March 11, 2025 • 41 mins
This is part one of a two-part series on Sarah Jane Moore, the unlikely woman who wanted to kill the president, and the bizarre life she led…which the headlines never got quite right.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Diversion audio. A note this episode contains mature content and
descriptions of violence that may be disturbing for some listeners.
Please take care in listening. It's a chilly Monday morning
(00:32):
in San Francisco in September of nineteen seventy five. A
forty five year old book keeper named Sarah Jane Moore
wakes up early, drops off her nine year old son
at school, runs a few errands, and then drives downtown
to the Saint Francis Hotel. She parks her car in
the garage across the street and walks over to join
(00:55):
the crowd that's gathered on the sidewalk outside scene. A
few thousand people are there, and there's a security rope
barrier keeping everyone back on the sidewalk. Sarah Jane is
wearing slacks and a jacket, and she has the kind
of floppy bouffont hairstyle that was popular in the mid seventies. Honestly,
(01:18):
she's pretty indistinguishable from any other middle aged woman in
the crowd, which is probably on purpose. The crowd is
starting to get bigger now, and as more and more
people shuffle in, Sarah Jane gets pushed almost to the
ropes at the front. She starts to feel a little uncomfortable.
(01:39):
She doesn't want to be this close, but she doesn't
let it distract her. She has a job to do
and she's going to do it. Sarah Jane holds her
purse tight against her waist as the space between her
and the people around her gets tighter. She takes a
deep breath and settles in for what she knows could
(02:00):
be a long wait. An hour goes by like this,
and then two, and then three, and then finally, out
(02:21):
of the hotel comes none other than the current President
of the United States, Gerald Ford. He has police and
secret service around him, and they're all walking out of
the hotel to get to his car, which is parked
along the sidewalk. He's not here to make a speech.
(02:44):
He's just making a quick exit on his way to
his next appointment. But before the President gets in the car,
he pauses for a moment and waves at the crowd.
Everyone starts applauding and cheering, and it's now that Sarah
Jane reaches her right hand into the purse she's carrying
(03:04):
and pulls out a gun. It's a thirty eight caliber Revolver.
Sarah Jane cocks it and takes aim right at Gerald
Ford's head, and then Welcome to the greatest true crime
(03:35):
stories ever told. I'm Mary Kay McBrayer. Today's episode we're
calling The Housewife who Tried to Kill the President Part one.
It's part one of a two part series about the
unlikely woman who wanted to kill the president and the
bizarre life she led, which the headlines never got quite right.
(04:19):
In most of my stories on this podcast, I like
to leave you in the dark a little bit. I'll
start with a flashback or an anecdote about a supporting character,
but I try to keep you guessing about the main
event until the end. With this story, though, I started
at the climax, because, to be honest, the crime that
(04:40):
this week's subject was involved in, the thing that got
her into the history books and for which she will
forever be known, is just the tip of the iceberg.
Her most known victim, President Gerald Ford, is someone so
powerful that most of the time Sarah Jane's story gets
squeezed into a footnote on his Wikipedia page. But as
(05:04):
you're about to learn, President Ford was only one in
a trail of victims. Few people even realize Sarah Jane
left others in her wake. The biggest question seems to
be how did this educated, matronly middle class woman get
tangled up in a plot to kill the president? But
(05:27):
appearances deceive because the more you learn about Sarah Jane,
the less surprising this incident gets. In this two part series,
we're going to take a look at the real Sarah Jane,
the Sarah Jane that went home each night and looked
at herself in the bathroom mirror before crawling into bed,
(05:47):
The Sarah Jane that the press was never able to capture.
And by the end of this series, trust me, you'll
believe me when I say that the incident that got
her into the history books might be shocking, but it's
the stuff she did before or an after that will
really blow your mind. Let's travel back to West Virginia,
(06:17):
where Sarah Jane was born in February nineteen thirty. Her
family home was in a town called Charleston, nestled in
the lush Appalachian Mountains. She was born Sarah Jane Kahan
to parents Ruth and Oloff Khan. At first glance, the
Khan family appeared to be the picture perfect middle class
(06:38):
American family. There were five kids, three boys and two girls,
and there was just enough space for them in their
two story log home. A thicket of woods crept up
to the back of the house, and the modest neighborhood
was the perfect place to run and play. Their father, Oloff,
was a hard working chemical engineer for DuPont. He earned
(07:00):
ten thousand dollars a year, which was a very respectable
income in the depression era. Her mother, Ruth, took care
of the home and was a diligent housewife, always keeping
things sparkling clean and making sure her kids were tidy
and polite. She was one of those moms who always
knew what was going on in the neighborhood, and she
probably showed up with the best snacks. Zooming in a
(07:24):
bit on life inside the con home revealed a few
cracks in their idyllic image, though. According to interviews with
Sarah Jane's siblings, Olof was a cold and exacting father.
