Speaker 1: Rip Current is a production of iHeart Podcasts. The views
Speaker 1: and opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those if the host, producers,
Speaker 1: or parent company listener discretion.
Speaker 2: Is it vie.
Speaker 3: Are California.
Speaker 4: Just before ten am on September fifth, nineteen seventy five,
Speaker 4: President Gerald Ford walked with a security detail on a
Speaker 4: path through Capitol Park on the grounds of the California
Speaker 4: Capitol Building in Sacramento. The path was lined with members
Speaker 4: of the public. State policemen were president at intervals along
Speaker 4: the route. A small woman wearing a bright red dress
Speaker 4: maneuvered her way through the crowd and approached the President
Speaker 4: as he passed.
Speaker 2: She had a gun.
Speaker 4: Her name was Lynnette from.
Speaker 5: Good Evening in CALIFORNI you today. President Ford looked down
Speaker 5: the barrel of a loaded automatic held by a red
Speaker 5: haired woman in a long red dress. But the gun
Speaker 5: didn't go off, and he's all right. The woman was
Speaker 5: wrestled to the ground by a secret serviceman and the
Speaker 5: President was hustled away. She is being charged with attempted
Speaker 5: murder of the President. She is twenty six year old
Speaker 5: Lynette Alice from nicknamed Squeaky.
Speaker 6: Less than three weeks later, on September twenty second, a
Speaker 6: woman named Sarah Jane Moore stood in a similar crowd
Speaker 6: assembled across the street from the Saint Francis Hotel in
Speaker 6: San Francisco. The President emerged from the side entrance and
Speaker 6: walked towards his waiting limousine. Moore fired a single shot
Speaker 6: before she was wrestled to the ground.
Speaker 7: This is a CBS News special report.
Speaker 2: Here CBS News correspondent Walder Cronkait.
Speaker 8: A woman fired a shot at President Ford in San
Speaker 8: Francisco this afternoon, but a policeman deflected the pistol and
Speaker 8: the President was not hit. The woman was in a
Speaker 8: crowd across the street about thirty five or forty feet away.
Speaker 8: As the President was leaving the Saint Francis Hotel to
Speaker 8: enter his limousine to return to Washington. Witnesses heard the
Speaker 8: sound and saw a puff of smoke. The woman, identified
Speaker 8: by police as Sarah Jane Moore in her forties, was
Speaker 8: immediately seized. When the shot was fired, the President was
Speaker 8: shoved into his car and wished to the airport, where
Speaker 8: Air Force one was waiting to fly him to Washington.
Speaker 8: He was not hurt, and at the airport appeared calm
Speaker 8: and unperturbed.
Speaker 4: In nearly two hundred and fifty years of United States history,
Speaker 4: there are only two times that we know of that
Speaker 4: a woman has tried to assassinate a US president. The
Speaker 4: two attempts were separated by seventeen days and less than
Speaker 4: ninety miles.
Speaker 6: I'm Toby Ball and I'm Mary Catherine Garrison, and this
Speaker 6: is rip current.
Speaker 9: I saw a woman start to go down and her
Speaker 9: arm go back, and I saw the gun, the big
Speaker 9: black gun.
Speaker 10: I got it out of her hand, and she.
Speaker 9: Kept saying, easy fellas, Easy fellas.
Speaker 6: It didn't go off.
Speaker 1: It didn't go off.
Speaker 6: Episode one, it didn't go off.
Speaker 4: So the idea for this podcast came as I was
Speaker 4: doing research on a related topic, radical groups in the
Speaker 4: nineteen seventies. I was going down these different rabbit holes,
Speaker 4: and at the end of one I came across Sarah
Speaker 4: Jane Moore and from there Lynette From.
Speaker 6: I came to this story by way of Broadway. I
Speaker 6: played Lynette Squeaky From in the original Broadway cast of
Speaker 6: Stephen Sondheim's musical Assassins Charlie Dahn.
