President Ford's Bullet Proof Trench Coat
Lynette Fromme was born on October 22, 1948, in Santa Monica. Around age ten she joined the Westchester Lariats, a dance group that appeared on the Lawrence Welk Show and once performed at the White House for President Eisenhower. In 1963 when she was 14 years old, her parents moved the family to Redondo Beach where young Lynette soon found herself in the “wrong crowd,” heavily drinking and doing drugs. In her first year of college her father kicked her out of the house.
Homeless and in a bad frame of mind, Lynette wandered alone on Redondo Beach.
Until she met her new family.
The Manson Family.
Charles Manson.
Lynette was the second member of the Manson family and took up residence at the Spahn Ranch. Owner George Spahn had previously rented his ranch to the movie industry for the making of Westerns but now 80-years-old and almost blind, he turned the ranch over to Manson and his followers in exchange for nightly sex with any of Manson’s “wives.”
Spahn gave Lynette the nickname “Squeaky” because she squealed when he pinched her thigh.
On the night of August 9, 1969, Manson dispatched Tex Watson, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Linda Kasabian to 10050 Cielo Drive in Benedict Canyon where they gruesomely murdered actress Sharon Tate, coffee heiress Abigal Folger, Jay Sebring, Wojciech Frykowski, and Steven Parent.
The home in Cielo Drive had previously been rented by producer Terry Melcher who had refused to sign Manson to his label.
Squeaky didn’t participate in the Tate murders or the LaBianca murders the following night.
While many of the Manson Family members later turned on Manson to get better plea deals, Squeaky never did. When Manson was moved to Folsom Prison, Squeaky moved to Sacramento to be near him.
Squeaky was devoted to California’s costal redwoods.
In the fall of 1975 President Gerald Ford had asked congress to relax some of the provisions of the Clean Air Act as they related to automobiles.
Squeaky feared that the increased smog was going to harm the redwoods.
President Gerald Ford was slated to do a breakfast speech at the Sacramento Convention Center, one mile from Squeaky’s apartment, on September 5, 1975.
Early that morning Squeaky put on a bright red dress with a matching hood, strapped an antique .45 caliber Colt to her left thigh, and moved to the front lawn of the capitol where Ford was supposed to be right after the breakfast speech.
Squeaky Fromme pushed to the front of the crowd and was standing only a few feet from President Ford when she pointed the gun at him and fired. She was immediately tackled by Secret Service Agents to whom she loudly complained “the gun didn’t go off!”
The Colt M1911 used by Squeaky is currently on display at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Squeaky was the second person who intended to assassinate President Ford that morning. On August 18, 1975 the Secret Service had arrested ex-convict Thomas Elbert after he phoned-in a threat to the local Secret Service office.
Just 17 days after Squeaky’s failed attempt, Ford was back in California as he was heavily counting on winning the state in order to beat back a challenge by Jimmy Carter.
As he exited the front door of the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, Sara Jane Moore raised her hastily-bought .38 pistol and fired from only 40 feet away. She missed and was tackled by a bystander before she could take a second shot.
Sara had been an FBI informant and been evaluated by the Secret Service earlier in 1975 specifically for any threat she may have posed to President Ford. Bizarrely, the day before the shooting, local police had picked her up on an illegal arms charge and had confiscated her .44-caliber Charter Arms Bulldog revolver and 113 rounds of ammunition, leaving her to scramble to acquire the .38 pistol she used the next morning when she shot at — but missed — President Ford.
About a year before the two September 1975 incidents, Muharem Kurbegovic, also known as The Alphabet Bomber, threatened to come to Washington and throw a nerve gas bomb on President Ford, who was only ten days into his presidency.
Squeaky Fromme and Sara Jane Moore are the only two females amongst all the presidential assassins and would-be assassins and both of them were gunning for President Ford, and both did so in California.
Following these twin failed attempts, the Secret Service required President Ford to wear a bullet-proof trench coat.