He wasn't the type to play or even interact much
with his kids. In fact, they rarely saw him in
anything but a three piece suit, even when the kids
(07:47):
were very young. Evenings were to be civil. When the
family would gather for dinner, Oloff expected good behavior and manners.
After the kids cleared the table, they would work on
homework or practice their instruments in the living room, where
Olaf would light a cigarette and read the paper. Any
disturbance would be met with anger. In the rare instance,
(08:09):
when one of the kids would work up the courage
to ask a question about homework assignment, Olaf would respond
by raising his eyebrows and replying in a flat voice,
if I told you, you wouldn't understand anyway, what a jerkyal.
Their mother, Ruth, wasn't any warmer. She had extremely high
standards for her children and expected them to excel in
(08:32):
whatever they were doing. For Ruth, perfection wasn't too much
to ask. This kind of parenting impacts people in different ways,
and it's impossible to say whether and to what degree
Sarah Jane's upbringing directly impacted the person she would later become.
But one thing I think we can say is that
(08:54):
living in a world of black and white, right and wrong,
with incredibly high standards to live up to, could definitely
contribute to some extreme views of the world. Despite her parents'
attempts to keep her on the right track, Sarah Jane
never quite seemed to fit in, either at home or
(09:14):
at school. Her siblings got along great, they each had
their own hobbies and bonds with one another, but Sarah
Jane often kept to herself. Academics made sense to her,
and she did very well in school, though she even
skipped a grade in elementary school. She was active in
orchestra and ballet and other after school groups, but most
(09:38):
people who knew her would say that something was slightly
off with Sarah Jane. She struggled to connect with her classmates.
One of her junior high teachers delicately described her as
a little odd. According to one of her ballet school classmates,
Sarah Jane would tell crazy stories to the other girls
(09:59):
in class, stuff about her family being descendants of royalty
and other things that the girls in class knew couldn't
possibly be true. The adults in the neighborhood tried hard
to get the kids to include her, but this just
made Sarah Jane more of an outcast. One of her
fellow Girl Scout Troop members recalled that even if you
(10:20):
tried to be nice to her, she never reciprocated. She
never tried to really be a part of anything. The
weird thing was for as much as the other kids
made her feel unwelcome, Sarah Jane loved their attention. In fact,
she demanded it. It almost seemed like she either didn't
(10:43):
notice that she made other people uncomfortable or she didn't care.
One of the most bizarre examples of this was at
her thirteenth birthday party, when Sarah Jane insisted that all
the neighborhood kids sit and listen to her perform a
violin recital before anyone could have a slice of cake.
I mean, we love the main character energy, but this
(11:06):
is bordering on manipulative. The one social space where Sarah
Jane did seem to fit in, though, was the theater.
She joined her high school's drama club, and even though
they didn't want to hang out with her, her classmates
couldn't help but respect her acting talent. Like so many
misfits before her, it seemed like stepping into the character
(11:27):
of another person came naturally to Sarah Jane, almost like
it was more comfortable to her than figuring out who
she was in real life. Despite her social awkwardness, Sarah
Jane was capable and smart. Her loved ones assumed she'd
become successful in some way, maybe go to college, become
(11:47):
a teacher or actress. Maybe she'd even fall in love
and start a family. But that was before she disappeared.
(12:13):
One day in the fall of nineteen forty six, when
Sarah Jane was sixteen, she packed up for school in
the morning, left home like she always did, but never arrived.
She didn't return that evening either. She didn't leave a note,
didn't tell anyone what she was doing or where she
was going. Her parents were, of course panicked. They informed
(12:35):
the police, who mounted a full search and questioned the town.
No one had a clue as to where she could be,
nor could they think of any activities or people she
might be involved with that would have called her away.
Three days later, just as abruptly as she had left,
Sarah Jane walked back into the house as if nothing
(12:57):
had happened. She looked exactly the way she looked the
day she disappeared. Her family begged for an explanation, but
Sarah Jane didn't give one. In fact, she refused to
talk to anyone about the incident at all. Was it
an abduction, her parents wonder, or sexual assault? Did she
(13:17):
have some sort of secret romance with a boy in
the next town over. Her mother, Ruth, insisted that Sarah
Jane get examined by the family doctor to check for
any signs of abuse or harm. The doctor sent her
home with a clean bill of health, so Sarah Jane
was not injured, she didn't appear to be traumatized, and
(13:40):
clearly she hadn't been kidnapped. Eventually, when Sarah Jane's family
realized that their questioning was no use, they gave up.