Speaker 4: As I dug into the research, I found that there
Speaker 4: was a bigger story here than just a historical oddity.
Speaker 4: This was the story of two women navigating the fringes
Speaker 4: of radical society. How had they arrived at this place
Speaker 4: in their lives? Why was California in nineteen seventy five
Speaker 4: the setting for these attempts? Why target Gerald Ford? And
Speaker 4: what can we learn from their stories? These assassination attempts
Speaker 4: and the stories of the two women who tried to
Speaker 4: kill President gerald Ford take place in the considerable shadow
Speaker 4: of what we call the sixties. There's a public perception
Speaker 4: about the sixties, Hippies, Woodstock, the civil rights movement, communes, Vietnam,
Speaker 4: campus protests. It's an umbrella that includes people and movements
Speaker 4: that embodied different ways of reimagining what America was, could
Speaker 4: and should be. And these movements continued on into the
Speaker 4: early seventies. But the popular perception of the sixties only
Speaker 4: reflects a certain segment of the population at that time. Many,
Speaker 4: even most Americans, found these new values and ideas threatening
Speaker 4: or disturbing or simply un American. Much of the mainstream
Speaker 4: press agreed with this assessment.
Speaker 11: When you read Time each week, you know more you understand.
Speaker 4: From before World War II until the rise of the Internet,
Speaker 4: Time magazine was a powerful cultural force. Their annual Person
Speaker 4: of the Year.
Speaker 2: Issue was a big deal.
Speaker 4: This was the person or people Time deemed quote to
Speaker 4: have done the most to influence the events of the year.
Speaker 4: On January twelfth, nineteen seventy, Time magazine named Middle Americans
Speaker 4: as its Men and Women of the Year for nineteen
Speaker 4: sixty nine. Who were the Middle Americans?
Speaker 1: The American dream that they were living was no longer
Speaker 1: the dream is advertised. They feared that they were beginning
Speaker 1: to lose their grip on the country. Others seem to
Speaker 1: be taking over. The liberals, the radicals, the defiant young,
Speaker 1: a communications industry that they often believed was lying to them. This,
Speaker 1: they will say, with an air of embarrassment that such
Speaker 1: a truth need be stated at all. Is the greatest
Speaker 1: country in the world. Why are people trying to tear
Speaker 1: it down?
Speaker 4: Time Magazine took a sympathetic, though also critical view of
Speaker 4: Middle Americans, those who saw the changes in the social, cultural,
Speaker 4: and political landscape. Basically, the things we associate with the
Speaker 4: sixties as threatening to create a country alien to the
Speaker 4: one that they knew. There's racism, which shows itself in
Speaker 4: concerns about the civil rights movement, but in other ways
Speaker 4: as well.
Speaker 1: The article says, the rising level of crime frightens the
Speaker 1: Middle American, and when he speaks of crime, though he
Speaker 1: does not like to admit it, he means blacks. And
Speaker 1: then the idea of sacrificing their own children's education to
Speaker 1: a long range improvement for blacks appalls them.
Speaker 4: Time's comfort with a certain level of racism is jarring,
Speaker 4: such as here talking about Middle Americans who voted for
Speaker 4: the overtly racist, segregationist presidential candidate George Wallace.
Speaker 1: They are not extremists of the right, despite the fact
Speaker 1: that some of them voted for George Wallace in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty eight.
Speaker 12: I say segregation, MA, segregation, the MA, and segregation forever.
Speaker 4: But the Middle Americans' concerns go beyond the impacts of
Speaker 4: the civil rights movement. They're worried that the radical young,
Speaker 4: as Time calls them, fundamentally challenge their belief in the
Speaker 4: goodness of America.
