ALDERSON, W.Va., Dec. 24 — Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, serving a life sentence for the attempted assassination of President Gerald Ford, apparently escaped from prison Wednesday night, officials said.

Fromme, 39, was discovered missing from the Alderson Federal Prison for Women about 9:30 p.m., a half-hour after she was seen during the nightly prison check, said Associate Warden Maureen Atwood.

“At first we thought she might be hiding here someplace, but we now are treating it as though she has escaped,” Atwood said. “It’s possible that she might still be here.”

Fromme, a follower of mass murderer Charles Manson, was convicted for the incident Sept. 5, 1975, in Sacramento, the first of two attempts on the president’s life in a month.

Ford was unharmed when a Secret Service agent grabbed a semi-automatic .45-caliber pistol aimed at him by Fromme on the grounds of the state Capitol.

In the second incident 17 days later in San Francisco, Ford again escaped injury when Sara Jane Moore, a 45-year-old political activist, fired a revolver at him.

Atwood said local, state and federal authorities, including the Secret Service, have been notified of Fromme’s disappearance.

Atwood said none of the federal prison’s other 985 female inmates is missing. The correctional center houses maximum, medium and minimum-security inmates.

Manson is serving a life sentence in San Quentin Prison for the 1969 murders of actress Sharon Tate and eight other people in two consecutive nights.

Fromme served 2 1/2 years at the West Virginia prison after her conviction. She was then moved to the prison at Pleasanton, Calif., in June 1978 after prison officials said she had become a “model inmate.”

But she was sent back to West Virginia in 1979 after striking another inmate with a hammer while the two tended a garden on the prison grounds.

She was born Lynette Alice Fromme. But everyone called her “Squeaky.” The name was tagged on by George Spahn, on whose Southern California ranch the Manson “family” lived before coming to notoriety. It stuck.

Fromme, along with friend Sandra Good, arrived at the ranch to find a seemingly idyllic band of young people celebrating a life — as they once described it — “of skipping and dancing and singing and playing,” a place where “age fell off of us like an old, dusty mask.”

After Manson’s convictions for the Southern California slayings, Fromme and Good moved to Sacramento, where they took an attic apartment on P Street and lived largely unnoticed.

Her dramatic date with President Ford began in her apartment that September 1975 morning when — depending upon whom you ask — she picked up either a loaded or empty .45-caliber pistol and headed for Capitol Park.

Good claimed her roommate ejected all the cartridges from the weapon’s clip before heading downtown.

Fromme’s version was that she never intended to kill Ford, but merely to gain the attention of the nation’s press.

Donald Heller, assistant U.S. attorney at the time, said, “I’m convinced, after looking at everything in this case, that her intention was to kill the president.”

“I think she really intended to bring notoriety to Manson, to get Manson back in the headlines,” he theorized after Fromme’s Nov. 27, 1975, conviction before U.S. District Judge Thomas J. MacBride.

Whatever her motivation, Fromme needed only an instant to pull the automatic pistol from the holster — strapped to her calf beneath a flowing, armless red robe — and point it at Ford.

Ford later said a Secret Service agent acted instantaneously, grabbing the hand and the gun, and the president immediately was hustled out of the area.

Perhaps no one has ever really understood what Fromme wanted that day in Capitol Park. Despite repeated requests for interviews, Fromme refused to meet with reporters.

However, in an Aug. 16, 1976, letter to The Bee’s Wayne Wilson, Fromme explained in rambling and vaguely ominous style: “Words won’t say it. Sandy and I came to get the family a courtroom to show real (sic) and save the U.S.

“Others can laugh about that until they see the Tate house.

“We didn’t get a courtroom. The life on earth is still being killed for money. And nobody wants to hear solutions as committees and councils and congresses play around real life issues.”

Sacramento attorney John E. Virga, who defended Fromme through much of her trial, expressed surprise over her escape.

He said he has had no contact with Fromme since her conviction 12 years ago.

Heller, who prosecuted Fromme, also expressed surprise.

“They let her walk away?” he asked.

Heller, now in private practice in Sacramento, said he does not believe Fromme would return to California.

“I think there are too many people in California who would recognize her,” he said. “If she wants to remain free as a fugitive, she’d be better off in a place where she wouldn’t be recognized.

“But then, she first came to Sacramento so she could be near Charlie Manson when he was in Folsom Prison. And now he’s nearby, so who knows?”

Heller said he believes Fromme is still dangerous.

“Out of an abundance of precaution I will protect myself. I will be more careful. I’m going to check with the Secret Service tomorrow and see what’s going on. I don’t think I was one of her favorite persons, you know.”

Heller said he carried a gun with him during the trials of Fromme and Good. He hasn’t carried one since, but that may change if Fromme is on the loose, he said.

“I don’t think I’ll carry one again, but they will be readily available,” he said. “There’s an ‘X’ on her forehead that would make for a nice target.”

(The day after Manson carved a “X” in his forehead, saying he had been “X-ed” out of his trial, Fromme and Good did the same.)

By ART CAMPOS and JOHN ROBIN