This is optimistic news for the Vanguard.
Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, 70, after almost 50 years of being apart from her master, Charles Manson, says she’s still in love with him.
Theirs was an enforced separation – since both went to prison, Manson for life – he died in 2017 at age 83 while serving a life sentence – and she – for more than 30 years; she was paroled a decade ago.
Fromme was part of Manson’s inner circle, part of his “family”, a woman, had she been with Keith Alan Raniere, instead of Manson, would have been promised an avatar baby.
Manson prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi described Fromme as the “main gal in the Family.”
And she still loves him, which ought to give Vanguard hope that some of his female followers will still be there, loving him, waiting for him when he gets out of prison in about 50 years.
Though Manson is dead and Fromme has not been with him since 1969, Fromme said in an interview Tuesday on the ABC special “Manson Girls” she’s still “in love” with him.
Fromme was not charged in connection to the murders in the summer of 1969 in Los Angeles, where several Manson cult members stabbed to death actress Sharon Tate and six others at Manson’s behest.
Fromme remained faithful to Manson throughout his murder trial, carving an “X” into her forehead like him and other followers.
Four yeas after Manson was sentenced in 1971, Fromme attempted to shoot President Gerald Ford with a Colt .45 outside the California State Capitol Park Building in Sacramento in Sept. 1975. She was a few feet from Ford but the gun never went off.
She was the first woman known to attempt to assassinate a U.S. president.
At her trial, she begged prosecutors to allow Manson to attend, [which was denied]. During the trial, U.S. Marshals had to carry Fromme in front of the judge when she refused to walk.
Fromme was convicted and sentenced to life in prison, and had an additional 15 years added to her sentence after being caught following a prison escape in 1987. In 2009, Fromme was granted parole at age 60 in 2009 and lives in Marcy, NY, about 45 miles east of Syracuse.
According to a report in the New York Post, Fromme lives in a skull-decorated, ramshackle home she shares with boyfriend, Robert Valdner, 68, who shot and killed his brother-in-law and pleaded guilty to manslaughter in 1988. Valdner started writing to Fromme in 1992, while they were both imprisoned, about his admiration of Manson and a prison romanced blossomed into a real life romance after both got released.
Once he is sentenced, the true test of Vanguard’s greatness may be how many women will admit to still being in love with him 50 years from now.
Charles Manson
Keith Raniere