Vermont had odd ties to a Manson devotee
|
|
Sandra Good |
Toolbox
By DANIEL BARLOW Vermont Press Bureau - Published: August 8, 2009
MONTPELIER – The small Vermont town of St. George prides itself on welcoming new residents.
Sandra Good was a new resident not received with open arms, however.
Good is better known as a member of the "Manson Family," a cult of hippies who in the late 1960s were followers of convicted killer Charles Manson. She is also the mother of one of Manson's children.
Although she had no role in the infamous Sharon Tate murders in August 1969, she later served time in federal prison for threatening the CEOs of corporations whom she believed were polluting the environment.
It was after her release from federal prison in 1985 that Good moved to Vermont, relocating thousands of miles away from Manson, who was then, and still is, in federal prison in California, and settled in the small town of St. George.
"You worry that a whole trail of cult people are going to walk into this town now," Mary Paquette, the wife of former Burlington Mayor Gordon Paquette, told the Knight-Ridder Newspapers in December 1985. "California doesn't want these people and neither do we. Vermont doesn't need any 'X' people."
During Manson's trial in 1970, Good was a vocal supporter of the man she called "father," appearing at press conferences with her head shaved and an "X" carved on her forehead in a statement of solidarity with the cult leader.
(In a strange twist of fate, the man who prosecuted Manson, Vincent Bugliosi, traveled to Vermont last year to campaign for Charlotte Dennett, a Progressive running for Attorney General on a platform of prosecuting President George W. Bush for murder).
Good was in prison for fraudulent use of a credit card the night of the ritualistic murders of actress Sharon Tate in August 1969. But her connections with the cult were strong, including being the roommate of Lynette Alice "Squeaky" Fromme, a Manson follower who was convicted of trying to kill President Gerald Ford in 1975.
"Your children will rise up and kill you," Good told a crowd of journalists outside of the court room when Fromme was convicted.
When police raided Good's California apartment in the mid-1970s, they found scores of threatening letters written to the CEOs of major polluting corporations – and those letters are what sent Good to prison for 10 years and lead to her five-year stint as a Vermonter.
According to news reports at the time, Good wanted to relocate to California to be near the prison where Manson was held, but parole officials said no. Instead, the state of Vermont was chosen and Good lived in a supervised home in Burlington before renting an apartment in St. George, a community of just more than 600 people.
Vermonters, when they found out about their new resident, were dismayed.
The chairman of the St. George Selectboard said he and other residents were shocked at the news, according to a March 1986 article in the Victoria Advocate. Another member of the Board had a more laid-back approach, calling her residency a "novelty."
But the issue soon got the attention of Vermont Gov. Madeline Kunin. She was out-of-state at the National Governors Association's executive committee meeting when the news broke, according to an article in the New York Times, but quickly issued a statement saying her administration was upset that public officials did not let her know.
Good seemed to keep a low-profile in the community and began going by the names, Sandra Collins (Collins is her middle name) or Blue Collins (a nickname given to her by Manson) to conceal her identity.
Her name didn't come up in press reports until four years later when she and other environmentalists sued the International Paper Co., which they accused of polluting Lake Champlain (the company later settled for $5 million, but Good refused the money). She was recognized when a local newspaper ran a picture of her protesting outside a Burlington courthouse.
A brief New York Times profile, which ran after Good was "outed" in the local newspaper, described her Vermont life – outside of her activism to save the lake – as quiet. She lived without a car and without a checking account, spending most of her time tending to her plants and flowers.
"I am amazed by the leap in environmental awareness I see around me," Good told the paper in 1989. "I got locked up for saying these things; 15 years ago, people considered this fanaticism."
A photograph up for auction at Supernaught.com, a true crime auction site, shows Good at her garden in Vermont during the 1980s. Manson, to whom she allegedly sent the photo to, scrawled on the back: "Bee in her gardens/ Places behind faces."
Good left Vermont soon after her parole ended in 1990 – and appears to have never looked back. She moved back to California to be near Manson and for some time ran the official Web site for one of the world's most notorious killer.
But, for the most part, she has disappeared, both from the Green Mountain State and from the Golden State.
Many of the public officials who warned about her time in Vermont have retired or died. Shirley Vaux, who was St. George's town clerk for four decades before retiring several years ago, said she didn't remember anything about the town's connection to the grisly murders.
Even Kunin, reached at her Burlington home Friday morning, had scant details. For the most part, the saga lives on only on Manson fan Web sites, which meticulously track the ongoing stories of those who surrounded the man during the late 1960s and early 1970s.
"I remember that there never was any incident with her," Kunin said. "People were really worried, but nothing ever happened."
Good continued carrying Manson's torch during her time in Vermont. A 1990 television interview with her, archived on You Tube, shows her sitting in her St. George home defending the man who, decades earlier, shocked the nation.
"He would be in the United Nations," Good told the interview after he asked what Manson would be doing if he wasn't in prison. "He would be in a position where he could help people."
daniel.barlow
@timesargus.com
43