saint squeaky of santa monica

When he wrote Squeaky: The Life and Times of Lynette Alice Fromme, Jess Bravin was a law student. In case you missed that factoid on the jacket cover, it hits you full in the face when you reach page 250 of this 398-page biography, only to find the final 150 pages are dedicated to the proceedings of Squeaky Fromme's first and last felony trial.

Bravin uses the trial to show Squeaky's transition from the upbeat free-spirit he depicts in the first three-fifths of the book to the muttering shell of a kook we know and love today. In the process, Bravin condemns the book Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders by Vincent Bugliosi, the prosecutor in Manson's trial for the Tate-LaBianca murders (of which Squeaky was apparently a bystander). Bravin makes it obvious that Squeaky (the book) is a response to Helter Skelter, a book which so angered Squeaky (the person), Bravin implies this was a factor in her attempted assassination of Gerald Ford.

Bravin paints the story of a shy, freckle-faced baby boomer, intelligent and sensitive, with a knack for poetry and musical theater. A childhood that could have come straight out of the musical Grease, were it not for a harsh father and uncaring mother. Bravin intimates Squeaky was sexually abused by her father, but, disappointingly, produces no hard evidence to confirm or dispel the rumor.

From childhood, she drifts her way into the experimental lifestyle of a Southland bohemian. At the age of eighteen, she meets Charles Manson sitting on a bench at the Venice boardwalk. That is the core of Bravin's book: the story of a nice, impressionable girl who turns flower child with the wrong Gardener, and in so doing, becomes the poster girl of the fall of the hippies.

Reading this account, I was reminded of Joan of Arc, the innocent girl whose voices led her to wage war on the English, sparking the first flame of French national pride. Whereas Joan justified her slaughter with the ever-popular "God's on our side," there really was something to Squeaky's call for free love, open society, getting back to nature. One major difference though, was that the voice Squeaky heard was coming from a living person, and, unfortunately, that person was Charles Manson.

I have doubts as to how truly innocent of Manson's racial demagoguery and murder spree Squeaky was, given that she was First Mate of the Manson Family. But even if the details are a bit vague, there is doubtless truth in Bravin's tale of a saint turned satan. Just ask Patty Hearst and John Walker Lindh.