Hey, guys, welcome to Greatest Escapes, a show bringing you the wildest true escape stories of all time. Today's story goes into a truly dark chapter of Hollywood history, only this time we're talking about the crimes and the escapes. They usually don't hear about A'marto Castro. And for this one, I have to bring in the incredible actress and voiceover artists and queen of Miami.
It's Amy Carrero. Amy Carrero.
Should I just use my normal Miami accent or why?
I just like, so, let's fucking do it, Like just say the three or five is present, an accountant present.
But you know what, we actually met way before the Menu.
That's true. Remember that we were doing phone banking, Yeah, live on ABC or whatever.
Good Morning America, that's what it was. Yeah, And we were sat next to each other.
That's right. And I remember I was like, oh my god, we saw John Lee. Guizamo was one of the main guys. I'll see you in about ten years in a movie called The Menu.
John like Guizamo the Menu, right, right, So that was my intro.
And look how far we've come. Now we're in a podcast together. Wow, this is great.
I love it.
Amy. What do you consider to be your greatest escape.
It happened Christmas twenty twenty one.
I was by myself and my husband Tim had gone to Egypt with his family for Christmas.
Are marriage Isakay.
I was doing a TV show at the time, and it was like right after Christmas. We'd had these Egypt tickets booked, and.
I was like, you should just go.
I couldn't go, like, you know, I had to work whatever. So I stayed in secretly like ooh, this is nice to get the house to myself. So I was walking the dog and I know my neighborhood obviously really well. I've lived here like almost ten years. And I turned around and there was this all like blacks, like a black sedan and the front mirror was blacked out, and I remember thinking it was really strange.
I was like, yeah, you see that in Los Angeles, right.
Like the front mirror right.
So I turned around. The car was there and it must have pulled up and it wasn't like a hybrid, but I didn't hear it. And so I was walking the dog and it was just kind of.
In a weird spot.
I live kind of like in an area where there's not a lot of cars that stop. It's just like, you know, it's strange to estrae of that to happen. So I was like, you know what, I'm not going to go back to my house because I don't want this person to know where I lived, just in case.
So I like, I like went up the hill.
Because I live in the hills, nice little side, no there, Yeah, And.
I was gone for like thirty minutes. I ran into a neighbor.
I started talking to the neighbor blah blah blah, and I was like, Okay, the car's probably gone. So I'm going back down this hill to turn to the street where I live. But my house is like six houses down right. So I'm like turning and there's this intersection. So I'm here with my dog and that car is like going like passing, and he sees me and stops and pulls over. Whoa, And there was this other car that was like I guess maybe like with that car.
It was like this Lexus car and there was a.
Woman in it, like a Latin woman in it because I know my fellow mommy's yeah, and she stopped behind him.
So this car pulls over. She pulls over behind him.
Luckily, there's like this mass of dudes that are like riding bike.
It's like literally it's.
Like Christmas Day and I got, say one on a Christmas Day bike ride, and I was like, oh my god, thank god. So I like scooch in where they are and I run back home, locked the door. And I ended up spending like four nights in a hotel after that because I'm like, I'm gonna walk my dog if
so get this. This is like comes full circle. So like two days later, I was watching the news and I saw that there had been like a dog kidnapping in West Hollywood what And they had video of it and the owner was dracked because his like jacket got caught onto the door, so he was dragged.
And I saw it and what do I see?
But this blacked out no like Nissan or Sedan whatever it was right, Yeah, So I was like, oh my god.
I called the LAPD. I was like, I figured, oh what artist.
I didn't get the license plate obviously, so it was useless information that I gave him, But I.
Was like, you just wanted to feel hurt.
Yeah, I was like, I narrowly escaped with my.
Dog Wow, how scary. Well, thank you so much for sharing that with us. Amy. Now, are you ready to hear some fucking crazy escape?
I'm ready?
What's rock and roll? So it's December twenty third, nineteen eighty seven, and at Alderson Federal Prison in West Virginia, a routine betcheck raised the alarm. Lynette from was missing from Yes, she had just turned thirty nine, but thank you for that. Ben Bub was missing from bromb. She had just turned thirty nine, but she had spent twelve of those years in prison for crimes that made national headlines.
Oh shit.
People had been discussing Lynette's life choices since nineteen sixty nine because she was also a diehard follower of Charles Manson Give me the music again, Ben, she.
I should have known as a Charles Manson follower because she was like, I mean this is a child criminal, I mean, you know criminal. She's only thirty nine, she's been in jail.
Yeah. Have you heard of her before, Lynette?
No, I've heard of like the crank Winkle and texts and like the other ones that were like a rest for the murders, but I don't I'd never heard of her.
