarrassment that such
a truth need be stated at all. Is the greatest
(06:12):
country in the world. Why are people trying to tear
it down?
Speaker 4 (06:17):
Time Magazine took a sympathetic, though also critical view of
Middle Americans, those who saw the changes in the social, cultural,
and political landscape. Basically, the things we associate with the
sixties as threatening to create a country alien to the
one that they knew. There's racism, which shows itself in
concerns about the civil rights movement, but in other ways
(06:40):
as well.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
The article says, the rising level of crime frightens the
Middle American, and when he speaks of crime, though he
does not like to admit it, he means blacks. And
then the idea of sacrificing their own children's education to
a long range improvement for blacks appalls them.
Speaker 4 (07:01):
Time's comfort with a certain level of racism is jarring,
such as here talking about Middle Americans who voted for
the overtly racist, segregationist presidential candidate George Wallace.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
They are not extremists of the right, despite the fact
that some of them voted for George Wallace in nineteen
sixty eight.
Speaker 12 (07:20):
I say segregation, MA, segregation, the MA, and segregation forever.
Speaker 4 (07:29):
But the Middle Americans' concerns go beyond the impacts of
the civil rights movement. They're worried that the radical young,
as Time calls them, fundamentally challenge their belief in the
goodness of America.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
Middle Americans education does not dwell upon the agonizing moral
discrepancies of American history, the stories of the Indians or
the Blacks, or the national tradition of violence. He cannot
believe that the society he has come to accept as
the best possible on earth. The order he sees as
natural contains wrong so deeply built in that he does
not notice them. Middle Americans believe that the radical young
(08:07):
are operating on a fast misunderstanding of their nation.
Speaker 4 (08:12):
Time uses shorthand to get this point across.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
While the rest of the nation's youth has been watching
Dustin Hoffman and Midnight Cowboy, Middle America's teenagers have been
taking in John Wayne for the second or third time
in The Green Berets.
Speaker 4 (08:30):
Midnight Cowboy is the story of a male sex worker
and his pimp trying to eke out a living in
the sedious corners of New York City.
Speaker 13 (08:38):
Oh Hey, I'm a hustler.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
You didn't know that.
Speaker 4 (08:41):
It received an X rating due to quote the homosexual
frame of reference and quote its possible influence on youngsters.
In contrast, The Green Berets was an anti communist, pro
Vietnam War movie. Critics observe that The Green Berets reduced
the ongoing war into a simple conflict of good versus evil.
Speaker 14 (09:04):
Successful nation Mikey Yeah, but very gustly.
Speaker 4 (09:09):
Roger Ebert gave it zero stars, but Middle America apparently
ate up the raw patriotism. We'll continue to use these
terms Middle America and the Radical Young as a shorthand
to broadly describe these two political and social groups in
the US in the late sixties and seventies.
Speaker 6 (09:34):
Lynette From and Sarah Jane Moore's stories are very different
in many ways, but they share two fundamental similarities. Both
women had lived much of their lives in the culture
of Middle America, but their experiences there were difficult, and
then they suddenly, disorientingly became part of the most extreme
frontiers of the radical Young. For Sarah Jane Moore, this
(09:57):
meant immersing herself in the revolutionary philosophy the underground militants
in the Bay Area, including San Francisco. For Lynette From,
it meant joining a commune led by a guru whose
name would become synonymous with the darkest fears that Middle
America had about the Radical Young. Charles Manson on this
season of Rip Current, we'll look at Lynette From and
(10:20):
Sarah Janemore's lives in Middle America, their transformations as they
entered the world of the Radical Young, and the social
and political forces that led them to try to kill
the President of the United States in September nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
If you think American society of the twenty first century
or the twenty twenties was dangerous and.
Speaker 15 (10:42):
Violent, it's nothing.
Speaker 16 (10:43):
Compared to what California was in the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 6 (10:47):
Many, many people all of the world are due to
be assassinated.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
This is just at the beginning.
Speaker 15 (10:53):
What starts as a hippie love called transmigraphied into a
violent criminal enterprise.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Of course, would have been imber.
Speaker 17 (11:01):
The people will be shot on prevent any.
Speaker 12 (11:03):
Primate, any plague.
Speaker 11 (11:05):
The worst thing in that underworld is to be an informant,
a snitch.
Speaker 17 (11:11):
These people aren't just a bunch of mouths.