Anyone who asked. They just said it was amnesia, and
Sarah Jane said nothing. Sarah Jane had always been a
little unusual, but this was the first time that her
(14:03):
parents had seen her not only completely disobey the rules,
but refused to acknowledge the seriousness of her behavior. It
was almost as if she was testing a boundary, seeing
how far she could push her family, how off the
wall she could act and still managed to convince them
that nothing was wrong. It's like she was normalizing her behavior,
(14:26):
either because she didn't want her loved ones to acknowledge
how unusual it really was, or because she didn't realize
it herself. Either way, it would not be the last
time she pulled a stunt like this. When it came
time for Sarah Jane to graduate high school in nineteen
forty seven, her parents were happy to learn that she
(14:47):
was planning to go into medicine, a fine occupation for
a smart girl like her. She was accepted into a
top tier nursing school, and she excelled there and minished
gave her glowing reviews, and it seemed like maybe Sarah
Jane had finally found her thing. But after just one semester,
(15:10):
without explanation, Sarah Jane changed her mind. In nineteen forty eight,
she dropped out and announced to her parents that she'd
be joining the Women's Army Corps instead. All right, they thought,
she's never mentioned anything about the army before, but at
least she's got a plan, and Sarah Jane was nothing
(15:34):
if not driven. She told her parents she had her
sights set on becoming a commissioned officer, and like in
most things she attempted to do, Sarah Jane was kind
of kicking ass. She earned top marks on the qualifying
tests and military arms training, and it seemed like she
was right on track to becoming an officer. But just
(15:57):
as she was rounding toward the finish line, Sarah Jane
took another abrupt turn that no one saw coming. In
nineteen forty nine, she got married marine's staff Sergeant Wallace E.
Anderson was his name, and they probably met on the
base where Sarah Jane was in training. They got married quickly,
(16:19):
and in spite of the fact that marrying would bar
Sarah Jane from ever becoming an officer, which up until
this point seemed like her dream. In the space of
just two years, Sarah Jane had gone from high school
graduate to nursing student, to army cadet, and now to housewife.
(16:41):
Her family was confused, as was I at learning of
this particular pivot, but they were happy that she seemed
happy at least. Also, I am completely aware and perhaps
a good example of the fact that people can make
impulsive and inconsistent decisions in their early adulthood but ultimately
end up mostly fine and level headed. But that was
(17:05):
not the case with Sarah Jane. Now, we're not going
to get too deep into Wallace or her marriage to him, because,
believe it or not, Sarah Jane changes her mind about
him pretty quickly. But I mentioned him here because there's
one incident from this period of Sarah Jane's life that
is just too strange not to highlight. It was on
(17:27):
one of those early days of her marriage that Sarah
Jane decided to go on a public tour of the
White House. She and Wallace were living in Pennsylvania at
the time, and Wallace must have been on duty because
Sarah Jane made the trip out to DC by herself.
It was a beautiful spring day. The cherry blossoms were
decorating the National Mall, and Sarah Jane, who was just
(17:50):
twenty years old at the time, wore a neat little
pastel suit to match. At the end of the tour,
Sarah Jane separated herself from the group and started wandering
across the White House lawn. After she'd made it a
few yards away, Sarah Jane suddenly went rigid and collapsed
(18:11):
onto the ground. Secret Service agents and other bystanders rushed
in to see what was wrong. Apparently she had fainted.
When she regained consciousness a few moments later, Sarah Jane
told the gathered crowd that she didn't know who or
where she was. When the Secret Service agents couldn't find
(18:31):
any form of ID on her, the only thing they
could think to do was to check her into the
Walter Reed Army Hospital. Here's where it gets really weird.
As the nurses undressed Sarah Jane to get her into
her hospital gown, they found something totally bizarre tucked up
into the bodice of her dress. It was a handful
(18:55):
of printed photographs, all of Sarah Jane. Over the next
few days, because Sarah Jane's identity was still a mystery,
her fainting spell got picked up by the local news.
Newspapers published a few of the photos she carried with
her and asked whether anyone could identify this mystery woman.
(19:15):
It didn't take long for her husband and her mother
to catch the story and rushed to the hospital to
id her. And would you believe it, her memory mysteriously
returned right after they showed up. Police leader concluded that
Sarah Jane had purposely traveled to the White House without
her idea. Now, we may never know exactly what was
(19:37):
behind this bonker's incident, but what I can say is
that it fits into a pattern of bizarre outbursts from
Sarah Jane that not only demand attention from everyone around her,
but forced them to redefine what normal behavior looks like
just like she did when she disappeared in high school.
Sarah Jane went on after this amnesia spell as if
(20:02):
nothing was wrong. Is almost like little by little, she
normalized the insanity of these behaviors. For Sarah Jane, these
feigning spells and mysterious games of hooky were harmless enough,
but they were paving the way for something much weirder
and much more dangerous. Now back to Sarah Jane's marriage
(20:23):
to Wallace Anderson. Practically as soon as his name escaped
your lips, Sarah Jane had divorced him and moved on
to her second husband, Air Force Captain Sidney Lewis Manning.