Well, Lynette had actually lived such a wild life before she was locked up, and that's where we're going to get into today. Okayat but two days before Christmas in nineteen eighty seven, why wasn't Lynette in her cell? So the guard scrambled to ask the other inmates when they had last seeing Lynette, and they all said that it was just before nine pm. That means that when guard started looking, Lynette had been gone for less than an hour.
Her disappearance mystified the person officials. They had no idea when she had slipped away or how she got out. The prison itself was super remote. It was about twelve miles to the nearest down in southeastern West Virginia. It held almost a thousand women, including many under what they called maximum guard.
I was going to ask, was this like a max prison?
Like, what's the situation maximum guard?
So basically, it should have been really hard for Lynette to escape. The officers searched all the prison buildings but couldn't find any sign of her. There are also no holes in the prison fencing or any sign of how she got past the barbier. Who the fuck knows. Then federal agents were called in for the hunt, but they really didn't have much to go on, you know, because weirdly enough, prisoners at Alderson were not required to wear uniforms. I mean, well then it's.
Not a maximum guard. What are we doing here? Were?
They just like encouraged to like express themselves. They're like, how are we feeling today? You guys?
I think I'm gonna wear a crocheted haulter? Yeah, what the hell?
The description given to local residents said that she had been last wearing a green army jacket, khaki pants and a pension for danger no and a red checkered bandana.
Right, that's like a very fashionable outfit.
Like what I know, she just like slapped it on. That's like a good brunch outfit, you know.
Yeah, totally.
She's like, I'm gonna go out, but in case I have an impromptu brunch meeting, I'm just gonna wear this red. And the main thing was that she had freckles and blazing red hair, so they.
Had hair dye at the fucking prison, or maybe she was a natural red.
No, there it was a spot, right, I believe it's just so this isn't fair to gingers though. I mean, imagine you're just another local West Virginia, thirty nine year old with red hair and a closet full of army jackets, Like, how would you feel bad? You don't have redheads not been through enough? And Caucasians in general, have they not been through enough?
Just give white people a chance, give them a break. Here's the thing with Gingers.
They have to go through the life as Gingers, and you know that's hard enough.
I mean, I bought the Prince Harry book. Like we're reading it.
I'm just saying that, Like that's your defense for like whenever you're like are you hating on Gingers, You're like, hey, guys, I have the Prince Harry book. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So tips started flowing in. Apparently she had been spotted nearby many, many times. But as teams of officers started to investigate the sightings, they found that all of them were cases of mistake and identity.
How many redheads?
Was, yeah, what the fuck? Were like match the description.
And Appalachia like they were like.
It was a massive exodus from Ireland.
Oh that's so weird.
Gingers were just being handed over to the police left and right for questioning, which is truly truly hilarious. Being like, excuse me, man, like I am literally the girl from Wendy's. Yeah, like fucking leave me alone?
Right right?
Right? What did I do? What is my crime? Make a ginger?
Yeah that's right. So more than one hundred agents swept the woods and hills around the prison, using dogs to try to pick up Lynnett's trail, but two days later they still hadn't come up with any trace. Ever, the prison warden said, okay, get this, that the dogs were hampered by the dampness and rocky soil, plus they were feeling like really emotionally unavailable, you know, because like mercury is in the third house or in.
A mental health day.
Yeah, small time bullshit like this was definitely not going to cut it, because actually it might not have been all that hard for Lynette to get out, especially since there had been fifteen escapes from Alderson in just three years. Right, I'm telling you.
They were like, dress what you wanted, do what you want.
Yeah, they would have excursions, so you guys come back whenever you're ready. Though, if you were if you were the warden though, and you're at the press conference, how would you try to spin this? Oh?
I would just quit?
Yeah, I would just be like, I don't believe in the prison system. Buy yeah, yeah, yeah, there's no spinning this.
I wonder how Miami Major would do this? So like it li isten't everybody? Okay? People would escape? What do you want me to do?
Me?
What happens? Okay? Look, I had a really bad day. My stomach was hurting. I went to the bathroom and she was gone, that's.
It, that's see. What do you want me to do about it? Okay?
Yeah, yeah, sorry how it is?
And then we're playing Okay, why don't you worry about your life?
Let me ask you this. So did she commit one of the murders or she was just like an accessory? Like what was coming about? Do we know?
Okay, I'm gonna blow your mind with this? All right? The officials hunting for Lynette weren't laughing, right, So word went out to the agencies in all fifty states. The US Marshalls started talking to everyone who had recently been in touch with her, and the headlines just bam hit the papers. Right, it was December twenty fifth, nineteen eighty seven. So Merry Christmas for Lisa to you America.
Merry Christmas, Lynette.
