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Sandra Good later told TIME: "I don't know what state of mind Lyn was in, but I do know that she was concerned that nobody is doing anything for the country. This act was a combination of many problems. She apparently was moved by the disaster facing the country from air and water pollution. Nixon lied to the people, and Ford is continuing to lie to the people. He is not doing anything."
Stop Polluting. Good claimed that she and Fromme were members of an "international people's court" consisting of several thousand members throughout the world, who were prepared to "kill" the polluters of the air and water. Said she: "We're going to start assassinating Presidents, Vice Presidents and major executives of companies. I'm warning these people they better stop polluting or they're going to die."
Squeaky Fromme was also accustomed to using the language of violence. Good was with her in late July when she told a journalist−who insists upon anonymity−that Ford, the creation of Nixon, "would have to pay for what he's doing. Ford is picking up in Nixon's footsteps and he is just as bad." Part of the interview took place in a local cemetery because the girls said they "identified" with the dead. When the newsman asked for more time to talk, Fromme said darkly, "This is nothing to the interview you will get. Something very big is going to happen."
It seemed inconceivable to some California law-enforcement officials who had worked on the Manson cases that Squeaky Fromme could have acted independently. Says one officer: "For Lynette just to go out on her own and do this doesn't make sense. The clan is just what its name implies−a family. And like a family, they don't operate alone."
In Sacramento, U.S. Attorney Dwayne Keyes said there was an "assumption" that Fromme had been part of a conspiracy because of the "close connection of the [Manson] group." In Los Angeles, Deputy District Attorney Stephen Kay said flatly: "I think Charles Manson had a hand in it. It's very easy to slip messages in and out of prison." Indeed, officials at San Quentin prison near San Francisco, where Manson is locked up, acknowledged that the mass murderer had frequently corresponded with Fromme by regular mail. A prison spokesman said that Manson had learned of the act through the prison grapevine shortly after it happened. Reportedly, Manson reacted with surprise to the news, declaring, "Oh, my God!"
Squeaky Fromme, daughter of a well-to-do aeronautical engineer in Redondo Beach, Calif., was one of the first people to join Manson's demonic tribe in 1967, after she dropped out of El Camino College in Torrance, Calif. Her life in the self-styled family revolved around drugs, depraved sex and devotion to Manson, who made her his "main lady." As she testified at his murder trial in 1971: "We were riding on the wind. You could say that it's a nonsense world of Alice in Wonderland, but it makes a lot of sense. Everybody makes their own [rules], and you get what you put out."