Speaker 11 (11:13):
They're perfectly willing to die for what they're doing.
Speaker 9 (11:17):
I'm not saying i'd try to take a shot.
Speaker 10 (11:18):
I didn't take a shot without a show in the chamber.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
I had two feet from him.
Speaker 17 (11:22):
I could have shot twice. I was the person in
the intent was exactly as I stated in court, to
wilfully and know.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Any assassinate Gerald off Or the Pressman of the United.
Speaker 6 (11:32):
States, Gerald Ford, the thirty eighth President of the United States,
arrived in Sacramento for the last stop of a two
day fundraising trip to the West coast. He had already
raised money in Seattle and Portland.
Speaker 10 (11:49):
It was September the fifth, nineteen seventy five, and it
was to be a red letter day in the city
of Sacramento. The President of the United States, Gerald R. Ford,
was to pay us a visit.
Speaker 6 (12:03):
This is senior US District Court Judge William Shubb speaking
at a twenty thirteen panel discussion of Lynnette From's trial.
Speaker 10 (12:12):
The town was all a bustle.
Speaker 7 (12:15):
In the morning.
Speaker 10 (12:15):
The President was scheduled to speak to a large group
of California business leaders at the annual host breakfast to
be held in the newly constructed Sacramento Community Center.
Speaker 7 (12:30):
Traditionally, the governor had always come and spoken to the breakfast.
Jerry Brown was in his first year as governor in
nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 12 (12:37):
The people in chacrament all the people in California and
out in the West, can make the difference.
Speaker 7 (12:41):
You don't even governor about eight or nine months at
this time, as a matter.
Speaker 17 (12:44):
Of fact, are you get out and vote on Tuesday.
Speaker 7 (12:48):
And invited him to come and speak, and he didn't respond.
He kind of put him off, and it angered the sponsors.
My name is Dan Walders. I'm a political columnist for
a non fuck with journalism group called Calmatters dot Org.
I'd been a journalist for over sixty years, and in
(13:09):
nineteen seventy five I had just begun covering the capitol
for the Sacramento Union. They were mostly Republicans. They kind
of angered him that this kind young snotnoas kid governor
wasn't coming in positive them. So that the head of
the committee at that time was a man by the
name of Carlisle Reed, who happened to be the publisher
of the Sacramento Union, and he was well connected in
(13:31):
Republican circles. So he decided, basically, I'll teach that young
son of a bitch a lesson. I'll get the president
to come to Sacramento instead and show him up, and
they did. He pulled strings and got a commitment from
Jerry Ford he would come and speak to the host breakfast.
Speaker 6 (13:50):
Ford received a warm welcome from the group of businessmen
and gave a speech guaranteed to appeal to their political sensibilities.
Speaker 12 (13:58):
In recent years, a disproportionate percentage of new jobs has
come from the public sector rather than the private the
result has been the creation of a bureaucracy that contributes
very little to America's prosperity and productivity. It simply shares it.
Speaker 6 (14:23):
His message of reducing regulatory burden was well received by
the largely Republican audience. Here is an unidentified attendee reacting
to Ford's speech.
Speaker 18 (14:33):
Well, I think the President gave a very determined statement
on which he stated that we're raither going to become
free Americans again and cause our economy to grow, or
we're going to go further and further in the direction
of a planned, a socialistic type economy.
Speaker 6 (14:49):
Following the speech, Ford returned from the convention Center to
the Senator Hotel for a brief rest before heading to
the state Capitol to meet with Governor Brown and address
the state legislature. Here's Ford testifying about that day months later.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
And what time did you leave the hotel?
Speaker 12 (15:06):
Approxtantly ten am that morning?
Speaker 19 (15:11):
As I understand, you crossed the street and you were
proceeding along the walkway.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
Towards the state capital. Is that correct?
Speaker 12 (15:19):
That is correct. I left the hotel, walked across L
Street and up a walkway from L Street to the
entrance to the State Capitol on my way to meet
the government.
Speaker 19 (15:35):
And as you were walking you were exchanging cordialities.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
With the people and shaking their hands. Is that correct?
Speaker 12 (15:41):
That is correct? As I went along the walkway, the
crowd had been assembled on my left as I walked
toward the Capitol, and they were held back by a rope.
And as I walked toward the Capital, I was shaking
hands and speaking to people in this group on the
(16:01):
left hand side.