That's right, Lynette from is free and she might be headed to a house near you. Also, what a Tim Burton Night member before Christmas? Little song there been? I was like I wanted to keep going with that. I was like, cozying up.
I know, I really love that sound.
So in fact, when word went up the chain the Lynette had escaped federal custody, the message reached all the way to the White House and the Secret Service was put on notice. Yeah, they even tightened up security around the president for fuck's sake, because the reason Lynette was in prison in the first place, it was a really serious one.
Oh okay.
She had been locked up for a failed attempt to assassinate Don Don Don, the precedent of the United States.
Oh what, okay, Yeah, that's a plot twist.
Did she get close like what? Or did she just think about.
It and then like I'm about to tell you Okay, Okay. So you know how Lynette was a follower of Charles Manson, Right, Well, we're gonna go all the way back to Manson's earliest days as a cult leader, because Lynette was actually his second recruit.
Okay, so she got in on the ground floor. She was like I want in.
She became like the cornerstone of the Manson family. So do you know, do you know much about the Manson family? I do.
I'm obsessed.
There's actually a tour in Los Angeles called the Dearly Departed Tour and it's about like weird ducks.
Dude, I took this fucking tour alone, and you can go. They take you up to the house. I know enough about Itello Drive. Yeah, but now they changed the name.
It's something else not but like but yeah, they'll take you up there. But I know, I think I know, maybe just like a skosh more than most people. But I'd never heard of this one, so maybe maybe I'm not as let me.
Give you some details on it. So Lynett's intro to Charles Manson takes us back a couple of decades. In nineteen sixty seven, Lynette was eighteen and she'd been recently kicked out by her parents for promiscuity. She probably like cooked up with two guys or something.
You know what I mean, Like, how was she had a wop okay and she had wopp okay.
I worked with this woman. You could just tell in the sixties she was fucking killing it.
And she was telling me the story that she moved to Venice Beach and she was approached by the Manson family.
No, yeah, dude, and that was like her great escape start.
She never like went to like a very I think she got weird vibes for immediately.
Can you imagine the kind of cute girls like the living in Venice Beach didn't get approached by a Manson family. They'd be like, so, what's it about me that you didn't like? You know, there's super selcustable right right?
Was I not like blonde enough? But she you could just touch she like even as an older woman. Now you look at her and you're like, oh.
Oh, you would have fucking you destroyed hearts.
Yeah, I mean she's still killing it. But back then it was like burr. So, I think Venice Beach was like ground zero for recruitment. But she got weird vibes from you know them well.
Anyway, Charles brought her back to the house where he was living at the time with his first partner, and together the three of them started growing the Manson family. Now by most reports, Lynnette became the family's main recruiter. Right She would find other young isolated women introduce them to Charles and bring them into the fold.
That's creepy.
Things started to change for the growing Manson family the next year, Wow quick, yeah, yeah, they were picked up by none other than Dennis Wilson, the drummer of the Beach Boys. Yeah. As the story goes, the women told Dennis about Charles Manson, their spirit leader and teacher, and Dennis was curious and said he would like to meet Manson sometime, right, But he was in for a surprise because the next time Dennis came home, he opened his door to find that Charles Manson was already in his house.
Okay, call the cops. What are we doing here? We could have saved all these lives.
Bad vibration, bad vibration, getting the creep fiund this fucking guy. So if this is you at this point, are you writing the vibes or are you going to the cops? What are you doing?
No, man, well it depends. Look it was nineteen sixties.
Everybody was probably super high, so it's like, okay, this is cool exactly.
You hit it on the head. Dennis and Charles just smoked some weed together and who knows what Charles said, but Dennis was super charmed. Right now, Oh, is that a bong sound that you? Yeah? Sorry, I just I needed to take a rip. I was like, is that a sound in my house? It didn't take long for Dennis to invite Charles, Lynnette and the rest of the family to move into his house on Senset Boulevard.
Wait wait, wait wait, they moved in.
They moved in with Dennis.
Yeah, oh yeah.
So for a little while least Lynnette found herself literally living in the mansion of one of the Beach Boys. And this is when listen, they were at the top of their fucking game, right the sixties. I mean, if this was today, whose house would you be moving into if you had a choice, If you're in.
A cult, for sure, I'd move into like Taylor Swift's like penthouse in Tribecca, Like that's we want the tippy top.
I want to go to Madonna's house and just be like, Okay, how do we live forever? Let's figure this fucking thing out. Hang upside down? Yeah, I'm like, so who do we sacrifice? That's it? Yeah? And I was like, do you believe in life after love?
I do believe in that facelift, tiny bun.