Speaker 1: Middle Americans education does not dwell upon the agonizing moral
Speaker 1: discrepancies of American history, the stories of the Indians or
Speaker 1: the Blacks, or the national tradition of violence. He cannot
Speaker 1: believe that the society he has come to accept as
Speaker 1: the best possible on earth. The order he sees as
Speaker 1: natural contains wrong so deeply built in that he does
Speaker 1: not notice them. Middle Americans believe that the radical young
Speaker 1: are operating on a fast misunderstanding of their nation.
Speaker 4: Time uses shorthand to get this point across.
Speaker 1: While the rest of the nation's youth has been watching
Speaker 1: Dustin Hoffman and Midnight Cowboy, Middle America's teenagers have been
Speaker 1: taking in John Wayne for the second or third time
Speaker 1: in The Green Berets.
Speaker 4: Midnight Cowboy is the story of a male sex worker
Speaker 4: and his pimp trying to eke out a living in
Speaker 4: the sedious corners of New York City.
Speaker 13: Oh Hey, I'm a hustler.
Speaker 2: You didn't know that.
Speaker 4: It received an X rating due to quote the homosexual
Speaker 4: frame of reference and quote its possible influence on youngsters.
Speaker 4: In contrast, The Green Berets was an anti communist, pro
Speaker 4: Vietnam War movie. Critics observe that The Green Berets reduced
Speaker 4: the ongoing war into a simple conflict of good versus evil.
Speaker 14: Successful nation Mikey Yeah, but very gustly.
Speaker 4: Roger Ebert gave it zero stars, but Middle America apparently
Speaker 4: ate up the raw patriotism. We'll continue to use these
Speaker 4: terms Middle America and the Radical Young as a shorthand
Speaker 4: to broadly describe these two political and social groups in
Speaker 4: the US in the late sixties and seventies.
Speaker 6: Lynette From and Sarah Jane Moore's stories are very different
Speaker 6: in many ways, but they share two fundamental similarities. Both
Speaker 6: women had lived much of their lives in the culture
Speaker 6: of Middle America, but their experiences there were difficult, and
Speaker 6: then they suddenly, disorientingly became part of the most extreme
Speaker 6: frontiers of the radical Young. For Sarah Jane Moore, this
Speaker 6: meant immersing herself in the revolutionary philosophy the underground militants
Speaker 6: in the Bay Area, including San Francisco. For Lynette From,
Speaker 6: it meant joining a commune led by a guru whose
Speaker 6: name would become synonymous with the darkest fears that Middle
Speaker 6: America had about the Radical Young. Charles Manson on this
Speaker 6: season of Rip Current, we'll look at Lynette From and
Speaker 6: Sarah Janemore's lives in Middle America, their transformations as they
Speaker 6: entered the world of the Radical Young, and the social
Speaker 6: and political forces that led them to try to kill
Speaker 6: the President of the United States in September nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 1: If you think American society of the twenty first century
Speaker 1: or the twenty twenties was dangerous and.
Speaker 15: Violent, it's nothing.
Speaker 16: Compared to what California was in the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 6: Many, many people all of the world are due to
Speaker 6: be assassinated.
Speaker 1: This is just at the beginning.
Speaker 15: What starts as a hippie love called transmigraphied into a
Speaker 15: violent criminal enterprise.
Speaker 2: Of course, would have been imber.
Speaker 17: The people will be shot on prevent any.
Speaker 12: Primate, any plague.
Speaker 11: The worst thing in that underworld is to be an informant,
Speaker 11: a snitch.
Speaker 17: These people aren't just a bunch of mouths.
Speaker 11: They're perfectly willing to die for what they're doing.
Speaker 6: I'm not saying i'd try to take a shot.
Speaker 10: I didn't take a shot without a show in the chamber.
Speaker 1: I had two feet from him.
Speaker 17: I could have shot twice. I was the person in
Speaker 17: the intent was exactly as I stated in court, to
Speaker 17: wilfully and know.
Speaker 1: Any assassinate Gerald off Or the Pressman of the United.