Speaker 6 (16:04):
As Ford moved along the route, he was accompanied by
Secret Service agents, city and state police officers, and a
group of journalists and camera operators, including Sacramento Television Channel
ten reporter Roger Lindberg.
Speaker 5 (16:16):
Beginning our series of reports on today's events in Sacramento
with a near assassination of the president.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Here is Roger Lindberg.
Speaker 17 (16:23):
Roger, Well, it is the sort of thing that you
hear about, but you never really believe you will ever see.
Speaker 14 (16:29):
Roger Lindberg, former KXTV reporter back in seventies. So my
assignment at the time was to be with the president
leaving the hotel, which was across the street from the Capitol,
and then go with him into the Capitol building. You
have to cross a major street, and then you walk
(16:53):
through this garden that is on the eastern side of
the Capitol building, and then you go up the step
into the Capitol. We come in the back door, not
the front of the Capitol. So that was my assignment
was to just be with him accompany him. I had
a camera crew with me at the time. It was
a big scrum. There were a lot of a lot
(17:14):
of cameras, a lot of reporters Secret Service.
Speaker 17 (17:17):
President Ford was smiling and shaking hands as he moved
across from the Senator Hotel.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
Towards the Capitol Building.
Speaker 17 (17:25):
It was crossing the street, walking up a path that
led to the back entrance of the Capitol.
Speaker 14 (17:30):
I remember it was an incredibly nice day. It was
bright and sunny, typical California day. We walked across the
street with him. We entered the park on the northern side,
and we were walking along a path at meanders between
big trees and rose garden, etc.
Speaker 6 (17:51):
There was a moment of confusion at the entrance to
the park. The security plan called for the Sacramento City
Police to aid the Secret Service and escorting the President
from the Senator Hotel to the park entrance. At the
entrance the city police were to give way to State
police officers who would accompany the President and his secret
Service detail through the park and to the back door
(18:12):
of the Capitol, But when the group reached the park
entrance there were only three uniformed state police officers on
the scene. A decision was made for one of the
city police officers to accompany the President and his entourage
into the park. Waiting amid the crowd was Lynette From.
After the break, the security accompanying President Ford as he
(18:54):
walked from the Senator Hotel to the California State Capitol was,
by today's standards, almost comically. Video of his walk appears
to show less than a dozen agents around the president.
The scene does not seem very secure. Inside the park,
about a dozen State Police officers were stationed along the path.
In the minutes before Ford's appearance. Lynette From approached one
(19:15):
of the officers. She asked the officer if the president
was going to take that path on his way to
the State House. The officer was evasive in his answer,
but a crowd of several hundred people were lining the
path from the park entrance to the east steps of
the Capitol, and it seemed clear that this would be
his route from wore a flowing sleeveless red dress with
the hem down at her ankles. Beneath the robe, she
(19:37):
carried an M nineteen eleven Colt forty five pistol in
a holster on her left leg. The presidential entourage made
its way through the park, with Forde shaking hands and
speaking with people lining the path. A man in the
crowd described to a television reporter what he saw next.
Speaker 13 (19:54):
I was about fifteen feet from where the president was
moving down the line of people shaking hands, and he
reached out to shake hands with a young woman. And
just about that time there was another person, a redheaded woman,
moved toward him.
Speaker 17 (20:09):
When he reached the halfway mark in the path, the
crowd suddenly shifted violently, and President Ford flinched back, his
hands thrust in front of him. Ford saw what few
others could. A woman dressed in a long red skirt
pointed a forty five caliber pistol at the president.
Speaker 6 (20:26):
Here is Gerald Ford again from his testimony, Where.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Was Lynette from when you first observed her?
Speaker 12 (20:32):
If you recall approximately halfway between L Street and the
State Capitol, I noticed a person in the second or
third row in a brightly colored dress, who appeared to
(20:54):
one who either shake hands or speak, or at least
wanted to get closer to me.
Speaker 19 (21:04):
Do you recall anything about the condition of her face
when you first observed her? Was it flushed, pale, weathered?
I know you've used the term weather before. Is at
your recollection?
Speaker 12 (21:14):
It looked weathered, but there were many faces that the
brightness of the dress attracted my attention, and then the
process of noticing the dress. I thought her face did
appear to be.