So Charles Manson had major ambitions to the music industry, right, We obviously don't because we've just been talking about the icons of the music industry. So we'll never make it a music but fuck it. Yeah, it seemed like this new connection to the Beach Voice was his big ticket. But after getting in with Dennis, things didn't go that smoothly. You know. The Beach Boys were kind of a family band for the three Wilson brothers, and it seemed like
Dennis was the only one who really liked Charles. The others thought he was pretty fucking creepy and try to keep him at a distance. Smart And actually, when we were getting ready for this episode, we discovered an old recording that the Wilson brothers must have written about Charles Ben. Can you play this whole tape? Yeah, let me put it or you have a tape player.
Yeah, it's an old cassette press play here.
A little creepy, A little creepy, dude. You know you got a shot. You're a little bit like a mouse pro This guy is weird. To get him out of your house.
He may seem chill because he smokes.
A ton of good bud.
He's got a bunch of weapons and flop. He's a little creepy little craby. Oh god, oh my god. Yes, it's my autobiography. Dude, that Ben created that song just for this episode.
Let's whose voice is that?
A man that's been to mine?
All?
That's the Beach Boys. I don't know you guys are talking to Oh my god, man, that was fucking gold. I want to keep that forever, fucking gold. I'm still not over the fact that there was a lyric that said in a murderous plot, yeah, in a Beach Boys background, I will tear that forever good. So one day in the recording studio, right, Manson pulled a knife on a producer who suggested changing some of his lyrics. So that was kind of the final straw for the rest of
the Wilson brothers. He finally convinced Dennis to kick Charles, Lynnette and the rest of the Manson family out of his house. Yeah. So that September, the Beach Boys did record a revised version of a song by Charles.
Can you believe oh so he wrote the song or what so?
Yeah, so they recorded a revised version of one of his songs. So apparently Dennis had changed the song and even gave it a new name. Manson had called the song ceased to Exist, and Dennis Wilson called it never learned not to love? That is what I fucking call Yeah. Also none of these also like.
So different, like he exist, I want to kill on the other ones like Lass.
But then after the whole night thing, do you even dare to steal someone's work like that?
I bet he was real pissed. Fuck no, I get me out of here, and I'm calling the cops. I don't even like the cops. I'm gonna call the cops. They could have saved you know what I mean. Like murders just just don't go from like smoking weed to like murder. It's like there are there were signs along the way.
Like what happened? Yeah? Yah, So two smooth things over with Charles. Apparently, Dennis gave him some cash and a motorcycle. After about a year of living with Manson, Lynette moved with the whole family to a desert ranch outside of la and by then the Manson family had grown to
five men and thirteen women. Now. The owner of the ranch, George Spawn, had been a dairy farman in his younger days, but by this point he was mostly blind and had trouble doing the work of maintaining the buildings in the land overlords. How did they meet this, George? Do we know? There was a mechanic who lived on the ranch, and Manson had gone there to see if he could fix the Colt bus, But as soon as he arrived, he realized what he really wanted was to move in to
George Spawn Spawn rancho. Of course, they had a fucking busser right in the sixties, could even be called if you didn't have a bus to drive around.
He needed that bus.
He needed the bus needed to be barefoot, and you needed like lots of dirty things.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So Famously, the ranch had previously been a movie set. It was fifty five acres dotted with buildings that had been used to film episodes of The Lone Ranger and Bonanza and a bunch of Bee Liss westerns. Right, but by the nineteen fifties, George Spawn mostly made his money renting out horses. His deal with the Manson family was that they would move into the property and help him out with the horses. And actually this wasn't that odd.
For him, because the ranch had already been home to a bunch of out of work stuntmen and ranch hands who lived there for free in exchange for taking care of the animals. Does this seem like an extremely weird or bad idea to you or is this like Hollywood normal? What do you think?
No, this is a bad idea.
But do you remember, I mean, it's hard to get the image out of my head because in that Quentin Tarantina movie Once upon a Time in Hollywood.
Did you see that movie?
Yeah? Yeah, yeah, I saw it.
They have a George Spawn character which is Bruce Dern and he's like in that backhouse or whatever. So yeah, it seems like real fucked up. But people were hitchhiking back then, like it was just a different time.
Yeah, yeah, it was a little more running got him. Yeah, yeah, you know what I mean.
I think that maybe people weren't as like, I don't know, thinking people were horrible.
I guess, I don't know. But which changed with.
The Manson family, I think a lot.
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, because you're like peace and love. Hippies are peace and love.
Yeah, and peace and love was still the reputation when the family moved to the ranch. Now, Charles Manson was ahead of the family, but it's pretty clear that Lynnette was the one behind the scenes keeping the family organized.
Yeah.
She did whatever paperwork the family needed, and you know, helped them paperwork. Yeah, paperwork. Guess So, how many sexual favors are we handing out today? Okay? And how much marijuana help? That fucking that excel chard must have looked fucking weird.