And you may notice a pattern here. Sarah Jane loves
military types, especially high ranking ones. That's one thing about
(20:44):
her that I can understand. Sarah Jane and Sidney began
their marriage by moving into family housing on the Air
Force base in Tucson, Arizona, where Sydney was stationed. In
nineteen fifty one, at age twenty one, she became pregnant
with their first child, and two more babies followed quickly
(21:06):
after that. Sarah Jane now had her feet firmly planted
in the world of motherhood, and this new persona was
sticking just about as well as the others she tried on.
The other mothers in the Air Force community could clearly
see that Sarah Jane was struggling. She had a hard
time keeping up with all the tasks of running a household,
(21:27):
which I mean, I completely get that, you forget to
switch over one load of laundry before it sours and
it blows the whole process to smotherings. But worse, and
probably more important, Sarah Jane just didn't seem to like
being a mother. She fed her kids on an erratic schedule,
(21:48):
The energy of the house was chaotic, but in an
abnormal way, and Sarah Jane seemed resentful of it all.
This wasn't the grandeur she had envisioned for her life,
and her marriage wasn't doing any better. With each new
addition to the family, Sydney and Sarah Jane grew further apart.
(22:10):
He started taking more overseas assignments, leaving Sarah Jane even
more isolated and unhappy. Eventually, he filed for divorce, and
once it was finalized, he quickly lost touch with both
Sarah Jane and his children. In nineteen fifty six, Sarah
Jane made one of her very rare calls to her mother.
(22:34):
She needed help. She said she wanted to visit West
Virginia with the kids and stay with Ruth and Olaft
for a bit. Ruth was thrilled. She had been watching
Sarah Jane's home life unravel from afar for the last
few years, and she thought that maybe this would be
her chance to finally help Sarah Jane get a handle
on this whole motherhood thing. The fights were booked and
(22:58):
Ruth and Olaf prepared for their stay. Sarah Jane's brother, Dana,
who still lived in West Virginia, was in charge of
collecting Sarah Jane and the kids from the airport when
they arrived. On the day of the flight. The plane
landed right on time, just before sunset. Dana stood at
the tarmac and watched the ground crew roll the big
(23:21):
staircase up to the plane's exit door. As the door
opened and the first passengers got off, Dana watched for
the faces of his sister and her kids. Passenger after
passenger walked down the staircase and was greeted by friends
and loved ones on the ground, but no Sarah Jane. Finally,
(23:44):
after every other passenger had left, Dana watched as little
Sidney Junior, who was just four years old at the time,
grabbed the handrail and carefully walked down the steps alongside
his three year old sister. Behind them was a flight
attendant holding their nine month old brother in her arms.
(24:07):
Dana was confused Sarah Jane was not with them. Sarah
Jane's parents were shocked when Dana arrived home without her.
They were sure something terrible had happened. They called the
airline right away, but the airline's staff had no information.
(24:27):
When they tried her home phone number and found that
it was disconnected, they called the police. Days went by
with no word from Sarah Jane. Sarah Jane's parents even
ended up calling Sydney, the children's father, at his air
Force base, but he had no idea where Sarah Jane
could be. After weeks of panic and confusion, the cons
(24:49):
finally had to accept what they didn't want to believe
was true. Sarah Jane was not hurt or sick or abducted.
She had orchestrated this whole thing. She had disappeared again,
and this time she had left her children behind. Two
(25:10):
and a half months went by without a single word
from Sarah Jane, and then one day she called. And
she called collect from a payphone. For those who weren't
alive when payphones were a thing, call and collect meant
that the person receiving the call is the one who
has to pay the charge. It's a funny little detail,
(25:30):
but it must have just been salt in the wound
for Sarah Jane's parents. Not only did Sarah Jane leave
her kids on her parents doorstep, but she wouldn't even
pay the two dollars to make the phone call to
let them know she was okay. Her parents, of course,
begged her to come home and take care of her kids.
(25:50):
They would help as much as they could, but the
children needed their mother. Sarah Jane agreed and promised she'd
be back. She never said. When five more months and
a few sporadic phone calls came and went, Sarah Jane
never showed up. That's when the calls stopped altogether. In
(26:12):
an act of desperation and exhaustion, the cons eventually called
the police to have Sarah Jane arrested for child neglect,
but by then even the police couldn't find her. Sarah
Jane had actually disappeared this time. To be honest, if
Sarah Jane hadn't gone on to attempt to assassinate a
(26:34):
US president, this incident could have been the focus of
this entire episode. It's worth pausing to recognize the amount
of trauma her actions are causing her family during this time.
The crimes we normally cover on this podcast often tend
to be violent and fatal, so it could be easy
to cruise past an incident like this without acknowledging how
(26:55):
emotionally destructive it is. Not only have these children had
to watch their parents get divorced, but now, only a
few months later, they're being abandoned by both of them.
It's difficult to fathom the pain of that. And let's
not forget how life altering this was for Sarah Jane's parents.
