Sara Jane Moore, the radical who attempted to assassinate President Gerald R. Ford in San Francisco in 1975, died Wednesday at a nursing home in Franklin, Tennessee. She was 95.
Her death was confirmed by Demetria Kalodimos, a reporter for the Nashville Banner who had befriended Moore. The Banner first reported her passing, according to The New York Times.
Moore, a mother of four who once worked as an FBI informant, fired two shots at Ford on Sept. 22, 1975, as he left the St. Francis Hotel. The attack came just 17 days after another woman, Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, a follower of Charles Manson, had also tried to assassinate the president in Sacramento.
In San Francisco, Moore stood across from the hotel as a crowd of about 3,000 gathered to see Ford. She drew a chrome-plated .38-caliber revolver and fired. The first bullet missed. As she raised her gun again, former Marine Oliver W. Sipple deflected her aim, and the shot ricocheted, grazing a bystander. Ford was unhurt but was quickly rushed away by Secret Service agents.
Investigators found no conspiracy, describing Moore’s ties to radical groups as limited. Doctors deemed her legally sane despite a history of troubled marriages, mental health struggles, and shifting political affiliations. She pleaded guilty that December, was sentenced to life in prison, and served 32 years before being paroled in 2007.
During her imprisonment, Moore escaped briefly in 1979 from a West Virginia prison camp before being recaptured hours later. She converted to Judaism in 1986, later admitting she did so partly to receive kosher meals.
After her release from a federal prison in California, she lived under an assumed name on the East Coast, married psychologist Philip Chase, and eventually settled in North Carolina before moving to Tennessee after Chase’s death in 2018.
Ford, who died in 2006, remained unforgiving. In a 2003 interview, he said: “Just because the president is left standing may be a matter of luck, but the malice was the same and the attempt was to kill.”
Moore occasionally reflected on her actions. In a 2009 interview on NBC’s “Today Show,” she described the turmoil of the 1970s.
“We were saying the country needed to change,” she told Matt Lauer. “The only way it was going to change was a violent revolution. I genuinely thought that this might trigger that new revolution in this country.”
She was born Sara Jane Kahn on Feb. 15, 1930, in Charleston, West Virginia. She served in the Women’s Army Corps, worked as an accountant in Hollywood, and became active in civil rights and antiwar protests in the Bay Area during the 1960s.
Her personal life was tumultuous. She married four times and had four children, placing three in the care of her parents. She later worked with People in Need, a food program linked to the Symbionese Liberation Army after the kidnapping of Patty Hearst.
Ostracized by radicals for her past role as an informant, she sought credibility with extremists and ultimately turned to violence.
Moore is survived by some of her children, though a full list of survivors was not immediately available.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