Yeah, I'd blowdrop for a dime back.
Oh my god, so weird for sure. Speaking of which, she helped them actually get to the doctor when the SDI spread through the group, which was obviously pretty frequent. Yeah, they were right smack in the middle of the sexual revolution thanks to the invention of the pill. But groups like Manson could obviously weren't protecting themselves. So for George, she cleaned up the house, got it painted, kicked out the cowboys, and started helping with meals and other daily
routines as he got to know each other. Oh god, this is so fucked up. George gave nicknames to the women in the Manson family, right. He called Lynnettes Squeaky for the way that she would react when he pinched her like what a gross old man way to give somebody a nickname.
Okay, well, now here we go.
Even though he was almost blind, you know, I think he probably wanted to have young women around him, and clearly he was pinching their asses and shit.
So he was a dog.
So the most relacious stories say that the Manson family women offered George sexual favors to stay on the ranch, and they called Squeaky his de facto wife.
Listen, they committed murder, for sure.
There were some you know, hey, somebody's got a pay rent.
You pay another way, ask cash or guess no one read I see.
So Squeaky has said that she didn't have a sexual relationship with Spawn, but Manson was preaching a kind of free love approach to sex. So honestly, at this point, it's hard to fucking know whether she did or she didn't. And you know, let's not get romantic about what Charles
Manson was teaching, for example, his helter skelter message. If you know much about this story, which I know you do, you probably know that by this point he was teaching that there was going to be a race war coming that would pit white and black Americans against each other. Manson said that the white Americans would lose, but then he and his family would be able to hiden the desert, and once the rest of the whites were slaughtered, he
would emerge and rule over the non white population. Oh, for fuck's sake, this is both super racist and extremely narcissistic.
Dude, nobody talks about the races.
He couldn't even get a record off the ground, asshole. But how does his rank in the most illusionable cult stories you've heard? It's pretty up there.
Well, I mean that I think you have to be delusion. That's like requirement number one is to be.
Delusional sense of grandeur.
He was probably had some fucking hitler fantasies and shit. But it's funny because nobody ever brings up the racial aspect of the Charles Manson thing.
No, and also at the time they used it so much as like I guess square Americans used it as proof of look, fucking hippies are fucking and their murderers motherfuckers say really, yeah, yeah, kicked off a dark period for trust of free spirited people.
I guess, right, right, right right.
Manson's fantasies of world power were obviously fucking bananas, but when things would get in his way, he would absolutely lose his shit. Like when a couple of drug deals to the family went bad, Charles started using the members of the family as an attack squad, and that's when they started killing people. Now, at first it was a couple of isolated murders that the cops couldn't solve. But in the spring of nineteen sixty nine, a music producer refused to sign Manson to record contract.
Was this the music producer that then rented the house to Roman Pelanski.
And Share you go, There you Go? So what comes next? Were the infamous murders on back to back nights, right, So, first were the killings of Sharon Tates house. Right, she had moved into the house where the record producer used to live exactly, they killed her along with another four people in her house. And then the next night, Manson said he was going to show his killers how to do it right, they randomly picked the house in a familiar neighborhood and killed the couple living there.
An older couple.
But you know what I think too, this was crazy And I don't know if this is like action really true or it was just in the movie I read somewhere, but I thought that Charles Manson actually went to that house where Sharon Tate was staying and was like, I want to talk to Roger of whatever the name of the of the music producer was, and like Jay Sebring, who was like was Sharentate's friend that was staying with her,
was like, oh, no, he doesn't live here anymore. So they knew that they didn't live there anymore, and they still killed the people in that house.
Right. I do know that he knew that the producer lived there. I don't know if he had that interaction with Jay, but they definitely.
I don't know if he had the conversation, but I know that they found him in the back house one day, like he was lurking, he was creeping, and they were like the fuck.
Out of here.
So the story has been told a lot of times, right, So we won't go into detail about the Sharon Tate murders. But for Squeaky, the important part was what happened when they were finally linked to the Manson family. They took a little time, but the Manson family was already in
trouble with the law. Yeah, so the cous that arrived at the ranch a week after the murders, but they were looking for stolen vehicles, so they smashed up the ranch and arrested the entire Manson family for grand theft auto, but they had to drop the charges for a few months. It seemed like the family had actually gone away with all their crimes. And we can't even be completely sure that Squeaky knew about the murders. But could you fucking
believe that she didn't know anything at this point? Like, of course she did. She was like number two. So two months later, the cops came back and arrested everyone again, and this time the cops were actually able to make the car robbery charge a stick to a few of the family members. But while they were locked up, one of the women, named Susan Atkins started bragging to the other prisoners that she and the family had committed the
mysterious murders. Okay, so murderers are always bragging, right, Like.
