VIOLENCE: Fromme: 'There Is a Gun Pointed'

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With Squeaky behind bars on $1 million bail, Sandra Good took over the leadership of the family with a vengeance. She began issuing bloodcurdling threats against people who she apparently felt were guilty of polluting the environment. Phoned by Rob Ruby, a reporter for a New Orleans radio station, she said that half a dozen leading businessmen in the South were targets for assassination, although some seemed to have no connection with environmental matters. Their wives, she said, would also be "terribly, terribly murdered." Later, Good gave the Associated Press a death list of 75 businessmen around the nation. The list also included such entries as "Pacific Gas & Electric—nuclear plants," "Fish and Wildlife Service. Kills animals" and "all automobile companies." Good told the A.P. that the assassinations would be carried out by what she called "the International People's Court of Retribution," which she defined as "several thousand people throughout the world who love the earth, the children and their lives."

Some individuals on the Manson family's "hit" list reacted with bewilderment and a sense of helplessness. Asked a California oil-company executive who was named: "What kind of precautions can I take? I don't plan to hide in the cellar."

No Crime. Frustrated Government law officials say that it would be next to impossible to charge Good with a crime for what she was saying last week. Under federal conspiracy laws, someone must perform an overt illegal act before he can be arrested, and under federal extortion laws, a person has to threaten to carry out a crime himself before he can be charged. Good's communiques have said that the attacks would be made by a second party, the International People's Court of Retribution.

California prosecutors are limited by similar requirements. Says Jack Winkler, an assistant attorney general who heads the state's criminal-law division: "We are most interested and concerned by what she has had to say. But mere words do not constitute a crime."

After being questioned by the FBI for three hours late last week, Good was subdued when she talked to TIME. Even so, she sat down at her typewriter and wrote out a statement in defense of the environment that declared, in part: "Any woman who allows her body to control or to sell products harmful to the people and the environment will be viciously murdered. Anyone who advertises or manufactures food or drugs injurious to people's health will be killed. The air, the water, the trees and the wildlife are part of the Manson family."

As Sandra Good launched her threats against the world, a woman claiming to be her mother told the San Diego Union that her daughter had once said that she had "finally reached the point where I can kill my parents." Sandra's mother requested anonymity; she is still afraid of her daughter. She recalled how Sandra had twice nearly died of respiratory ailments when she was a child. "Once I even left the hospital after they had told me she had died," she remembered. Then she added: "Why did she have to pull through?"