SACRAMENTO, Oct. 20 – Former Manson family follower Catherine Louise Como, 39, was sentenced by a Sacramento Superior Court judge to three years in prison Monday after she pleaded guilty to charges of receiving stolen property.

The sentence by Judge Ronald Tochterman is to run concurrently with a five-year sentence Como began serving in August at a San Diego prison after she was convicted on federal charges of mail fraud.

If Como had been found guilty of receiving stolen property by a jury, her sentence could have been added on to her federal conviction. The Sacramento district attorney’s office also agreed in a plea bargain not to consider a 1973 robbery conviction which could have added another year to Como’s sentence.

Como was arrested in September 1978 for driving a stolen 1966 Jaguar. Como’s husband, Kenneth, was then serving a 10-year sentence at Folsom Prison for a Southern California robbery intended to get weapons to free convicted killer Charles Manson.

Released from the prison last week, Kenneth Como was ambushed and shot in the arm in La Puente two days later.

According to court documents, Catherine Como is believed to have been the “key outside” person involved in smuggling an automatic pistol into Folsom Prison in March 1977. The pistol was discovered in the possession of one of Kenneth Como’s prisoner friends.

During her involvement with the cult headed by Manson, Catherine Como was known as Catherine “Gypsy” Share.

She was a witness for the defense in the trial of Manson and other family members on charges that they were responsible for the Tate-LaBianca murders in Los Angeles in the late 1960s.