Women Serving Long Sentences

The thought of women doing life without parole seems abhorrent to some people in this country. We have had to put up with apologists for the Myra Hindley, and they will keep popping up for Rose West & Joanna Dennehy, and no doubt for Claire Nichols, who is doing a minimum of 32 years for the sadistic prolonged torture and murder of her vulnerable and gentle husband, assisted by her brother and another man.  I go with the old adage of "Cannot do the sentence, do not commit the crime!"  But you do not get waves of sympathy for convicted women in the United States.  There are many who are doing life without parole. Indeed, you get that in California for I believe, three consecutive felony convictions -the "three strikes" policy.

    One woman whom has been in for around forty years, due to refusing parole, is Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme.  She was jailed for the altercation right by President Ford in the mid 70`s.  Just another publicity shot for egomaniac Manson.  Why has she refused?  Is it because she is on her own out there and all the young and impressionable middle class kids with nothing better to do with their time, are no longer around?  Could it be that many have eventually got it through their thick skulls that they were all manipulated by a former PIMP! - exploiter of women! - who wanted to do something and found the mugs to do it for him?  I have no doubt he would not have succeeded with young people from a run down ghetto.  I believe she stays inside because she can`t do much outside on her own for her master.  Pathetic.  The true death of the sixties along with Altamont.

    Another long term prisoner was Ruth Brown, a black woman, originally sentenced to the chair in Sing Sing Prison in New York.  What got her into Death Row was the murder of a man called Eli Huston in a Speakeasy in New York`s Harlem district in May 1931.  But Ruth, 24, had her sentence commuted by State Governor Franklin. D. Roosevelt, to life without parole.  Ruth was paroled nineteen years later in 1950 by Governor Tom Dewey, but went back to prison of her own volition, declining to apply for parole ever again.  She died aged 77, around 1984/85 in the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility.  Ruth had spent nearly fifty years behind bars, longer than any other female in the prison system of New York State.