(27:16):
Ruth and Olaf had already done the whole parenting thing
with their children, and they were just getting ready to
settle into retirement. But now it was back to diaper
changes and baseball practice and college tuition. They wouldn't be
settling down for at least another eighteen years. So when
I say that Sarah Jane left a trail of victims
(27:37):
behind her. It may not be the kind of victims
you're used to hearing about in our stories, but they
were victims all the same. Eventually, Ruth and Olaf filed
to adopt their grandchildren outright so they could collect some
Social Security benefits and save some money to put them
through college. What they can never do, though, was heal
(27:58):
the wound of being left by a mother for reasons
they would never understand. But Sarah Jane wouldn't disappear completely
from her children's lives. Twenty years from now, they'd see
her again, but this time it would be on the
front page of the newspaper. Only Sarah Jane knows exactly
(28:40):
what she did in the years after she abandoned her kids.
The records that exist suggest that she was probably living
in Los Angeles, but she covered her tracks well enough
that law enforcement was never able to locate her. It's
possible that she used aliases and even in different Social
Security number. From what we can tell, it seems like
(29:03):
she studied accounting and began to support herself as a bookkeeper,
and surprise surprise, she also managed to find a new
husband and just a real quick polling question for our listeners.
You know, we have a lot of episodes that feature
serial monogamous women who get married many, many times, and
(29:24):
I just wonder sometimes, how how did they find these guys? Like,
how did they convince them to get married? I don't
even think it's necessarily a regional or time period related thing.
My brain just doesn't compute it anyway. Her new husband's
name was John Alberg, and he worked in Hollywood, y'all,
(29:45):
this poor guy. He was known around town as a
kind and genuine man, and he was head over heels
in love with Sarah Jane. But just a month after
their wedding and days after discovering she was pregnant with
his child, when know it, Sarah Jane had had enough.
She left John and moved to San Francisco, where she
(30:06):
decided she would raise the baby alone. Why san Francisco.
It's hard to know why Sarah Jane did anything, But
the one thing we do know about Sarah Jane is
that she wanted to live a big life. She wanted
to be at the center of things. Where better to
be in the mid nineteen seventies than San Francisco, the
(30:29):
epicenter of the political and cultural revolution that was turning
America upside down. For those of us who weren't alive
at this time, me included, it can be hard to
understand what a gigantic paradigm shift was going on in
the nineteen sixties and seventies in America. The buttoned up,
(30:49):
Ozzy and Harriet days when wives had dinner on the
table at five o'clock sharp were no more. Clothes were
getting looser, hair was getting longer, and women were leaving
their girdles and braws at home. In the fifties, most
Americans were content to live by the traditional values of
hard work, family and patriotism. But once the seventies rolled around,
(31:15):
political activism was ramping up all around the country. People
were upset. The Vietnam War seemed to be getting more
nonsensical and hopeless. Racial inequality was becoming more and more
difficult to ignore. In the South, feminism and civil rights
were on everyone's mind and were creating an atmosphere of
both optimism and tension. Enemy Number one for many radicals
(31:39):
was the President Gerald Ford. For one thing, Ford kept
America entangled in the Vietnam War. He also chose to
pardon Richard Nixon after his involvement in the Watergate scandal,
which seemed to most people like an obstruction of justice
and hanging over all of that, there were questions about
(31:59):
whether Ford was even a legitimate president. Now here's something
I didn't know until I started researching this story. Gerald
Ford was the first person in America to ever become
president without being elected. It sounds crazy, but it's true.
When Nixon's Vice President, Spiro Agnew resigned in nineteen seventy three,
(32:24):
Nixon appointed Ford to fill Agnew's place. Then, when Nixon
resigned a year later, Ford automatically ascended to the presidency.
It's a bizarre return of events, and it made many
Americans feel like the democratic process was crumbling under their feet.
(32:45):
So suffice it to say left wing Americans were upset
about it in the seventies, and San Francisco had become
their home base. You can imagine how the energy of
a city like this would have appealed to a bright,
ambitious woman like Sarah Jane when she struggled to find
purpose as a housewife. The energy of these young, forward
(33:08):
thinking activists was seductive. They had purpose, they were doing
something that mattered or at least it seemed that way
to Sarah Jane. She decided she wanted to be one
of them, so she began to try on her most
compelling and influential persona to date political activist. Once she
(33:32):
arrived in San Francisco, Sarah Jane began to transform from
an isolated conservative military wife who was uninterested and uninvolved
in politics into something very different. She started reading, hanging
out on college campuses, and informing herself about the political
issues of the day. She found easy retail work during
(33:56):
the day at a linoleum flooring shop where she earned
enough to pay for rink and food, and in the
evenings she started driving to the warehouse district where she'd
heard some of the radical groups were holding their meetings.