Speaker 6: States, Gerald Ford, the thirty eighth President of the United States,
Speaker 6: arrived in Sacramento for the last stop of a two
Speaker 6: day fundraising trip to the West coast. He had already
Speaker 6: raised money in Seattle and Portland.
Speaker 10: It was September the fifth, nineteen seventy five, and it
Speaker 10: was to be a red letter day in the city
Speaker 10: of Sacramento. The President of the United States, Gerald R. Ford,
Speaker 10: was to pay us a visit.
Speaker 6: This is senior US District Court Judge William Shubb speaking
Speaker 6: at a twenty thirteen panel discussion of Lynnette From's trial.
Speaker 10: The town was all a bustle.
Speaker 7: In the morning.
Speaker 10: The President was scheduled to speak to a large group
Speaker 10: of California business leaders at the annual host breakfast to
Speaker 10: be held in the newly constructed Sacramento Community Center.
Speaker 7: Traditionally, the governor had always come and spoken to the breakfast.
Speaker 7: Jerry Brown was in his first year as governor in
Speaker 7: nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 12: The people in chacrament all the people in California and
Speaker 12: out in the West, can make the difference.
Speaker 7: You don't even governor about eight or nine months at
Speaker 7: this time, as a matter.
Speaker 17: Of fact, are you get out and vote on Tuesday.
Speaker 7: And invited him to come and speak, and he didn't respond.
Speaker 7: He kind of put him off, and it angered the sponsors.
Speaker 7: My name is Dan Walders. I'm a political columnist for
Speaker 7: a non fuck with journalism group called Calmatters dot Org.
Speaker 7: I'd been a journalist for over sixty years, and in
Speaker 7: nineteen seventy five I had just begun covering the capitol
Speaker 7: for the Sacramento Union. They were mostly Republicans. They kind
Speaker 7: of angered him that this kind young snotnoas kid governor
Speaker 7: wasn't coming in positive them. So that the head of
Speaker 7: the committee at that time was a man by the
Speaker 7: name of Carlisle Reed, who happened to be the publisher
Speaker 7: of the Sacramento Union, and he was well connected in
Speaker 7: Republican circles. So he decided, basically, I'll teach that young
Speaker 7: son of a bitch a lesson. I'll get the president
Speaker 7: to come to Sacramento instead and show him up, and
Speaker 7: they did. He pulled strings and got a commitment from
Speaker 7: Jerry Ford he would come and speak to the host breakfast.
Speaker 6: Ford received a warm welcome from the group of businessmen
Speaker 6: and gave a speech guaranteed to appeal to their political sensibilities.
Speaker 12: In recent years, a disproportionate percentage of new jobs has
Speaker 12: come from the public sector rather than the private the
Speaker 12: result has been the creation of a bureaucracy that contributes
Speaker 12: very little to America's prosperity and productivity. It simply shares it.
Speaker 6: His message of reducing regulatory burden was well received by
Speaker 6: the largely Republican audience. Here is an unidentified attendee reacting
Speaker 6: to Ford's speech.
Speaker 18: Well, I think the President gave a very determined statement
Speaker 18: on which he stated that we're raither going to become
Speaker 18: free Americans again and cause our economy to grow, or
Speaker 18: we're going to go further and further in the direction
Speaker 18: of a planned, a socialistic type economy.
Speaker 6: Following the speech, Ford returned from the convention Center to
Speaker 6: the Senator Hotel for a brief rest before heading to
Speaker 6: the state Capitol to meet with Governor Brown and address
Speaker 6: the state legislature. Here's Ford testifying about that day months later.
Speaker 2: And what time did you leave the hotel?
Speaker 12: Approxtantly ten am that morning?
Speaker 19: As I understand, you crossed the street and you were
Speaker 19: proceeding along the walkway.
Speaker 2: Towards the state capital. Is that correct?
Speaker 12: That is correct. I left the hotel, walked across L
Speaker 12: Street and up a walkway from L Street to the
Speaker 12: entrance to the State Capitol on my way to meet
Speaker 12: the government.
