Sara Jane Moore
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Sara Jane Moore (born 1930 in Charleston, WV) unsuccessfully tried to assassinate US President Gerald Ford on September 22, 1975 outside the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco. A former nursing school student, Women's Army Corps recruit and accountant, Moore had had five husbands and four children before she turned to revolutionary politics while in her forties. She was recruited as an informant by the FBI to gain information on the Patty Hearst kidnappers, but her cover was blown. In order to reconnect with her radical friends, she attempted to shoot President Gerald Ford, only 17 days after Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme. Ford was saved by bystander Oliver Sipple.
Moore pleaded guilty to attempted assassination and was sentenced to life in prison, which she is currently serving in Alderson Federal Prison Camp.
Moore is one of the assassins portrayed in Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman's musical Assassins. Moore is portrayed as an 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. Along with "Squeaky" Fromme, she serves as a bit of comic relief before major events in the play, such as Guiteau's assassination of James Garfield.
Quotes
- "There comes a point when the only way you can make a statement is to pick up a gun."