One of the groups Sarah Jane became involved with was
called People in Need or PIN. Like many of the
left wing groups of this era, PIN was all about
(34:19):
social change through protests, strikes, and other forms of activism.
They advocated for peace, an end to the Vietnam War,
civil rights, women's rights, LGBTQ rights, and workers' rights. Sarah
Jane was immediately captivated by the way PEN members were
(34:41):
actually doing something about the issues she thought were plaguing society.
Life here seemed to have a purpose in a way
that none of her previous lives ever did. Maybe she
could do something important here. Maybe this could be her
opportunity to finally live her big life. At her first meeting,
(35:04):
Sarah Jane introduced herself to the people in charge as
a passionate activist with extensive experience in accounting, and asked
if they needed help with their books. She didn't look
like an activist with her preppy, suburban mom blouses and cardigans,
but they did need help. Within just a few weeks,
(35:25):
Sarah Jane had found her way into one of the
group's messy offices and asserted herself as the lead accountant.
But even though she had managed to make herself at
least a little bit useful, she had trouble making friends
the same way her girl Scouts and classmates sensed that
something was off about her. The other volunteers at PENN
(35:47):
found Sarah Jane's personality off putting. Her attitude was volatile,
and she seemed to be more concerned with her status
as a member of the organization than with its mission.
But even though she wasn't very well liked. It wasn't
a reason to kick her out, at least not yet.
(36:08):
So Sarah Jane settled into a routine, spending her days
at the flooring shop and her nights at PEN meetings
and events. The activism work consumed her free time and
eventually her identity, and she loved every minute of it.
(36:33):
On a Saturday morning in September nineteen seventy five, a
few years into her work with Penn, Sarah Jane opened
up the San Francisco Chronicle to find a report that
President Gerald Ford would be visiting the Bay Area. He
would be in downtown San Francisco at the Saint Francis
Hotel on September twenty second for a luncheon with the
(36:56):
World Affairs Council. He wouldn't be making any public appearances,
it said, but he'd be traveling in his motorcade to
the airport sometime that afternoon. And that's when an idea
popped into Sarah Jane's mind. She may not fit in
with the young, bleeding heart hippies and the activist community.
(37:19):
She knew a few things that they didn't know about
the way the world worked. She knew that sometimes small
actions weren't enough. Sometimes, in order to make big changes,
you had to make a statement. Sometimes, if people didn't
see things the way you did, you had to make
them pay attention. Sarah Jane knew how to make people
(37:44):
pay attention. This would be her moment, her chance to
be the main character she always wanted to be. It
was with this conviction that Sarah Jane drove herself to
the Saint Francis Hotel on September twenty second, nineteen seventy five,
with a thirty eight revolver in her purse, and aimed
(38:04):
it at the President. A single gunshot rings out, Screams
pierce the air. The crowd scrambles. The President Ford does
not fall. The bullet flies five inches to the right
(38:27):
of his head and chips the wall behind him. Sarah
Jane is standing with her hands still holding the gun
in the air, but before she can take another shot,
a burly man behind her lunges grabs her arm and
pulls it down just long enough for a police officer's
nearby to take her gun and pin her to the ground.
(38:51):
Sarah Jane has missed her chance, and she won't get
another one. Newspapers the next morning would scramble to find
information about this woman who seemed to have come out
of nowhere to assassinate the president. What the reporters didn't
know was that Sarah Jane hadn't actually come out of nowhere.
(39:12):
In fact, law enforcement knew all about her, but not
because of her nefarious passed. Actually, law enforcement knew about
Sarah Jane because she'd been working with the FBI for months.
(39:49):
Join me next week on the greatest true crime stories
ever told to find out how Sarah Jane got mixed
up with the FBI and how she went from working
for the government to trying to take it down. That's
in part two of our two part series about Sarah
Jane Moore, the woman who tried to kill the President.
(40:10):
I'd like to shout out Jerry Spieler's book Housewife Assassin,
The Woman who Tried to Kill President Ford, which was
our biggest source for today's episode. It's really the only
place you'll find detailed information about Sarah Jane's life, and
I highly recommend getting a copy. All other sources we
used are cited in the show notes. Plus, at the
(40:34):
end of next week's episode, I get to interview Jerry
Spieler about Sarah Jane, so I hope you'll come back
for that too. For more information about this case and
others we cover on the show, visit diversion audio dot com.
The Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told is a production
of Diversion Audio. I'm Mary Kay mcbraer and I hosted
(40:58):
this episode. This episode was written by Grace Heerman. Our
show was produced by Emma Dumouth, edited by Antonio Enriquez,
Theme music by Tyler Cash. Executive produced by Scott Waxman.
Diversion audio. A note this episode contains mature content and
descriptions of violence that may be disturbing for some listeners.