Speaker 19: And as you were walking you were exchanging cordialities.
Speaker 2: With the people and shaking their hands. Is that correct?
Speaker 12: That is correct? As I went along the walkway, the
Speaker 12: crowd had been assembled on my left as I walked
Speaker 12: toward the Capitol, and they were held back by a rope.
Speaker 12: And as I walked toward the Capital, I was shaking
Speaker 12: hands and speaking to people in this group on the
Speaker 12: left hand side.
Speaker 6: As Ford moved along the route, he was accompanied by
Speaker 6: Secret Service agents, city and state police officers, and a
Speaker 6: group of journalists and camera operators, including Sacramento Television Channel
Speaker 6: ten reporter Roger Lindberg.
Speaker 5: Beginning our series of reports on today's events in Sacramento
Speaker 5: with a near assassination of the president.
Speaker 1: Here is Roger Lindberg.
Speaker 17: Roger, Well, it is the sort of thing that you
Speaker 17: hear about, but you never really believe you will ever see.
Speaker 14: Roger Lindberg, former KXTV reporter back in seventies. So my
Speaker 14: assignment at the time was to be with the president
Speaker 14: leaving the hotel, which was across the street from the Capitol,
Speaker 14: and then go with him into the Capitol building. You
Speaker 14: have to cross a major street, and then you walk
Speaker 14: through this garden that is on the eastern side of
Speaker 14: the Capitol building, and then you go up the step
Speaker 14: into the Capitol. We come in the back door, not
Speaker 14: the front of the Capitol. So that was my assignment
Speaker 14: was to just be with him accompany him. I had
Speaker 14: a camera crew with me at the time. It was
Speaker 14: a big scrum. There were a lot of a lot
Speaker 14: of cameras, a lot of reporters Secret Service.
Speaker 17: President Ford was smiling and shaking hands as he moved
Speaker 17: across from the Senator Hotel.
Speaker 2: Towards the Capitol Building.
Speaker 17: It was crossing the street, walking up a path that
Speaker 17: led to the back entrance of the Capitol.
Speaker 14: I remember it was an incredibly nice day. It was
Speaker 14: bright and sunny, typical California day. We walked across the
Speaker 14: street with him. We entered the park on the northern side,
Speaker 14: and we were walking along a path at meanders between
Speaker 14: big trees and rose garden, etc.
Speaker 6: There was a moment of confusion at the entrance to
Speaker 6: the park. The security plan called for the Sacramento City
Speaker 6: Police to aid the Secret Service and escorting the President
Speaker 6: from the Senator Hotel to the park entrance. At the
Speaker 6: entrance the city police were to give way to State
Speaker 6: police officers who would accompany the President and his secret
Speaker 6: Service detail through the park and to the back door
Speaker 6: of the Capitol, But when the group reached the park
Speaker 6: entrance there were only three uniformed state police officers on
Speaker 6: the scene. A decision was made for one of the
Speaker 6: city police officers to accompany the President and his entourage
Speaker 6: into the park. Waiting amid the crowd was Lynette From.
Speaker 6: After the break, the security accompanying President Ford as he
Speaker 6: walked from the Senator Hotel to the California State Capitol was,
Speaker 6: by today's standards, almost comically. Video of his walk appears
Speaker 6: to show less than a dozen agents around the president.
Speaker 6: The scene does not seem very secure. Inside the park,
Speaker 6: about a dozen State Police officers were stationed along the path.
Speaker 6: In the minutes before Ford's appearance. Lynette From approached one
Speaker 6: of the officers. She asked the officer if the president
Speaker 6: was going to take that path on his way to
Speaker 6: the State House. The officer was evasive in his answer,
Speaker 6: but a crowd of several hundred people were lining the
Speaker 6: path from the park entrance to the east steps of
Speaker 6: the Capitol, and it seemed clear that this would be
Speaker 6: his route from wore a flowing sleeveless red dress with
Speaker 6: the hem down at her ankles. Beneath the robe, she
Speaker 6: carried an M nineteen eleven Colt forty five pistol in
Speaker 6: a holster on her left leg. The presidential entourage made
Speaker 6: its way through the park, with Forde shaking hands and
Speaker 6: speaking with people lining the path. A man in the
Speaker 6: crowd described to a television reporter what he saw next.
