Sara Jane Moore, the former psychiatric patient who tried to assassinate President Ford at an era of astonishing violence and upheaval in California, died Wednesday in a nursing home in Franklin, Tenn.
Moore, who withdrew in North Carolina after serving 32 years in federal prison but who was then imprisoned at the end of his life, was 95 years old. The news of her death has been confirmed by Demetria Kalodimos, executive producer of the Nashville banner, who has developed a relationship with Moore in the past two years. A cause of death was not reported, but Kalodimos said that Moore had been bedridden for about 15 months after a fall.
As shocking as Moore’s attempt to kill the president was, it seemed a little less during the frenzied 1970s.
It was in 1975 in San Francisco. Charles Manson was in the death corridor, the victim of Kidnape who became a complice Patty Hearst had just been arrested, and a very young governor named Jerry Brown was in the first year in power.
Moore chose this moment for a shocking crime at a time almost defined by them – on September 22, 1975, she tried to assassinate Ford in front of the Hotel St. Francis in fashion.
It was the second potential assassin to face the 38th president in the space of a month.
Her bullet missed, thanks to the rapid reflexes of a former sailor standing next to her.
The attempt intervened only 17 days after a follower of Manson in the habit of a nun, Lynette “Squeaky” Fumme, pointed out a weapon on Ford in Sacramento. It was never clear if she had tried to pull the trigger.
Time newspapers described Moore as an enigma. They highlighted his allegedly conventional past. She was described as an average housewife and a mother whose conversion into radical politics seemed an unlikely touch. She herself insisted that she had been a relatively normal suburb before joining the left metro.
It was not true. Moore’s entire adulthood was punctuated by mental health problems, divorces and suicide attempts. Many people who knew her described her as unstable and mercurial.
Born Sara Jane Kahn on February 15, 1930 in Charleston, W. VA., Moore had been a grass actress and nurse before finding accounting. She got married five times, was far from her family and abandoned three of her children. A fourth remained at his custody at the time of the assassination attempt. Her erratic behavior had cost her job to her job, and she had been treated several times for mental illness.
This story led some, including Ford himself, to conclude that it was “out of his mind”, as the former president said in an interview with CNN in 2004.
She was in the middle of 40 years, divorced and lived in Danville, outside San Francisco, when she went to work in 1974 as an accountant for people in need. The organization had been created to distribute food in response to ransom requests from the Symbionais Liberation Army, the extreme left group who had kidnapped Hearst in early 1974 and shortly after having started a furious rifle battle against the Los Angeles police, one of the longest shootings in American history.
Moore’s links with other radical organizations were troubled. She would later project herself as an informer of the desired FBI who had come to live in the fear of an unpertified threat. Its source came from the government or its radical brothers, according to the interview. The authorities have minimized it, saying that its occasional calls for local agents and police were not asked.
Hearst had been arrested a few days before the assassination attempt. The day before, Moore, 45, had been arrested by police from San Francisco who seized a weapon of her. She made a wave threat and the secret services were alerted, but the agents concluded that she was not dangerous and released her.
Moore immediately bought a caliber revolver .38.
Dressed in polka dot pants, she went to the hotel where Ford spoke to the World Affairs Council. She waited outside and raised her arm to shoot when the president emerged at 3.30 p.m. Oliver Sipple, a former disabled sailor standing next to her, saw the weapon and diverted her arm just when the weapon died.
The ball has passed the president’s head, turned and injured a taxi driver. The president’s security details rushed to the airport and Ford was taken from California as quickly as possible.
After her arrest, knowledge said Moore was very concerned that people assumed that she was mentally ill. She often alluded to her political motivations to try to kill Ford. Journalists impatiently interviewed her to find out more, but she never seemed able to clearly explain her political agenda.
Her lawyers were preparing a defense linked to her mental state when she suddenly pleaded guilty, against their advice. She was sentenced to life with a possibility of parole. Moore’s attempt caused an exam of the Senate of Presidential Security.
“Am I sorry to have tried?” Said Moore during his conviction. “Yes and no. Yes, because it has accomplished little, except to throw the rest of my life, even if I realize that there are those who think that it is the only good thing that results. And no, I am not sorry to have tried, because at the time, it seemed a correct expression of my anger.”
Moore again made the headlines briefly in 1979 when she escaped the federal reform for the women of Alderson, W.VA., by climbing a 12 -foot fence.
Otherwise, his years in prison took place without incident. She would have completed her time of needle functions and books, and was released in 2007 at the age of 77 in a federal installation of low security for women in Dublin, east of San Francisco. Its parole was essentially straight by the federal rights which has since been tightened.
“It was an era that people don’t remember,” Moore said on NBC’s “Today” program in 2009. “You know we had a war … The Vietnam War, you became, I became, immersed in it. We said that the country had to change. The only way it was going to change was a violating revolution. [shooting Ford] could trigger this new revolution. »»
In 2015, Moore was interviewed remotely by CNN, its location only listed as North Carolina.
Moore was again imprisoned in early 2019 when she was detained at JFK airport for having traveled outside the country without informing the leaders of the parole. Friends said she had fallen ill in Israel, forcing her to stay longer than she had planned it. She was released six months later.
Moore argued that she had not been influenced by the assault of FROMME against Ford. FROMME was released in 2009 and moved to the north of New York, largely disappeared. The two women were represented in the musical of Stephen Sondheim “Assassins”, who won a Tony Award in 2004.
Sipple, who diverted the shot, was greeted as a hero but then continued several newspapers for invasion of privacy. He said the media reports that he was gay had ruined his family relationships, but he lost the matter. He died in 1989.
Subsequent attacks on public figures would eclude Moore’s crime. Three years later, the San Francisco supervisor, Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone, were murdered. The murder of John Lennon occurred two years after that, and the shooting by John Hinckley Jr. of President Reagan a few months later.
Ford, who died of natural causes at 93 in 2006, was said to have died by Moore’s attempt over his life. But other members around him saw him as coherent with the place and time.
Questioned by San Francisco Chronicle to summarize the event, Ford’s press secretary, Ron Nessen, who was with him when he was targeted, framed him in this way: “It was the 1970s in San Francisco and California.”
Leovy is a former Times staff editor.
