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Sara Jane Moore

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Sara Jane Moore (née Kahn; born February 15, 1930) is an American woman who attempted to assassinate U.S. president Gerald Ford in 1975.[1][2] She was given a life sentence for the attempted assassination and she was released from prison on December 31, 2007, after serving 32 years. Moore and Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme are the only women who have attempted to assassinate an American president; both of their assassination attempts were on Gerald Ford and both of them took place in California within three weeks of one another.

Sara Jane Moore
Moore's mugshot following her arrest
Born
Sara Jane Kahn

(1930-02-15) February 15, 1930 (age 94)
Charleston, West Virginia, U.S.
OccupationAccountant
Criminal statusParoled
Conviction(s)Attempted assassination of the President of the United States (18 U.S.C. § 1751)
Criminal penaltyLife imprisonment

Background

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Moore was born in Charleston, West Virginia, the daughter of Ruth (née Moore) and Olaf Kahn.[3] Her paternal grandparents were German immigrants.[4] Moore had been a nursing school student, Women's Army Corps recruit, and accountant. Divorced five times, she had four children before she turned to revolutionary politics in 1975.[5][6] Moore comes from a Christian background.[4] She later began practicing Judaism.[7]

Moore's friends said that she had a fascination and an obsession with Patricia Hearst.[8] After Hearst was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), Hearst's father, Randolph Hearst, created the organization People In Need (PIN) to feed the poor, as a response to the SLA's claims that the elder Hearst was "committing 'crimes' against 'the people'".[8] Moore, a volunteer bookkeeper for PIN, had been serving as an FBI informant there until the moment she attempted to assassinate Ford.[5][8][9]

Attempted assassination of Gerald Ford

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Main article: Gerald Ford assassination attempt in San Francisco
 
Reaction right after the assassination attempt

Moore had been evaluated by the Secret Service earlier in 1975, but agents decided that she posed no danger to the president.[10] The 45-year-old had been picked up by police on an illegal-handgun charge the day before the Ford incident, but was released. The police confiscated her .44-caliber Charter Arms Bulldog revolver and 113 rounds of ammunition. [11]

Moore's assassination attempt took place in San Francisco on September 22, 1975, just 17 days after Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme's attempted assassination of Ford. She was standing in the crowd across the street from the St. Francis Hotel, and she was about 40 feet (12 m) away from Ford[12] when she fired a single shot at him with a .38 caliber revolver.[2] She was using a gun which she bought in haste that same morning and as a result, she did not know that the sights were 15 cm (6 inches) off the point-of-impact at that distance, causing her to narrowly miss.[13]

After realizing that she had missed, Moore raised her arm again, and Oliver Sipple, a former Marine, dove toward her and grabbed her arm, possibly saving Ford's life.[14][15] 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."[16] The bullet from the second shot ricocheted and hit John Ludwig, a 42-year-old taxi driver. Ludwig survived.[17] U.S. District Judge Samuel Conti, who sentenced Moore, voiced his opinion that Moore would have killed Ford had she had her own gun, and it was only "because her gun was faulty" that the president's life was spared.[13]

During an interview which she conducted in 2009, Moore stated that her motive was to spark a violent revolution in order to bring change to America.[18]

Trial and imprisonment

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Moore pleaded guilty[19] to attempted assassination and was sentenced to life in prison.[20][21] 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."[22] She served her term at the federal women's prison in Dublin, California, where she worked in the UNICOR prison labor program for $1.25 per hour as the Lead Inmate Operating Accountant.[12][23] Moore had the Federal Bureau of Prisons register number 04851-180.[24]

In 1979, Moore escaped, but she was captured several hours later.[25]

During an interview which he conducted in 2004, Ford described Moore as "off her mind" and he also stated that he continued to make public appearances, even after two attempts on his life within such a short period of time, because "a president has to be aggressive, has to meet the people."[26]

Release

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On December 31, 2007, at age 77, Moore was slated to be released from prison on parole after serving 32 years of her life sentence. Ford had died from natural causes on December 26, 2006, one year and five days before her release. Moore had later stated that she regretted the assassination attempt, saying she was "blinded by her radical political views".[27][28] 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."[29]

In February 2019, at age 89, Moore was arrested for violating her parole by failing to tell her parole officer about a trip which she went on outside the country; she was subsequently released in August 2019.[30]

Media

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On May 28, 2019, Moore appeared on NBC's Today program, her first television appearance since she left prison on parole.[31]

Moore also discussed her 1979 escape from prison. She revealed that an inmate told her, "when jumping the fence just put your hand on the barbed wire, you'll only have a few puncture wounds." She went on to say, "If I knew that I was going to be captured several hours later, I would have stopped at the local bar just to get a drink and a burger."[32]

Excerpts from an interview with Moore by Latif Nasser appear on an episode of the radio program Radiolab titled "Oliver Sipple", which was released on September 22, 2017. In the interview, Moore discusses the scene from the day she attempted to assassinate President Ford and her perspective of being stopped by Oliver Sipple.[33]

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Moore is a character in Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman's musical Assassins, which is about presidential assassins, both successful and unsuccessful. Moore and John Wilkes Booth, Charles J. Guiteau and Leon Czolgosz appear in "The Gun Song".

