Charles Manson follower Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme was released Friday morning from a Texas prison, according to officials at the facility.
The 60-year-old Fromme left the Federal Medical Center Carswell in Fort Worth at about 8 a.m. Friday, according to a statement from Carswell spokeswoman Dr. Maria Douglas.
Fromme was convicted of trying to assassinate former President Gerald Ford. She spent more than three decades in prison.
She had already completed her sentence for the assassination attempt, but was serving additional time for a 1987 escape attempt.
Fromme was 26 in September 1975 when she pointed a pistol at Ford in Sacramento. Ford was not injured.
Secret Service agents intervened when Fromme brandished the weapon, which was later found to have a clip of ammunition but no bullet in the chamber.
In a 1987 interview, Fromme described Ford as looking "like cardboard" as he walked from the California State Capitol to his hotel.
"He had his hands out and was waving... and he looked like cardboard to me," she told television station WCHS in Charleston, S.C. "But at the same time, I had ejected the bullet in my apartment and I used the gun as it was."
Fromme, who received a life term, became the first person sentenced under a special federal law covering assaults on U.S. presidents, a statute enacted after the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Fromme was granted parole in July 2008 and released "via good conduct time" after completing a 15-month sentence for unlawful escape from a federal correctional institution, according to the prison's statement. That sentence was being served consecutively after a life sentence for threats against the president.
She escaped from a female prison in Alderson, W.Va., on Dec. 23, 1987, and was recaptured about two miles away on Christmas Day after a massive search. She was sentenced to an additional 15 months in prison for the escape.
Fromme had said she escaped from prison to be closer to Manson.
It was unclear why Fromme was at Carswell, a facility that specializes in providing medical and mental health services to female offenders. A spokeswoman for the bureau of prisons did not immediately return a phone call Wednesday seeking comment, according to The Associated Press.
"I knew someday she would be released," said John Virga, the Sacramento attorney who handled her trial.
Fromme served time in at least two other facilities before Carswell.
Manson is serving a life term in Corcoran State Prison in California for the 1969 murders of actress Sharon Tate and eight others. Fromme, one of his "family" of followers, was not implicated in those attacks.