Speaker 13: I was about fifteen feet from where the president was
Speaker 13: moving down the line of people shaking hands, and he
Speaker 13: reached out to shake hands with a young woman. And
Speaker 13: just about that time there was another person, a redheaded woman,
Speaker 13: moved toward him.
Speaker 17: When he reached the halfway mark in the path, the
Speaker 17: crowd suddenly shifted violently, and President Ford flinched back, his
Speaker 17: hands thrust in front of him. Ford saw what few
Speaker 17: others could. A woman dressed in a long red skirt
Speaker 17: pointed a forty five caliber pistol at the president.
Speaker 6: Here is Gerald Ford again from his testimony, Where.
Speaker 2: Was Lynette from when you first observed her?
Speaker 12: If you recall approximately halfway between L Street and the
Speaker 12: State Capitol, I noticed a person in the second or
Speaker 12: third row in a brightly colored dress, who appeared to
Speaker 12: one who either shake hands or speak, or at least
Speaker 12: wanted to get closer to me.
Speaker 19: Do you recall anything about the condition of her face
Speaker 19: when you first observed her? Was it flushed, pale, weathered?
Speaker 19: I know you've used the term weather before. Is at
Speaker 19: your recollection?
Speaker 12: It looked weathered, but there were many faces that the
Speaker 12: brightness of the dress attracted my attention, and then the
Speaker 12: process of noticing the dress. I thought her face did
Speaker 12: appear to be.
Speaker 6: Somewhat weather, though four doesn't mention it, and photographs taken
Speaker 6: at the scene, Lynette is wearing a strange hat that
Speaker 6: matches the red of her dress. The hat is made
Speaker 6: of fabric and a shape like a cone, though most
Speaker 6: of it is folded down like a limp, which's capped
Speaker 6: to the right of her face. Her appearance was so
Speaker 6: unusual that even as Ford moved through a crowd of people,
Speaker 6: she stood out.
Speaker 12: I would say that she was three to four feet
Speaker 12: from me when I first noticed her. She appeared to
Speaker 12: want to come forward. I had the impression she did
Speaker 12: come forward. I didn't see the precise movement. I stopped
Speaker 12: because I had the impression she wanted to speak to
Speaker 12: me or shake my hand, And as I moved to
Speaker 12: either shake hands or speak to her, I then noticed
Speaker 12: the gun as I indicated it in her hand was
Speaker 12: approximately two feet.
Speaker 19: From where exactly, if you recall, was the barrel of
Speaker 19: the weapon point.
Speaker 2: I could not tell.
Speaker 12: The weapon was large. It covered all or most of
Speaker 12: her hand as far as I could see. And I
Speaker 12: only saw it instantaneously because almost automatically, one of the
Speaker 12: Secret Service agents lunged, grabbed the hand and the weapon,
Speaker 12: and then I was pushed off by the other members
Speaker 12: of the Secret Service detail.
Speaker 2: Do you know who it was that grabbed a hold
Speaker 2: of her arm?
Speaker 12: It was one of the Secret Service detail, mister Larry boondor.
Speaker 20: My position at the time was right at his left shoulder.
Speaker 20: So he's walking along shaking hands. I'm concentrating on his hands.
Speaker 20: Don't want to have anybody grabbed too long, take his
Speaker 20: watch whatever.
Speaker 6: We tried to interview Larry Bundorff, who was long retired
Speaker 6: from the Secret Service, but the Secret Service Press office
Speaker 6: turned down our interview request. Boondorf was next to Ford,
Speaker 6: keeping an eye on the hands reaching for the president.