A biography of Moore called Taking Aim at the President was published in 2009 by Geri Spieler, a writer who had a correspondence with Moore for 28 years.[34][35]

Suburban Fury, a 2024 Robinson Devor documentary about Moore, filmed after her release from prison, was selected to screen in the Main Slate section of the 2024 New York Film Festival.[36]

References

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  1. ^ "CBS Evening News for Thursday, September 25, 1975". Vanderbilt Television News Archive. Vanderbilt University. Retrieved 2007-01-03.
  2. ^ a b "President Ford survives second assassination attempt". This Day In History. The History Channel. Archived from the original on 2013-01-03. Retrieved 2007-01-03.
  3. ^ "Kentucky New Era - Google News Archive Search". Retrieved 2015-07-23.
  4. ^ a b Spieler, G. (2008). Taking Aim at the President: The Remarkable Story of the Woman Who Shot at Gerald Ford. St. Martin's Press. p. 20. ISBN 9780230621848. Retrieved 2015-07-23.
  5. ^ a b "Making of a Misfit". Time Magazine. 1975-10-06. Archived from the original on September 30, 2007.
  6. ^ Hernandez, Ernio (2004-04-05). "Assassins Shooting Gallery, Part III: Garrison as Fromme and Baker as Moore". Playbill. Archived from the original on 2007-09-30. Retrieved 2007-01-03.
  7. ^ "Sara Jane Moore". nndb.com. Retrieved 2015-07-23.
  8. ^ a b c "Timeline: Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst". American Experience. Public Broadcasting Service. 2005-02-16. Retrieved 2007-01-03.
  9. ^ United States Secret Service. "Public Report of the White House Security Review". United States Department of the Treasury. Archived from the original on 2006-09-23. Retrieved 2007-01-03. Just seventeen days after the Fromme incident, Sara Jane Moore fired a bullet at President Ford in San Francisco. As President Ford exited a downtown hotel, Moore, standing in a crowd of onlookers across the street, pointed her pistol at him. Just before she fired, a civilian grabbed at the gun and deflected the shot. The bullet missed Ford but slightly injured a bystander. Moore was a known radical and a former FBI informant.
  10. ^ Carney, James (August 3, 1998). "How To Make The Secret Service's 'Unwanted' List". Time. Archived from the original on June 26, 2007. Retrieved January 3, 2007.
  11. ^ Spieler, Geri (June 28, 2009). "Sara Jane Moore -- Then and Now". Huffpost. Archived from the original on June 28, 2009. Retrieved June 28, 2009. Alt URL
  12. ^ a b Tucker, Jill (2006-10-29). "Kenneth Iacovoni – special agent". San Francisco Chronicle. p. B-7. Retrieved 2007-01-03.
  13. ^ a b "'Taking Aim at the President', by Geri Spieler".
  14. ^ Evans, Harold (1998). "The Imperial Presidency: 1972–1980". The American Century. Random House. Retrieved 2007-01-03.
  15. ^ "Remember... Oliver Sipple (1941-1989)". Archived from the original on 2006-11-03. Retrieved 2007-01-03.
  16. ^ Seattle Times. "Ford 'won't cower' after shooting." September 23, 1975.
  17. ^ Caught in Fate's Trajectory, Along With Gerald Ford, Lynne Duke, The Washington Post, December 30, 2006, p. D01.
  18. ^ "Sara Jane Moore: Radical Would-Be Ford Assassin". 22 April 2017.
  19. ^ "December 12, 1975 in History". BrainyHistory. Retrieved 2007-01-03.
  20. ^ Nevas, Steve (news anchor) (1976). Ten O'Clock News broadcast (Television news). Boston, MA: WGBH.
  21. ^ "January 15, 1976 in History". BrainyHistory. Retrieved 2007-01-03.
  22. ^ Geri Spieler (23 December 2008). Taking Aim at the President: The Remarkable Story of the Woman Who Shot at Gerald Ford. St. Martin's Press. p. 177. ISBN 978-0-230-62184-8.
  23. ^ "Ford Assailant Blocks Prison Key Crackdown". San Francisco Chronicle. August 12, 2000. p. A-21. Retrieved January 3, 2007.
  24. ^ "Sara Jane Moore". Federal Bureau of Prisons. Archived from the original on November 18, 2007. Retrieved January 9, 2010.
  25. ^ "Sara Jane Moore in a Futile Escape". The New York Times. Associated Press. February 6, 1979. Retrieved April 29, 2024.
  26. ^ King, Larry (June 8, 2004). "Interview with former President Gerald Ford and former first lady Betty Ford". Larry King Live. Retrieved January 3, 2007.
  27. ^ "Would-be Ford assassin freed from prison on parole". CNN. December 31, 2007. Archived from the original on January 1, 2008.
  28. ^ "Woman Who Tried to Assassinate President Ford Released From Prison". Fox News. December 31, 2007.
  29. ^ Taylor, Michael (January 1, 2008). "Sara Jane Moore, who tried to kill Ford in '75, freed on parole". San Francisco Chronicle. Archived from the original on February 2, 2008. Retrieved October 1, 2008.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  30. ^ McKay, Hollie (26 February 2019). "Would-be President Ford assassin back in jail for violating her parole, official says". Fox News. Retrieved 26 September 2019.
  31. ^ NBC News msnbc.com
  32. ^ "Video: Sara Jane Moore on the 'Today' show". theweek.com. Archived from the original on 2013-12-28. Retrieved 2015-07-23.
  33. ^ Radiolab (September 22, 2017). "Oliver Sipple". Radiolab. WYNC. Retrieved September 22, 2017.
  34. ^ Spieler, Geri (2009). Taking Aim at the President: The Remarkable Story of the Woman Who Shot at Gerald Ford. New York City: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9780230610231. OCLC 226357171.
  35. ^ "Taking Aim at the President". gerispieler.com. Archived from the original on July 23, 2015. Retrieved 2015-07-23.
  36. ^ "Suburban Fury". Film at Lincoln Center. Retrieved 9 August 2024.
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