Sara Jane Moore
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Sara Jane Moore (born Sara Jane Kahn¹ on February 15, 1930) attempted to assassinate U.S. President Gerald Ford on September 22, 1975 outside the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, just seventeen days after Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme had also tried to kill the president.²

Life

A former nursing school student, Women's Army Corps recruit, and accountant, Moore had married and divorced five times and had four children before she turned to revolutionary politics at the age of 45.³⁴

Moore's friends said she was obsessed with Patty Hearst.⁵ After Hearst was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army, her father Randolph Hearst created the organization People in Need (P.I.N.) to feed the poor, in order to answer S.L.A. claims that the elder Hearst was "committing 'crimes' against 'the people.'"⁵ Moore was a bookkeeper for P.I.N. and an FBI informant³⁶⁵ when she attempted to assassinate Ford.

Moore had been evaluated by the Secret Service earlier in 1975, but they had decided she presented no danger to the President.⁷ She had been picked up by police on an illegal handgun charge the day before the Ford incident but was released. Police kept the .44 pistol and 113 rounds of ammunition.

Reaction approximately one second after the assassination attempt.

Moore was 40 feet away from Ford ⁸ when she fired a single shot at him.² The bullet missed the President because bystander Oliver Sipple grabbed Moore's arm and then pulled her to the ground, using his hand to keep the gun from firing a second time.⁹¹⁰ Sipple said at the time: "I saw [her gun] pointed out there and I grabbed for it. [...] I lunged and grabbed the woman's arm and the gun went off."¹¹ The single shot which Moore did manage to fire from her .38-caliber revolver ricocheted off the entrance to the hotel¹² and slightly injured a bystander.⁶

Moore pleaded guilty¹³ to attempted assassination and was sentenced to life in prison.¹⁴¹⁵ At her sentencing hearing Moore stated: "Am I sorry I tried? Yes and no. Yes, because it accomplished little except to throw away the rest of my life. And, no, I'm not sorry I tried, because at the time it seemed a correct expression of my anger."¹⁶

In 1979, Moore escaped from the Alderson Federal Prison Camp in Alderson, West Virginia, but was recaptured only hours later.¹⁷ After her return, she was transferred to a more secure facility, and she served the remainder of her term at the federal women’s prison in Dublin, California.⁸¹⁸ She was paroled on December 31, 2007.

In an interview in 2004, former President Ford described Moore as "off her mind" and said that he continued making public appearances, even after two attempts on his life within such a short time, because "a president has to be aggressive, has to meet the people."¹⁹

On December 31, 2007, at the age of 77, Moore was released from prison on parole after serving 32 years of her life sentence. Ford died from natural causes on December 26, 2006, one year and five days before her release. Moore has stated that she regrets the assassination attempt, saying she was 'blinded by her radical political views'²⁰²¹. She will be under supervised parole for at least five years. Moore was released under a federal law that makes parole mandatory for inmates who have served at least 30 years of a life sentence and have maintained a satisfactory disciplinary record. When asked about her crime in an interview, Moore stated "I am very glad I did not succeed. I know now that I was wrong to try."¹⁶

In popular culture

Moore is portrayed in Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman's musical Assassins.

Moore's assassination attempt on Ford was also mentioned on the October 22, 2007 episode of the NBC time-traveling show Journeyman.

Quotes

• “I do regret I didn't succeed, and allow the winds of change to start. I wish I had killed him. I did it to create chaos.”²²²³
• “I didn’t want to kill anybody, but there comes a point when the only way you can make a statement is to pick up a gun.”⁴¹
• “The government had declared war on the left. Nixon's appointment of Ford as vice president and his resignation making Ford president seemed to be a continuing assault on America.”²⁴
• “I know now that I was wrong to try. Thank God I didn't succeed. People kept saying he would have to die before I could be released, and I did not want my release from prison to be dependent on somebody, on something happening to somebody else, so I wanted him to live to be 100.”²⁵

External links

• Photograph of both Sipple and Moore taken during the assassination attempt; the black arrow points to Moore.
• Photograph of Ford and his Secret Service agents taken just after Moore fired her shot.
• Photographs of both the Fromme and Moore assassination attempts from the Ford Presidential Library.
• More photographs of both the Fromme and Moore assassination attempts from the Ford Presidential Library.
• Federal BOP Inmate Locator showing Sara Moore's current status

References