Speaker 6: He would not have been expecting when that thrusting forward
Speaker 6: a gun, but he acted immediately.
Speaker 20: As he's shaking hands. Suddenly I see this hand come
Speaker 20: up with something in it, and it wasn't At that time,
Speaker 20: didn't know it was a weapon, but I stepped in
Speaker 20: front of the President to stop the hand from coming
Speaker 20: up because I didn't want him to get.
Speaker 11: Hit with whatever it was.
Speaker 20: The minute I hited it, I knew it was a gun,
Speaker 20: so I yelled out, gun. All my very best friends
Speaker 20: that are with the President they leave. She's screaming in
Speaker 20: the crowd, screaming, and I got hold of her hand
Speaker 20: and I got the gun. I got the gun here
Speaker 20: pushing right. Didn't have my vest on, So I'm thinking
Speaker 20: that I don't know if there's more to this than
Speaker 20: it's going to happen, but I know I'm not letting
Speaker 20: go older.
Speaker 3: Hey, you heard Bundorf yelling a lady with a gun?
Speaker 2: Forty five.
Speaker 6: This is retired Secret Service agent Doug Duncan, who was
Speaker 6: part of President Ford security details, speaking at a commemoration
Speaker 6: of the assassination attempt the.
Speaker 3: President Duck and I looked over his shoulder and I
Speaker 3: could see that Larry had the gall in custody. He
Speaker 3: had his hand over the gun pointed at the ground.
Speaker 3: His left hand was around her, so he had her
Speaker 3: under control.
Speaker 6: All of this happened in front of the assembled crowd.
Speaker 6: To some it appeared to be just a commotion. Others
Speaker 6: who were closer saw more clearly what happened. Dan Walters,
Speaker 6: we had a.
Speaker 7: Reporter out there by the name of Vita fied Rigi
Speaker 7: and I saw Vita and I said, what happened? She said,
Speaker 7: what she tried to kill Ford or something like that,
Speaker 7: and I said, you've got it right.
Speaker 6: This is Vita being interviewed by local news immediately after the.
Speaker 9: Attempt, And all of a sudden, I was standing maybe
Speaker 9: three feet from Ford, behind two people. All of a sudden,
Speaker 9: I saw the Secret serviceman right behind Ford just reach
Speaker 9: out and push, and I saw a woman start to
Speaker 9: go down and her arm go back, and I saw
Speaker 9: the gun, and I didn't watch what Ford was doing.
Speaker 9: And they wrestled through the ground and were slapping cuffs
Speaker 9: on her and this big black gun. They got it
Speaker 9: out of her hand, and she kept saying, easy fellas,
Speaker 9: easy fellas.
Speaker 6: It didn't go off.
Speaker 16: It didn't go off.
Speaker 11: The president right after it happened, turned around and kind
Speaker 11: of looked back at the spot, and it was clear
Speaker 11: to me at least that he was aware of what
Speaker 11: had happened. He seemed to me was done be will
Speaker 11: they something like that, and it was clear that he
Speaker 11: knew what had happened.
Speaker 6: Six Secret Service agents forced the president into a crouch
Speaker 6: and hurried him the remaining hundred yards to the capital's
Speaker 6: rear entrance and inside to safety. Meanwhile, Larry Bundorff and
Speaker 6: others brought Lynnette to a tree to isolate her from
Speaker 6: the crowd.
Speaker 16: Roger Lindberg, the Secret Service hustled her to a large
Speaker 16: tree that was in the garden, and I think because
Speaker 16: of my age, wearing sunglasses and having a suit on,
Speaker 16: which was unusual for reporters, I.
Speaker 14: Ended up just standing right next to her and I
Speaker 14: started interviewing her. I started talking to her. Her words
Speaker 14: to me were, damn it. It didn't go off. The gun,
Speaker 14: it didn't go off. I was scribbling notes as quickly
Speaker 14: as I could, and then the Secret Service realized that
Speaker 14: I wasn't Secret Service and got me away from the tree.
