Fromme Pulls Trigger: Ford Survives Assassination

Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme drew a Colt .45 pistol from a thigh holster beneath her red dress and pointed it at President Gerald Ford from a distance of two feet in the grounds of the California State Capitol in Sacramento on September 5, 1975. A Secret Service agent grabbed the weapon and wrestled Fromme to the ground before she could fire. The gun held four rounds in its magazine but had no bullet in the chamber, a detail that has never been fully explained: whether Fromme deliberately left the chamber empty or simply failed to rack the slide remains unknown. Fromme was 26 years old and a devoted follower of Charles Manson, the cult leader serving a life sentence for orchestrating the Tate-LaBianca murders in 1969. She had remained fanatically loyal to Manson throughout his trial and imprisonment, camping outside the courthouse during proceedings and carving an X into her forehead to match the mark Manson had given himself. Her assassination attempt was motivated partly by environmental concerns, as she later claimed she wanted to draw attention to California's redwood forests, and partly by a desire to create a platform from which Manson could speak to the public. Ford had been president for barely a year, having assumed office after Richard Nixon's resignation in August 1974. He had not been elected to either the presidency or the vice presidency, making him the only president in American history to hold the office without winning a national election. The assassination attempt came during a period of intense political turmoil, and Ford faced a second attempt just 17 days later when Sara Jane Moore fired at him outside the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco. Fromme was convicted of attempted assassination and sentenced to life in prison. She escaped briefly from a West Virginia federal prison in 1987 but was recaptured within two days. She was paroled in 2009 after serving 34 years, making her one of the longest-held female prisoners in the federal system. The attempt on Ford's life was the first against a sitting president since the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963 and prompted a significant overhaul of Secret Service protective procedures.