Sunday, 22 September 2024

suburban fury (11. 865)

Joining the only other American female would-be presidential (let’s not forget Fanny Kaplan and the long tradition of Russian attempts) assassin with the mutual target being Gerald Ford inside of a month from each attempt, Sara Jame Moore tried to kill the US president on this day in 1975 as he was leaving a San Francisco hotel. Preoccupied with Patricia Hearst (maybe a case of Stockholm Syndrome by-proxy), Moore and volunteered as a bookkeeper and informant for the the organisation founded by William Randolph Hearst to rebuff the claims by the Symbionese Liberation Army that they had kidnapped and inculcated his daughter for his crimes against the poor up until the moment of her plot foiled by the FBI. Picked up by local authorities the day prior on suspicion of having an illegal handgun and a large supply of ammunition, Moore acquired a new revolver and shot at Ford from a distance of twelve metre as he exited the St Francis Hotel and misjudging the sightings on her new and untested weapon missed by a narrow margin. Moore said later that her motive was to incite revolution and bring about positive change in America. Remanded for life in prison and with an interim escape and re-apprehension, Moore was paroled at the end of 2007 and is living in Tennessee, aged 94.