Sara Jane Moore

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Sara Jane Moore
Born February 15, 1930 (1930-02-15) (age 78)
Charleston, West Virginia, U.S.
Penalty Life sentence
Status On parole

Sara Jane Moore (born Sara Jane Kahn[1] 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]

Contents

[edit] Background

A former nursing school student, Women's Army Corps recruit, and accountant, Moore had five husbands before she turned to revolutionary politics at the age of 45.[3][4]

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 informant[3][6][5] 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.

[edit] Assassination attempt

Reaction approximately one second after the assassination attempt.
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.[9][10] 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 hotel[12] and slightly injured a bystander.[6]

Moore pleaded guilty[13] to attempted assassination and was sentenced to life in prison.[14][15] She served her term at the federal women’s prison in Dublin, California[8][16]. 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."[17]

[edit] Release

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 had 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'[18][19].

[edit] In popular culture

In Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman's musical Assassins, Moore is portrayed as a flaky accident-waiting-to-happen who can't wield a gun properly; in the "Gun Song" (the only song she sings outside of the Assassins as a group) when she "squeezes her little finger to change the world" along with the boys, hers goes off although theirs do not, and in "Everybody's Got the Right" the Proprietor reminds her "Don't forget that guns can go boom," when she accidentally aims hers at him. Along with Fromme, she serves as a bit of comic relief before major events in the musical, such as Charles Guiteau's assassination of James Garfield.[20]. The interactions between Moore and Fromme presented in the musical, which include smoking marijuana and firing off pistols at a bucket of fast food, are entirely fictitious, however.

Moore's assassination attempt on Ford outside the St. Francis Hotel was also mentioned on the October 22, 2007 episode of the NBC time-traveling show Journeyman, where the main character's father misses the opportunity to photograph the event.

[edit] 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.”[21][22]
  • “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.”[4][1]
  • “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.”[23]
  • “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.”[24]

[edit] External links

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b CBS Evening News for Thursday, Sep 25, 1975 (HTML) (English). Vanderbilt Television News Archive. Vanderbilt University. Retrieved on 2007-01-03.
  2. ^ a b 1975 : President Ford survives second assassination attempt (HTML) (English). This Day In History. The History Channel. Retrieved on 2007-01-03.
  3. ^ a b www.time.com "Making of a Misfit".
  4. ^ a b Hernandez, Ernio (2004-04-05). Assassins Shooting Gallery, Part III: Garrison as Fromme and Baker as Moore (HTML) (English). Playbill. Playbill, Inc.. Retrieved on 2007-01-03.
  5. ^ a b c Timeline: Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst (HTML) (English). American Experience. Public Broadcasting System (2005-02-16). Retrieved on 2007-01-03.
  6. ^ a b United States Secret Service. Public Report of the White House Security Review (HTML) (English). United States Department of the Treasury. Retrieved on 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.”
  7. ^ Carney, James. "How To Make The Secret Service's "Unwanted" List" (HTML), TIME Magazine, Time Warner, 1998-08-03. Retrieved on 2007-01-03. (English) 
  8. ^ a b Tucker, Jill. "Kenneth Iacovoni -- special agent" (HTML), San Francisco Chronicle, 2006-10-29, p. B-7. Retrieved on 2007-01-03. (English) 
  9. ^ Evans, Harold (1998). The Imperial Presidency: 1972 - 1980 (HTML) (English). The American Century. Random House. Retrieved on 2007-01-03.
  10. ^ Remember...…Oliver Sipple (1941-1989) (HTML) (English). Retrieved on 2007-01-03.
  11. ^ Sipple quoted in the Seattle Times, 23 September 1975, "Ford 'won't cower' after shooting"
  12. ^ Obituaries: David Richardson Wendell (HTML) (English). The Almanac. Embarcadero Publishing Company (2003-01-29). Retrieved on 2007-01-03.
  13. ^ December 12, 1975 in History (HTML). BrainyHistory. Retrieved on 2007-01-03.
  14. ^ Nevas, Steve (news anchor). (1976). Ten O'Clock News broadcast [Television news]. Boston, MA: WGBH.
  15. ^ January 15, 1976 in History (HTML). BrainyHistory. Retrieved on 2007-01-03.
  16. ^ "Ford Assailant Blocks Prison Key Crackdown" (HTML), San Francisco Chronicle, 2000-08-12, p. A-21. Retrieved on 2007-01-03. (English) 
  17. ^ King, Larry (2004-06-08). Interview with former President Gerald Ford and former first lady Betty Ford (HTML) (English). Larry King Live. CNN. Retrieved on 2007-01-03.
  18. ^ Would-be Ford assassin freed from prison on parole", CNN.com, December 31, 2007
  19. ^ FOXNews.com - Woman Who Tried to Assassinate President Ford Released From Prison - Local News | News Articles | National News | US News
  20. ^ Assassins (HTML) (English). The Guide to Musical Theatre. Retrieved on 2007-01-03.
  21. ^ Keerdoja, Eileen. "Squeaky and Sara Jane" (HTML), Newsweek, 1976-11-08. Retrieved on 2007-01-03. (English) 
  22. ^ Putting the Ass Back in Assassin (HTML) (English). Suck.Com (2001-02-12). Retrieved on 2007-01-03.
  23. ^ Lee, Vic (2007-01-02). Interview: Woman Who Tried To Assassinate Ford (HTML) (English). ABC-7 News. KGO-TV. Retrieved on 2007-01-03.
  24. ^ Former President Ford lauded, laid to rest (HTML) (English). CNN (2007-01-04). Retrieved on 2007-03-22.
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