If this was why we Don't get me.
Wrong, I'm happy that they got caught, but why are they always going to other people in jail?
Be Like, you know, she named her ass squeaky. She she's a loose cannon.
I mean she's a squeaky wheeler that you need to do.
Yeah right, Loose lips sink ships, and that's what happened there.
So it was so by December Susan di Tattletale had to deal with the police. Plus her lawyer had in fact actually gotten her a book contract. Her testimony before the grand jury about the murders splashed into the newspaper. It even became the cover of Life magazine. Now, the five members of the Manson family who committed the murders were convicted and sentenced to death. The rest of the cult didn't really have a plan, so they scattered across California.
Now squeak he moved into a motel with another member and they tried to figure out how to support Manson through his trials. Yep, she even answered the letters that were sent to him, saying that he was innocent and that he was being crucified by the authorities who didn't want him to remake the world. Personally, I'm not team let Charles Manson rule the world. Like what, I don't know how you feel about this.
It's a bad idea, It's fucking terrible. No thanks.
And then there were people that were like fans of his, like, you know, some bitch married him in jail.
Here's some sick people out there. Also that he tried to spin it as in like there's this ideological race war, where all it really was was he was sending his followers to like revenge kill somebody that thought they didn't give him a fucking contract.
Listen, I'm not not to boil it down to something like so reductive, but like I think part of the reason, like Hitler had a fucking like whatever he fucked up shit he had in his mind because he was like a failed artist, you know what I mean, And then he got really angry and then just and it became this whole other thing.
Some small, fragile men tend to once give him power, they tend to fucking take it out of the world.
They get rejected and then they're just like, well, now I'm just going to be a mass murderer. And I think that that's uh, you know, with Charles Manson, it was like he was, you know, rejected, the.
Feeling of inadequacy just like yeah, he was like he had a power in his little bubble and he abused it. And I hope your rots in fucking hell for the rest of his eternity.
Oh, he's in there. He's in half for sure.
So in the fall of nineteen seventy a wildfire burned through the Spawn ranch and anyone who still had dreams of reviving the Manson family would have to find somewhere else to do it. Oh, are we in a spy novel?
Is this? Yes? This is the James Bond seventies part of it sounds like it.
Charles Manson was sent to death row at Saint Quentin Prison. Now outside Squeaky started working on a book telling the story of the Manson family. Lynnette felt that the whole trial had been stage managed by the authorities to give the wrong impression about Manson, and she still wanted to recruit new members to their way of life.
Now.
Meanwhile, in prison, Charles Manson was kind of undermining her at every turn because he was currently joining the Aryan Brotherhood, which is a white supremacist prison gang, which was a shock to absolutely fucking no one.
No one.
Yeah, kind of hard to get the wrong impression about that, right, Like they say, you're advicetander in the nineteen seventies. Is there anything in the world Lynette could do that would change her mind.
Here's the thing.
I mean, it happens now too. It's like people tell you who they are. They show you who they are over and over and over. You could literally have a picture, you know, with like a Grand Wizard of the KKKA and.
People were like, well that was just I don't know, like is he reads not? We don't know if he's racing.
You know.
It's like people are just making up stories.
It's incredible what people are able to fucking deny, Like the denial that people can go into.
Oh yeah, rationalize the way.
You know.
It's funny because it's like she drank the kool aid, but she also made the kool aid too, so.
She was in too deep. She was never getting out.
Yeah. The deal that Manson struck with the Aran Brotherhood was a trade. They would protect him inside the prison and then on the outside, the Manson family would look after the gang members. Okay, So members of the Manson family even helped an Arian Brotherhood member escape from prison in August nineteen seventy one, and Squeaky's roommate was the fucking ghetaway driver. What okay? So this shit is dark, right?
So one night when Squeaky was away, Arian Brotherhood members murdered one of our friends inside the house where they lived. The police later found the body buried in the basement. So you know what, this proves more than anything that none of these girls had a Latina mother.
Mita.
If I went to my mom and I'd be like, yo, yeah, so I'm going to join a college. Is that okay? Yeah? And you and what army?
Okay a, Mita, You're never living the house again?
Okay? Cool? I hope you. I hope you enjoy being here until you're thirty five. So for both the prison escape and the murder, Lynette was arrested as a member of the conspiracy and held for as long as possible both times of the police they had to release her right because they never had direct evidence that she was involved in the plants. All they did have was her constant stream of letters to Charles Manson in prison as he waited execution. What's the craziest thing you've ever done
for love? Amy Canado?
I would probably say I gave up my very nice apartment that I loved to move in with my husband. That's it, and that's all you get in love. Is not supposed to be a suffering situation.