Speaker 6 (21:26):
Somewhat weather, though four doesn't mention it, and photographs taken
at the scene, Lynette is wearing a strange hat that
matches the red of her dress. The hat is made
of fabric and a shape like a cone, though most
of it is folded down like a limp, which's capped
to the right of her face. Her appearance was so
unusual that even as Ford moved through a crowd of people,
(21:47):
she stood out.
Speaker 12 (21:49):
I would say that she was three to four feet
from me when I first noticed her. She appeared to
want to come forward. I had the impression she did
come forward. I didn't see the precise movement. I stopped
because I had the impression she wanted to speak to
(22:09):
me or shake my hand, And as I moved to
either shake hands or speak to her, I then noticed
the gun as I indicated it in her hand was
approximately two feet.
Speaker 19 (22:24):
From where exactly, if you recall, was the barrel of
the weapon point.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
I could not tell.
Speaker 12 (22:32):
The weapon was large. It covered all or most of
her hand as far as I could see. And I
only saw it instantaneously because almost automatically, one of the
Secret Service agents lunged, grabbed the hand and the weapon,
(22:55):
and then I was pushed off by the other members
of the Secret Service detail.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Do you know who it was that grabbed a hold
of her arm?
Speaker 12 (23:04):
It was one of the Secret Service detail, mister Larry boondor.
Speaker 20 (23:10):
My position at the time was right at his left shoulder.
So he's walking along shaking hands. I'm concentrating on his hands.
Don't want to have anybody grabbed too long, take his
watch whatever.
Speaker 6 (23:25):
We tried to interview Larry Bundorff, who was long retired
from the Secret Service, but the Secret Service Press office
turned down our interview request. Boondorf was next to Ford,
keeping an eye on the hands reaching for the president.
He would not have been expecting when that thrusting forward
a gun, but he acted immediately.
Speaker 20 (23:42):
As he's shaking hands. Suddenly I see this hand come
up with something in it, and it wasn't At that time,
didn't know it was a weapon, but I stepped in
front of the President to stop the hand from coming
up because I didn't want him to get.
Speaker 11 (23:55):
Hit with whatever it was.
Speaker 20 (23:57):
The minute I hited it, I knew it was a gun,
so I yelled out, gun. All my very best friends
that are with the President, they leave. She's screaming in
the crowd. Its screaming, and I got hold of her
hand and I got the gun. I got the gun
here pushing right. Didn't have my vest on, So I'm
thinking that I don't know if there's more to this
(24:18):
than it's going to happen, but I know I'm not
letting go older.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
Hey, you heard Bundorf yelling a lady with a gun?
Speaker 2 (24:24):
Forty five.
Speaker 6 (24:26):
This is retired Secret Service agent Doug Duncan, who was
part of President Ford security details, speaking at a commemoration
of the assassination attempt the.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
President Duck and I looked over his shoulder and I
could see that Larry had the gall in custody. He
had his hand over the gun pointed at the ground.
His left hand was around her, so he had her
under control.
Speaker 6 (24:50):
All of this happened in front of the assembled crowd.
To some it appeared to be just a commotion. Others
who were closer saw more clearly what happened. Dan Walters,
we had a.
Speaker 7 (25:00):
Reporter out there by the name of Vita fied Rigi
and I saw Vita and I said, what happened? She said,
what she tried to kill Ford or something like that,
and I said, you've got it right.
Speaker 6 (25:09):
This is Vita being interviewed by local news immediately after the.
Speaker 9 (25:13):
Attempt, And all of a sudden, I was standing maybe
three feet from Ford, behind two people. All of a sudden,
I saw the Secret serviceman right behind Ford just reach
out and push, and I saw a woman start to
go down and her arm go back, and I saw
the gun, and I didn't watch what Ford was doing.
And they wrestled through the ground and were slapping cuffs
on her and this big black gun. They got it
(25:33):
out of her hand, and she kept saying, easy fellas,
easy fellas.
Speaker 6 (25:36):
It didn't go off.
Speaker 16 (25:37):
It didn't go off.
Speaker 11 (25:38):
The president right after it happened, turned around and kind
of looked back at the spot, and it was clear
to me at least that he was aware of what
had happened. He seemed to me was done be will
they something like that, and it was clear that he
(25:58):
knew what had happened.
Speaker 6 (26:02):
Six Secret Service agents forced the president into a crouch
and hurried him the remaining hundred yards to the capital's
rear entrance and inside to safety. Meanwhile, Larry Bundorff and
others brought Lynnette to a tree to isolate her from
the crowd.
