From the Lexington Herald-Leader, June 27, 2005:
Would-Be Ford Assassin Up For Parole
Janet Mclaren
New York Daily News
WASHINGTON—The infamous "lady in red" who tried to assassinate President Gerald Ford in 1975 faces her first and last parole hearing next month after serving 30 years of a life sentence in federal prisons.
Even if she is granted parole, Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, once a devoted member of mass murderer Charles Manson's "Family," will have to serve an additional 13 months because of a 1988 prison escape. If she's turned down, she will die in prison.
Fromme, 56, has rejected parole hearings since she first became eligible in 1985. But by law a hearing is mandatory, and she must be freed if a parole board finds she is not likely to commit another crime and has not seriously violated prison rules.
Tom Hutchinson, chief of staff for the U.S. Parole Commission, said his office will begin proceedings next month and announce the results in early September.
She is incarcerated at Carswell Federal Medical Center in Fort Worth, Texas. Barbara Young, a unit manager at Carswell, said Fromme has not said whether she plans to appear at her hearing.
Officially known as prisoner 06075-180, Fromme refused a written request from the New York Daily News for an interview.
Dressed completely in red with a red turban covering her red hair, Fromme approached Ford on Sept. 5, 1975, with a .45-caliber handgun as he was walking from his hotel to the state Capitol in Sacramento, Calif. There was no bullet in the chamber when Fromme fired at Ford, and she later claimed she never intended to kill him. Nevertheless, she was convicted in November 1975 of trying to assassinate the president.
Hutchinson said federal law requires a mandatory parole hearing for inmates who have completed two-thirds of a life sentence, considered 30 years. If the parole board concludes Fromme is no longer a danger to society, the government will be required to release her.
"She'll never get out. Never," said Stephen Kay, the Los Angeles deputy district attorney who helped prosecute Manson. Kay attended 60 parole hearings for Manson Family members before he retired earlier this year.
Fromme attacked a fellow inmate with a hammer in 1979 and was moved from Dublin, Calif., to a West Virginia prison. She escaped in 1987, reportedly trying to reach Manson. She was recaptured two days later, on Christmas Day, and transferred soon after to the Federal Correctional Institution in Lexington. When the high security unit in Kentucky closed in 1988, Fromme was transferred to a new high-security unit of the Marianna Federal Correctional Institution in Florida.
Todd Clear, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, said that although parole board members might normally look favorably on a middle-aged woman who had served so many years, they probably would not overlook violations in this case.
Seventeen days after Fromme's assassination attempt, Sara Jane Moore also tried to shoot Ford outside a San Francisco hotel.
Moore also is serving a life sentence at a California prison and will be eligible for parole in 2007.
www.squeakyfromme.org/media/mclaren.htm