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LYNETTE "SQUEAKY" FROMME
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From the Detroit Free Press, December 12, 1985:
Manson Follower Moves in, and City Gets the Jitters
E. A. Torriero
Knight-Ridder Newspapers
BURLINGTON, Vt.—It is not unusual these days for some Vermonters here to scan strangers' foreheads for signs of a crudely engraved "X" between the eyebrows.
"You worry that a whole trail of cult people are going to walk into this town now," said Mary Paquette, wife of a former mayor. "California doesn't want these people, and neither do we. Vermont doesn't need any 'X' people."
This city has been abuzz since it was revealed that Sandra Good, former follower of cult leader and mass killer Charles Manson, was paroled here after being released last week from a federal prison in West Virginia.
Still marked by an "X," which Manson followers seared into their foreheads with red-hot bobby pins in 1969, Good is living in a private home in Burlington under federal supervision.
Convicted in 1975 for conspiring to send death threats to corporate officials from her Sacramento apartment, Good was the last Manson disciple to go to jail.
Good, 41, is also the first of Manson's most ardent supporters to be released from custody. Under the terms of her parole, she is prohibited from returning to California—and cannot visit Manson—until 1990.
Manson, who often referred to himself as both Jesus Christ and the devil, is serving a life sentence at San Quentin for the 1969 ritual slayings of actress Sharon Tate, grocer Leno LaBianca and seven others.
GOOD'S RELEASE, caught Vermont officials by surprise and angered Gov. Madeleine Kunin, who criticized U.S. parole authorities.
"While by law we didn't have to be notified, we should have been," said Kunin aide Bob Sherman. "It's just a common courtesy. When you have someone of this notoriety come into your state, you want to know about it."
Vermont police met with with federal authorities and were promised they would be kept informed of Good's status, Sherman said. Authorities refuse to make Good's address public, saying she has been a "model prisoner" and is not a threat to society.
"There has been no evidence of any problems with her," said Joseph Krovisky, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Justice. "You must realize there have never been any big offenses in her past."
Good was sent to Vermont because federal officials were looking for "the appropriate setting" for her to live in, where she eventually could go to work and become accustomed to life outside prison, Krovisky said.
After an intensive lobbying effort by California lawmakers who wanted Good kept east of the Rockies, federal officials determined that the best place for her was more than 3,000 miles from her home state.
"Her time was up and she had to go someplace," Krovisky said. "And Vermont fit the special conditions set for her."
BUT MANY WHO live in this city of 40,000 on the shores of Lake Champlain are wary of the woman who once threatened to kill Nelson Rockefeller when he was vice-president, compiled a death list of hundreds of executives, lamented that she never carried out those threats and vowed to never leave prison before Manson, the man she often referred to lovingly as "my father."
Burlington—known for its liberal attitude and the University of Vermont—isn't embracing the prospect of harboring Good.
"It's not a big issue like the development of the waterfront, which has people really concerned here," said Greg Guma, owner of a used-book store. "But you wonder when she is going to surface. Is she a flake? Is she an activist? Is she a Yuppie? What meetings will she attend?"
Good, who through the years has courted publicity, has been silent about her life in freedom. Few know how she is spending her time.
"When she left, she told me to tell the media that she didn't want to talk," said David Helman, executive director of the Correctional Institution for Women at Alderson, W.Va., where Good served most of her sentence.
Good had turned down an opportunity for freedom last spring, refusing parole after officials offered to place her in a halfway house in Camden, N.J., under condition that she couldn't return to California or visit Manson followers. Good said she had "too much anger" in her to leave prison.
"By staying inside where my family is, I keep myself outside of thought dedicated to money, power and approval," she said. "I still feel the way I did the day I walked into prison. I don't want out until (Manson) and family get a fair trial. Charlie is inside and that's where my soul, that's where my love, lies. Inside."
OFFICIALS SAY that Good would not say why she decided to accept parole this time.
Good, the daughter of a San Diego stockbroker, joined the Manson clan in the late 1960s and became one of his most outspoken and loyal supporters.
During Manson's trial in 1970, Good conducted news conferences outside a courthouse in Los Angeles, glared at witnesses and, along with a dozen other followers, burned an "X" in her forehead in a show of solidarity for Manson.
In 1975, she was rooming with cult member Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme in Sacramento when Fromme pointed a pistol at then- President Gerald Ford, who was making an appearance at a park. Fromme received a life sentence.
When authorities raided the women's apartment, they found hundreds of threatening letters that Good had written to executives of energy, lumber, and oil companies in which she accused them of polluting the environment.
After her conviction, Good asked that she remain in prison for life but was sentenced instead to 15 years. She served almost a decade of that sentence.
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