No, no, no, okay. This is at the way street with the waste point to me. Okay, okay. Before manson sentence was carried out, though California's death penalty was ruled on institutional Manson and the other murderers were not going to be executed for their crimes. Charles was moved out of Saint Quentin to another prison further Inland, so Lynette decided to follow. She moved into a small apartment in Sacramento.
Now she wasn't allowed to actually see Charles, but she still went to the prison regularly just to ask how he was doing. God. And then came September nineteen seventy five. That's when Lynette decided to kill the President of the United States.
The President, the president man? What was her gripe with the President? What's happening?
So Charles Manson hated authority, and his whole persona at this point was about the United States being overthrown. But he had taken a particular dislike to Richard Nixon after Nixon had made fun of him during the murder. Charles, because he's a fucking small man with a very fragile ere. You see what I'm talking about. He's like, this is the particular gribe he embarrassed him, and that's yeah.
He embarrassed it. It's not never mind like the Vietnam shit. It was like, no, you made fun of me, there for you bust it.
Yeah. So the president was Gerald Ford now, but that didn't make a whole lot of difference, right. The Manson family hated whoever. The president was very discerning people. These people. So when President Ford was visiting Sacramento in nineteen seventy five, Squeaky had her chance. He was giving a speech downtown, right in her new stomping grounds. Between appointments, Ford decided to walk through the park and say hello to the
good people with Sacramento. A path was cleared for him, and as he went along, shaking hands until he reached a small woman in a red coat, Lynnette Squeaky. From from under that red coat, Squeaky pulled out cold for five ooh good. She raised the gun and pulled the trigger, but it didn't go off.
Fuck that was lucky, but lucky for Forde.
Yeah.
Yeah, so the gun clicked, but no shot was fired, despite being loaded with four bullets. The gun simply didn't go off. The Secret Service officers around Squeaky dove forward, they crashed into her, and they threw her to the ground. Witnesses remember that she yelled it didn't go off as she went down. It's like, thank you for the info. We were there, we know. So when the police searched Lynette's apartment after the arrest, they found letters from the
International People's Court of Retribution. The fuck is that they are full of threats against other government officials and the leaders of big companies. Apparently President Ford had just been the first target on the list. Now, the International People's Court was completely made up by Squeaky and her roommate.
I was going to say, I was like, never heard of it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love the word shopping of the title. Be like, okay, so the vengeful people know it's too hard, much.
Too harsh. Let's make it sound more official international.
Yep, that's good, that's right, yeah, because we're everywhere. So this time the case was very simple. At the Federal Chriald Squeaky didn't even try to fight the charges. She just pled guilty to her assassination attempt. It made her the first woman in the US to be convicted for the crime. Wow, so Lynette was giving a life sentence and things didn't go exactly smoothly in prison. Right In March nineteen seventy nine, Sweeky attacked a fellow inmate with
the claw end of a hammer. She said that the other woman was, get this, a white, middle class, rich bitch who doesn't deserve to live. I'm like, is this the battle of the Karens or what I mean?
Battle of the Karens?
Listen, she's she's just a white middle class rich bitch that doesn't even give me sense.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's like, we can't middle class.
Yes, she's a white poor, middle class rich yeah, and communist bitch and it's like I don't. Yeah, there's a lot going on in the international people score.
Yeah.
Oh so who the fuck is giving inmates hammers?
That's another good question, Artiro? What is prison? Was it like a fucking kindergarten?
Like, geez, it was fantastic for the inmates. Yeah, so she was still trying to helter skelter, apparently, even long after that. In December nineteen eighty seven, she wrote to a friend that she only felt alive when she was thinking about Charles Manson and so a few years later, when Squeaky got a phone call telling her that Charles Manson was dying of testicular cancer, she was desperate to see him again. Ninety minutes after the call, she disappeared
from her prison in West Virginia. Okay, so, now we've gone through her story up to that point, do you feel any differently about the fact that she was able to just fucking disappear from custody.
No, man, it shouldn't have happened. Shouldn't have happened. You know who cares why she did it?
Yeah? Fuck the reasons. Sucker motive. Sucker motive. That's right. She's clawing people, she's hammering people. Man. So Squeaky apparently escaped without leaving any traces as to how she got out. She didn't even leave a trio out of the prison, right, she had just up and vanished.
She had help, for sure. I'm just going for it. I'm gonna say she had help.
Okay, Yeah, throw it out there. So, prison officials didn't know how she had done it, and they had no idea what would happen next. If you remember that fifteen people had escaped from the prison just in two years. Is it really about the talent of the escapee or is it more about the person? They're like, we don't know how the fucks she did it.
We have no idea how sha did it.