Speaker 16 (26:17):
Roger Lindberg, the Secret Service hustled her to a large
tree that was in the garden, and I think because
of my age, wearing sunglasses and having a suit on,
which was unusual for reporters, I.
Speaker 14 (26:33):
Ended up just standing right next to her and I
started interviewing her. I started talking to her. Her words
to me were, damn it. It didn't go off. The gun,
it didn't go off. I was scribbling notes as quickly
as I could, and then the Secret Service realized that
I wasn't Secret Service and got me away from the tree.
Speaker 17 (26:57):
Woman I didn't find as Manson Paul Lynn Allen Squeaky
from of Sacramento was held by Secret Service and police
while the President continued on to the Capitol. Witness has
heard Miss Brown say at one point it didn't go off.
Can you believe it didn't go off?
Speaker 6 (27:14):
An eyewitness told a local television reporter that Lynette kept
talking even after Roger Lindberg had been moved away. What
was she saying when they got her tied behind this tree?
Speaker 18 (27:24):
She kept saying that he's not a public servant.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
He's not a public servant.
Speaker 6 (27:29):
From was taken to Sacramento Police headquarters, where she was questioned.
At four o'clock, she appeared at the Sacramento Federal Court.
The one page complaint charging her with the assassination attempt
was read, and then US Magistrate Esther Mix asked From
if she had any statement before bail was set. From
replied no in a barely audible voice. She was then
(27:50):
sent to the Sacramento County Jail, where she was confined
alone to a cell. For his part, Ford continued with
his schedule, meeting with Governor Jerry By and then, an
hour after the attempt on his life, addressing the state legislature. Ironically,
the speech which was written before his visit centered on crime.
Speaker 12 (28:10):
Serious crime rose eighteen percent for the nation as a whole.
Speaker 4 (28:18):
After the speech to the Legislature, Ford left for McClellan
Air Force Base, where Air Force one waited on the
tarmac to take him back to Washington.
Speaker 17 (28:27):
Ford boarded the plane directly from the limousine.
Speaker 18 (28:30):
The President paused.
Speaker 12 (28:31):
Only at the door of the craft to wave a
warm goodbye to the people.
Speaker 5 (28:34):
Tonight, President Ford is enrud back to Washington, and apparently
he will continue his campaign schedule, including a return trip
to California in about two weeks.
Speaker 4 (28:51):
Though President Ford had left Sacramento unscathed, authorities and the
public were left with pressing questions. Who exactly was Lynette
from six years after the arrests of her guru Charles Manson,
What had compelled her to attempt an act of sensational violence,
and why had she targeted Gerald Ford next time on.
Speaker 12 (29:15):
Rip current.
Speaker 10 (29:17):
Was very good person.
Speaker 18 (29:22):
Manson did things so much on instinct of how to survive.
Speaker 15 (29:26):
I always felt like Glynnette was kind of this right
hand woman, and she was also.
Speaker 6 (29:31):
Very very dedicated to him. We did not have sex
orgies and drug orgies or cult.
Speaker 11 (29:38):
Eating five persons, including actress Sharon Tape were found dead
at the home of Mistape and her husband, screen director
Roman Polotsky.
Speaker 15 (29:46):
When Manson was arrested, Lynette essentially emerged as the recognized
leader of the group.
Speaker 17 (29:52):
Manson told his followers that this would be a bloodbath
in the streets of every American city.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
Was created and written by Toby Ball and developed with
Alexander Williams. Hosted by Toby Ball with Mary Katherine Garrison.
Original music by Jeff Sannoff. Show art by Jeffney as
Goda and Charles Rudder. Producers Jesse Funk, Reema O'Kelly and
Nolas Griffin. Supervising producer Treviie Young, Executive producers Alexander Williams
(30:21):
and Matt Frederick. Recorded at In Your Ear Studios, Richmond, Virginia,
engineered by Paul Bruski and Spotland Productions Nashville, Tennessee, engineered
by Ben Holland. Here episodes of RIP Current early completely
add free and receive exclusive bonus content by subscribing to
iHeart True Crime Plus only on Apple Podcasts. For more
(30:44):
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows and visit our website,
ripcurrentpod dot com.
Speaker 12 (31:00):
Thank you very much.
Host
Toby Ball
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