The Nation - News from Jan. 15, 1988

Would-be presidential assassin Lynette (Squeaky) Fromme pleaded no contest to an escape charge at her arraignment in Bluefield, W.Va., and asked the magistrate to let her represent herself at her trial. Fromme said she wants the money that would have gone to a lawyer to be used to plant trees in West Virginia. Fromme, 39, was charged after she escaped Dec. 23 from the Federal Correctional Institution at Alderson, where she was serving a life term for trying to shoot President Gerald R. Ford in 1975. She was recaptured about two miles from the prison on Christmas Day. Federal Magistrate Charles Cunningham told Fromme that he was entering a not guilty plea on her behalf because he could not legally accept a no contest plea.