They were just iming the eight foot fence and heading into the woods, that's all they were doing. So when Lynette escaped, the president wasn't the only one who went on alert. One of the prosecutors who had handled their case started carrying a gun during her trial and he
was worried that she would come after him. Another prosecutor under Charles Manson case worried that Lynette was on her way to break Manson out of jail, So we started spinning up some fucking crazy story to the press, telling them that Lynette might even take some hostages somewhere and demand Manson's release. Absolutely, no one was safe, Like, what are you doing, man.
Just spreading public panic.
Yeah, she's gonna drop from the air, you see, she's got flying people, you see.
Yeah, she's gonna take your hostage.
They all like regrets to nineteen fifteen. Yeah, despite the fear jumped up in the headlines, Lynette wasn't raiding homes across the Midwest to take prisoners. In fact, he didn't even get very far. That afternoon, two prison officers driving on a nearby road saw a woman walking on the shoulder of it. She was wearing a green army jacket and khaki pants and she was sold threw from the ring. That's right. They just didn't go with the red hair. They pulled the car over, opened the door, and Squeaky
just climbed inside. After all that, she just fucking gave up. I mean, if you wear that diehard, what would you think it would break.
In frough the wine like that?
She's like, you know what, it's cold, I'm wet. Fuck it, really, I want to go home. So in the battle of nature versus Squeaky, nature came out on top. When she went to trial for the escape attempt, she put in a plea of no contest, and it added fifteen years their sentence. She was sent back into custody and eventually transferred to her prison and Lexington, Kentucky, where they actually had uniforms. What do you know? What do you know?
So Lynett's fight was over. She didn't escape prison again, but even in nineteen n eighty four, the Deputy da who prosecuted Manson, said that he believed Squeaky was still keeping the flame alive from Manson. His book about the murders, Helter Skelter, became one of the best selling true crime accounts in history. In two thousand and nine, Lynette was paroled.
She was sixty years old. She self published a memoir on the Manson family in twenty eighteen, and she writes about her time with Manson in such happy, glowing terms that it basically seems like he still believes that the things that they were doing were good. You know.
Oh yeah, no, she's gone her.
The final sentence assists that she never meant to kill the president. It says there was no bullet in the chamber of that gun. Yeah, yeah, they were there, Okay, just didn't go off. Yeah it didn't go off. Okay, you got lucky. He got lucky. Charles Manson finally died in custody in twenty seventeen. Any possibility of him ruling the world was finally over. And one final note on the elders in prison today they require the inmates to
wear khaki uniforms. Did she's just set a trend? She's a trendsetter, at least that she'd save the local army jacket fans some hassle.
Right, Wow, that bitch just climbed the fence. That's all she did, and that's it.
That's our story. What do you think any major takeaways from squeaky story?
Wow?
You know what, I think Squeaky could have had a much better situation, in a much better life if she had just learned not to dye her hair red.
That was her biggest That was like her biggest way.
We find out in her memoir she was actually blonde the whole time.
She's a blonde.
Also, after everybody else goes to prison, like she had a chance to start a new life, so.
Like she couldn't plate it worse.
She's done if she didn't actually commit the murders, Like that was her chance to turn her fucking life around and be like, you.
Know what, I've seen the light.
This is a new star now.
And and that guy from that drummer from the Beast Voice who was actually kind of cute. I'm gonna go see what the fuck he's.
Up to, you know, Yeah, I'm gonna make amends. I'm going to join a swell set program. She really could have had a good life, but she listened. Squeaky's got a squeak.
Listen. Thank you so much for doing this. Can I ask you for our listeners where they can check you out?
Yeah, I mean listen. Thanks for having me.
First of all, you can find me on Instagram at Amy Carrero.
A I M E E C A R R E R O and the twitters. But mostly I just talk about politics and dungeons and dragons. I don't know.
This is fun, of course. Thank you so much, Amy. We'll see you next time. Bye Yah. Greatest Escapes is a production of iHeartRadio and Film Nation Entertainment in association with Gilded Audio. Our executive producers from me or Turo castro A, Lissa Martino and Milan Papelka from Film Nation Entertainment, Andrew Chug and Witning Donaldson from Gilded Audio, and Dylan Fagan from iHeartRadio. The show is produced and edited by Carl Nellis and Ben Chubb, who are also, respectively, our
research overlord and music overlord. Our associate producer is Tory Smith, who's our other overlord. Nick Dooley is our technical director. Additional editing by Whitney Donaldson Special thanks to Alison Cohen, Dan Welsh, Ben Riizek, Sarah Joyner, Nicky Stein, Olivia Kenny and Kelsey Albright. Hey, thank you so much for listening, and if you're enjoying the show, please drop a rating or review. My mom will call you each personally and thank you, and we'll see you all next week