Please take care in listening. It's a chilly Monday morning
(00:32):
in San Francisco in September of nineteen seventy five. A
forty five year old book keeper named Sarah Jane Moore
wakes up early, drops off her nine year old son
at school, runs a few errands, and then drives downtown
to the Saint Francis Hotel. She parks her car in
the garage across the street and walks over to join
(00:55):
the crowd that's gathered on the sidewalk outside scene. A
few thousand people are there, and there's a security rope
barrier keeping everyone back on the sidewalk. Sarah Jane is
wearing slacks and a jacket, and she has the kind
of floppy bouffont hairstyle that was popular in the mid seventies. Honestly,
(01:18):
she's pretty indistinguishable from any other middle aged woman in
the crowd, which is probably on purpose. The crowd is
starting to get bigger now, and as more and more
people shuffle in, Sarah Jane gets pushed almost to the
ropes at the front. She starts to feel a little uncomfortable.
(01:39):
She doesn't want to be this close, but she doesn't
let it distract her. She has a job to do
and she's going to do it. Sarah Jane holds her
purse tight against her waist as the space between her
and the people around her gets tighter. She takes a
deep breath and settles in for what she knows could
(02:00):
be a long wait. An hour goes by like this,
and then two, and then three, and then finally, out
(02:21):
of the hotel comes none other than the current President
of the United States, Gerald Ford. He has police and
secret service around him, and they're all walking out of
the hotel to get to his car, which is parked
along the sidewalk. He's not here to make a speech.
(02:44):
He's just making a quick exit on his way to
his next appointment. But before the President gets in the car,
he pauses for a moment and waves at the crowd.
Everyone starts applauding and cheering, and it's now that Sarah
Jane reaches her right hand into the purse she's carrying
(03:04):
and pulls out a gun. It's a thirty eight caliber Revolver.
Sarah Jane cocks it and takes aim right at Gerald
Ford's head, and then Welcome to the greatest true crime
(03:35):
stories ever told. I'm Mary Kay McBrayer. Today's episode we're
calling The Housewife who Tried to Kill the President Part one.
It's part one of a two part series about the
unlikely woman who wanted to kill the president and the
bizarre life she led, which the headlines never got quite right.
(04:19):
In most of my stories on this podcast, I like
to leave you in the dark a little bit. I'll
start with a flashback or an anecdote about a supporting character,
but I try to keep you guessing about the main
event until the end. With this story, though, I started
at the climax, because, to be honest, the crime that
(04:40):
this week's subject was involved in, the thing that got
her into the history books and for which she will
forever be known, is just the tip of the iceberg.
Her most known victim, President Gerald Ford, is someone so
powerful that most of the time Sarah Jane's story gets
squeezed into a footnote on his Wikipedia page. But as
(05:04):
you're about to learn, President Ford was only one in
a trail of victims. Few people even realize Sarah Jane
left others in her wake. The biggest question seems to
be how did this educated, matronly middle class woman get
tangled up in a plot to kill the president? But
(05:27):
appearances deceive because the more you learn about Sarah Jane,
the less surprising this incident gets. In this two part series,
we're going to take a look at the real Sarah Jane,
the Sarah Jane that went home each night and looked
at herself in the bathroom mirror before crawling into bed,
(05:47):
The Sarah Jane that the press was never able to capture.
And by the end of this series, trust me, you'll
believe me when I say that the incident that got
her into the history books might be shocking, but it's
the stuff she did before or an after that will
really blow your mind. Let's travel back to West Virginia,
(06:17):
where Sarah Jane was born in February nineteen thirty. Her
family home was in a town called Charleston, nestled in
the lush Appalachian Mountains. She was born Sarah Jane Kahan
to parents Ruth and Oloff Khan. At first glance, the
Khan family appeared to be the picture perfect middle class
(06:38):
American family. There were five kids, three boys and two girls,
and there was just enough space for them in their
two story log home. A thicket of woods crept up
to the back of the house, and the modest neighborhood
was the perfect place to run and play. Their father, Oloff,
was a hard working chemical engineer for DuPont. He earned
(07:00):
ten thousand dollars a year, which was a very respectable
income in the depression era. Her mother, Ruth, took care
of the home and was a diligent housewife, always keeping
things sparkling clean and making sure her kids were tidy
and polite. She was one of those moms who always
knew what was going on in the neighborhood, and she
probably showed up with the best snacks. Zooming in a
(07:24):
bit on life inside the con home revealed a few
cracks in their idyllic image, though. According to interviews with
Sarah Jane's siblings, Olof was a cold and exacting father.
He wasn't the type to play or even interact much
with his kids. In fact, they rarely saw him in
anything but a three piece suit, even when the kids
(07:47):
were very young. Evenings were to be civil. When the
family would gather for dinner, Oloff expected good behavior and manners.
