The Day Squeaky Fromme Pointed a Gun at President Ford

Harriet Wilder
Sep 5
5 min read

A collage featuring newspaper headlines about an attempt on Ford's life, people in suits in black-and-white photos, and a woman in red detained by police.

On the morning of 5 September 1975, a young woman dressed head to toe in red walked through Capitol Park in Sacramento, California. Her name was Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, and she was carrying a Colt M1911 pistol. As President Gerald Ford shook hands with well-wishers on his way into the California State Capitol, Fromme raised the pistol, aimed it at the president, and pulled the trigger.

The weapon clicked, but it didn't fire.

Ford, who was less than two feet away, later recalled the surreal moment:

“As I stopped, I saw a hand come through the crowd in the first row, and that was the first active gesture that I saw, but in the hand there was a gun.”

Instead of collapsing to the ground, he carried on into the Capitol building, where he calmly met Governor Jerry Brown for a scheduled discussion, barely mentioning that someone had just tried to assassinate him.

Fromme was quickly subdued by Secret Service agent Larry Buendorf, who wrestled the pistol from her hand. She shouted in frustration, “It wouldn’t go off!” as she was dragged to the ground. Ford, with characteristic Midwestern composure, told his agents, “Put me down! Put me down!” when they half-carried him away. He refused to let the drama interrupt his official business.

It was the first of two attempts on Gerald Ford’s life in the same month of 1975. The second, just 17 days later, came from another woman in California, Sara Jane Moore. Remarkably, both attempts failed.

A group of men in suits surround and assist another man, looking tense and urgent. The background is outdoors with trees. Black and white photo. — President Gerald Ford is shielded by the Secret Service after an assassination attempt by Lynette

Who Was Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme?

Lynette Alice Fromme was born in Santa Monica, California, in 1948. She grew up in a middle-class family and was described as an intelligent, artistic, and somewhat troubled child. She was nicknamed “Squeaky” by George Spahn, the blind owner of the Spahn Movie Ranch, where Charles Manson and his followers lived in the late 1960s. Fromme squeaked when Spahn would touch her, and the name stuck.

By her late teens, Fromme had fallen under the spell of Charles Manson. She became one of his earliest and most loyal followers. While others drifted in and out of the so-called “Manson Family,” Fromme stayed committed, even after the horrific Tate–LaBianca murders of 1969 sent Manson and many others to prison.

Secret Service agents put handcuffs on Lynette Fromme. The agent holding Fromme at center, wearing dark glasses, is Larry Bruendorf.

She wasn’t directly involved in the murders, but she worked tirelessly to keep the Family connected, visiting imprisoned members and speaking on Manson’s behalf. In 1971, she was jailed for 90 days after trying to feed LSD-laced food to a witness in the Tate murder trial. Her loyalty never wavered.

By the mid-1970s, Fromme was living in Sacramento in a modest attic flat with Sandra Good, another die-hard Manson follower. They had developed an obsession with ATWA, air, trees, water, animals, the ecological philosophy Manson preached. Environmentalism became her new mission, and she believed the redwood forests of California were in grave danger.

Why Target Gerald Ford?

Ford was not seen as a particularly polarising president. He had assumed office in 1974 after Richard Nixon resigned over Watergate, and he was widely regarded as steady, pragmatic, and unpretentious. But in the eyes of Fromme, Ford symbolised government neglect of the environment.

She was furious about reports of California’s worsening smog, which she believed threatened not only people but also the ancient redwoods she revered. In her own words, she claimed her goal was “to get life. Not just my life but clean air, healthy water, and respect for creatures and creation.”

When she learned that Ford would be in Sacramento in September 1975 to attend the annual Host Breakfast and meet state officials, she decided to act. Fromme believed that frightening the government by attacking its leader might draw attention to her environmental concerns.

The Gun: A 1911 Relic

The weapon Fromme carried was itself a piece of history. It was a Colt M1911 pistol, manufactured in 1911, the same year the model became standard issue for the U.S. military. Large and powerful, it fired .45 ACP rounds.

The gun had a curious backstory. It belonged to Harold “Zeke” Boro, a retired government draftsman in his mid-60s who had befriended members of the Manson Family in Sacramento. Described by some as a “sugar daddy,” Boro loaned cars, gave money, and provided Fromme with the pistol, though reluctantly. She took it, along with a box of ammunition, after he showed her how it worked.

But there was a problem. Fromme did not realise that a semi-automatic like the M1911 needed a round chambered before it could fire. She had ammunition in the magazine but had not racked the slide to load the first cartridge. Some later accounts suggest she intentionally ejected the top round, claiming she had no intention of actually killing Ford. Others believed it was sheer ignorance of how the weapon functioned. Either way, the gun failed to discharge.

Today, that very pistol is on display at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum in Grand Rapids, Michigan, a chilling relic of the close call.

Trial and Conviction

Fromme’s trial opened on 4 November 1975. She did little to help her own case. Defiant and unpredictable, she refused to cooperate with her lawyers and even threw an apple at the prosecutor during proceedings. The government introduced more than a thousand items of evidence taken from her apartment and car, including the box of .45 ammunition and a handgun manual.

Ford himself gave videotaped testimony, the first time in U.S. history that a sitting president testified at a criminal trial.

On 19 November, the jury convicted Fromme of attempting to assassinate the president. She was sentenced to life in prison.

Police and civilians surround a tree in a park. A woman looks concerned, caught in the crowd. Sunlight filters through the leaves.

Life Behind Bars

Fromme served her sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution in Alderson, West Virginia. Her devotion to Manson remained strong. She wrote him letters, defended his philosophy, and kept his teachings alive among sympathetic followers.

In December 1987, she briefly escaped while serving time in West Virginia. She was caught two days later and had additional years tacked onto her sentence. She ultimately spent 34 years behind bars.

On 14 August 2009, at the age of 60, Lynette Fromme was released. By then, Gerald Ford had been dead for nearly three years. She moved to Marcy, New York, where she lived quietly with a partner, Robert Valdner, himself a former convict.

Ford’s Response and Legacy

Ford rarely showed bitterness about the attempt. His wife, Betty Ford, admitted in 2004 that she prayed for his safety every time he left the White House after the incident. But Ford himself maintained a steady composure.

In a strange cultural footnote, George Lucas renamed the hero of Star Wars from “Luke Starkiller” to “Luke Skywalker” in 1976, reportedly to avoid any echoes of the Manson murders and the climate of violence associated with the Family.

Fromme’s attempt is remembered as one of the strangest moments in presidential history, an intersection of the Manson Family’s lingering shadow, 1970s radical politics, and environmental zealotry.

A Curious Connection: Squeaky and Phil Hartman

One lesser-known detail about Fromme’s past is her teenage friendship with Phil Hartman, the future comedian and Saturday Night Live star who was tragically murdered in 1998. The two grew up together in Southern California, went to high school together, and even dated briefly. Their lives could not have diverged more dramatically—Hartman into comedy stardom, Fromme into infamy.

Fromme in recent years

Conclusion

The assassination attempt on Gerald Ford by Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme on 5 September 1975 was a bizarre, almost surreal episode. It highlighted the lingering influence of the Manson Family, the anxieties of the 1970s, and the unpredictable intersections of politics and extremism.

Ford’s calm response, Fromme’s unwavering loyalty to Manson, and the sheer strangeness of the incident have kept it alive in public memory. Today, the pistol that failed to fire sits quietly in a museum case, a reminder of the day history came within a “click” of turning out very differently.