Speaker 17: Woman I didn't find as Manson Paul Lynn Allen Squeaky
Speaker 17: from of Sacramento was held by Secret Service and police
Speaker 17: while the President continued on to the Capitol. Witness has
Speaker 17: heard Miss Brown say at one point it didn't go off.
Speaker 17: Can you believe it didn't go off?
Speaker 6: An eyewitness told a local television reporter that Lynette kept
Speaker 6: talking even after Roger Lindberg had been moved away. What
Speaker 6: was she saying when they got her tied behind this tree?
Speaker 18: She kept saying that he's not a public servant.
Speaker 2: He's not a public servant.
Speaker 6: From was taken to Sacramento Police headquarters, where she was questioned.
Speaker 6: At four o'clock, she appeared at the Sacramento Federal Court.
Speaker 6: The one page complaint charging her with the assassination attempt
Speaker 6: was read, and then US Magistrate Esther Mix asked From
Speaker 6: if she had any statement before bail was set. From
Speaker 6: replied no in a barely audible voice. She was then
Speaker 6: sent to the Sacramento County Jail, where she was confined
Speaker 6: alone to a cell. For his part, Ford continued with
Speaker 6: his schedule, meeting with Governor Jerry By and then, an
Speaker 6: hour after the attempt on his life, addressing the state legislature. Ironically,
Speaker 6: the speech which was written before his visit centered on crime.
Speaker 12: Serious crime rose eighteen percent for the nation as a whole.
Speaker 4: After the speech to the Legislature, Ford left for McClellan
Speaker 4: Air Force Base, where Air Force one waited on the
Speaker 4: tarmac to take him back to Washington.
Speaker 17: Ford boarded the plane directly from the limousine.
Speaker 18: The President paused.
Speaker 12: Only at the door of the craft to wave a
Speaker 12: warm goodbye to the people.
Speaker 5: Tonight, President Ford is enrud back to Washington, and apparently
Speaker 5: he will continue his campaign schedule, including a return trip
Speaker 5: to California in about two weeks.
Speaker 4: Though President Ford had left Sacramento unscathed, authorities and the
Speaker 4: public were left with pressing questions. Who exactly was Lynette
Speaker 4: from six years after the arrests of her guru Charles Manson,
Speaker 4: What had compelled her to attempt an act of sensational violence,
Speaker 4: and why had she targeted Gerald Ford next time on.
Speaker 12: Rip current.
Speaker 10: Was very good person.
Speaker 18: Manson did things so much on instinct of how to survive.
Speaker 15: I always felt like Glynnette was kind of this right
Speaker 15: hand woman, and she was also.
Speaker 6: Very very dedicated to him. We did not have sex
Speaker 6: orgies and drug orgies or cult.
Speaker 11: Eating five persons, including actress Sharon Tape were found dead
Speaker 11: at the home of Mistape and her husband, screen director
Speaker 11: Roman Polotsky.
Speaker 15: When Manson was arrested, Lynette essentially emerged as the recognized
Speaker 15: leader of the group.
Speaker 17: Manson told his followers that this would be a bloodbath
Speaker 17: in the streets of every American city.
Speaker 1: Was created and written by Toby Ball and developed with
Speaker 1: Alexander Williams. Hosted by Toby Ball with Mary Katherine Garrison.
Speaker 1: Original music by Jeff Sannoff. Show art by Jeffney as
Speaker 1: Goda and Charles Rudder. Producers Jesse Funk, Reema O'Kelly and
Speaker 1: Nolas Griffin. Supervising producer Treviie Young, Executive producers Alexander Williams
Speaker 1: and Matt Frederick. Recorded at In Your Ear Studios, Richmond, Virginia,
Speaker 1: engineered by Paul Bruski and Spotland Productions Nashville, Tennessee, engineered
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Speaker 12: Thank you very much.