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Television Interview,
circa 1993
Fromme:
Even if they put us in a cage, I don't care; if they put us together.
Fromme:
I mean, you figure, I've been away from him, I mean physically, for twenty, twenty-three years, almost twenty-three years, and, uh, it hasn't worn off, I haven't changed my mind.
Narrator:
A Southern California girl, Lynette came from an upper middle class family, and an authoritative father, she says whom she clashed with, and who kicked her out of the house as a teenager, right into the available arms of an ex-con and drifter named Charles Manson.
Fromme:
I was not his main or favorite woman; there were many women around, we all had a relationship with each other that was very strong, and our minds hooked up. We rejected the society, we rejected marriage, because we didn't like what our parents had.
Narrator:
It is a similar story for many of the Manson Family women, including Sandra Good, who grew up an executive's daughter in San Diego, a card-carrying member of the affluent class--until she met Charlie Manson.
Good:
He is a quintessential White man. And I don't mean as a racist; he didn't compute, he wasn't what my mom told me that I was supposed marry, not that I was paying any attention to what she said anyway. But this guy, he'd been in the penitentiary, he didn't speak proper English, he didn't have an education, yet within three days I had called my roomates and said, "Sell my skis, you can have all my clothes, in fact, I'm gone."
Fromme:
He didn't ask me to call him god; he thought that was really funny. Do you think you'd be with somebody you had to call god? I wouldn't. Blue wouldn't. It was said that we were sicko, sick, in a perverse way, stupid, all those kind of things. And why would people say that?
Narrator:
Sandra Good and Lynette Fromme generated a lot of interest by wearing long, flowing, hooded robes, by publically taunting non-believers, and by carving x's into their foreheads in thier further quest to have Manson free.
Fromme:
When I put this on, which was, gosh, twenty-two years ago, something like that, twenty-two or twenty-three, um, it was to wear a visible symbol of our rejection of the society, and I certainly don't want to have it taken off.
Narrator:
Red and Blue were never implicated in any of the Manson murders.
Good:
And my friends, who did the killings, I stand by 'em, I stand by 'em, because I didn't see anybody else willing to go to war; in war, there's death.
Fromme:
I look at myself, and I say, well, am I sick, am I perverted? No; there's things I love.
Narrator:
And there are things she would consider killing for. She pulled a loaded forty-five caliber pistol and thrust it at a stunned President Gerald Ford in September, 1975.
Fromme:
I pointed a gun at people's leader, that's your leader.
Good:
And she pulled the gun, and decided it wouldn't be the right thing to shoot him.
Fromme:
And, yet at the same time, I don't care what happens to him.
Steven Kay:
I do not believe that it's possible that she got the idea on her own to try and assassinate President Ford. I firmly believe that Manson put her up to that.
Fromme:
No; he didn't know anything about it, neither did Blue. I don't regret it.
Narrator:
During the investigation that followed, authorities found in the apartment that Blue and Red shared threatening letters to other leaders. Squeaky Fromme went to prison for life; Sandra Good got ten years. With Charlie, in spirit, they were together again, behind bars. The Family was home.
Good:
I'm not going to snivel and cry about it; I didn't break the law, I didn't deserve to go, but I value the experience.
Manson:
Look here, I'm in jail because people want to keep me in jail. It ain't got nothin' to do with the law. The law ain't got nothing to do with it.
Fromme:
I'm missing out on a lot. I want to be with him. I much rather would have gotten him out of there.
Anchorwoman: Charles Manson and four members of his Family convicted of the Tate-LaBianca murders remain in prison. Ms. Fromme is serving life and says she has no interest in parole as long as Manson stays in prison.
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