After the kids cleared the table, they would work on
homework or practice their instruments in the living room, where
Olaf would light a cigarette and read the paper. Any
disturbance would be met with anger. In the rare instance,
(08:09):
when one of the kids would work up the courage
to ask a question about homework assignment, Olaf would respond
by raising his eyebrows and replying in a flat voice,
if I told you, you wouldn't understand anyway, what a jerkyal.
Their mother, Ruth, wasn't any warmer. She had extremely high
standards for her children and expected them to excel in
(08:32):
whatever they were doing. For Ruth, perfection wasn't too much
to ask. This kind of parenting impacts people in different ways,
and it's impossible to say whether and to what degree
Sarah Jane's upbringing directly impacted the person she would later become.
But one thing I think we can say is that
(08:54):
living in a world of black and white, right and wrong,
with incredibly high standards to live up to, could definitely
contribute to some extreme views of the world. Despite her parents'
attempts to keep her on the right track, Sarah Jane
never quite seemed to fit in, either at home or
(09:14):
at school. Her siblings got along great, they each had
their own hobbies and bonds with one another, but Sarah
Jane often kept to herself. Academics made sense to her,
and she did very well in school, though she even
skipped a grade in elementary school. She was active in
orchestra and ballet and other after school groups, but most
(09:38):
people who knew her would say that something was slightly
off with Sarah Jane. She struggled to connect with her classmates.
One of her junior high teachers delicately described her as
a little odd. According to one of her ballet school classmates,
Sarah Jane would tell crazy stories to the other girls
(09:59):
in class, stuff about her family being descendants of royalty
and other things that the girls in class knew couldn't
possibly be true. The adults in the neighborhood tried hard
to get the kids to include her, but this just
made Sarah Jane more of an outcast. One of her
fellow Girl Scout Troop members recalled that even if you
(10:20):
tried to be nice to her, she never reciprocated. She
never tried to really be a part of anything. The
weird thing was for as much as the other kids
made her feel unwelcome, Sarah Jane loved their attention. In fact,
she demanded it. It almost seemed like she either didn't
(10:43):
notice that she made other people uncomfortable or she didn't care.
One of the most bizarre examples of this was at
her thirteenth birthday party, when Sarah Jane insisted that all
the neighborhood kids sit and listen to her perform a
violin recital before anyone could have a slice of cake.
I mean, we love the main character energy, but this
(11:06):
is bordering on manipulative. The one social space where Sarah
Jane did seem to fit in, though, was the theater.
She joined her high school's drama club, and even though
they didn't want to hang out with her, her classmates
couldn't help but respect her acting talent. Like so many
misfits before her, it seemed like stepping into the character
(11:27):
of another person came naturally to Sarah Jane, almost like
it was more comfortable to her than figuring out who
she was in real life. Despite her social awkwardness, Sarah
Jane was capable and smart. Her loved ones assumed she'd
become successful in some way, maybe go to college, become
(11:47):
a teacher or actress. Maybe she'd even fall in love
and start a family. But that was before she disappeared.
(12:13):
One day in the fall of nineteen forty six, when
Sarah Jane was sixteen, she packed up for school in
the morning, left home like she always did, but never arrived.
She didn't return that evening either. She didn't leave a note,
didn't tell anyone what she was doing or where she
was going. Her parents were, of course panicked. They informed
(12:35):
the police, who mounted a full search and questioned the town.
No one had a clue as to where she could be,
nor could they think of any activities or people she
might be involved with that would have called her away.
Three days later, just as abruptly as she had left,
Sarah Jane walked back into the house as if nothing
(12:57):
had happened. She looked exactly the way she looked the
day she disappeared. Her family begged for an explanation, but
Sarah Jane didn't give one. In fact, she refused to
talk to anyone about the incident at all. Was it
an abduction, her parents wonder, or sexual assault? Did she
(13:17):
have some sort of secret romance with a boy in
the next town over. Her mother, Ruth, insisted that Sarah
Jane get examined by the family doctor to check for
any signs of abuse or harm. The doctor sent her
home with a clean bill of health, so Sarah Jane
was not injured, she didn't appear to be traumatized, and
(13:40):
clearly she hadn't been kidnapped. Eventually, when Sarah Jane's family
realized that their questioning was no use, they gave up.
Anyone who asked. They just said it was amnesia, and
Sarah Jane said nothing. Sarah Jane had always been a
little unusual, but this was the first time that her
(14:03):
parents had seen her not only completely disobey the rules,
but refused to acknowledge the seriousness of her behavior. It
was almost as if she was testing a boundary, seeing
how far she could push her family, how off the
wall she could act and still managed to convince them
that nothing was wrong. It's like she was normalizing her behavior,
(14:26):
either because she didn't want her loved ones to acknowledge
how unusual it really was, or because she didn't realize
it herself. Either way, it would not be the last
time she pulled a stunt like this. When it came
time for Sarah Jane to graduate high school in nineteen
forty seven, her parents were happy to learn that she
(14:47):
was planning to go into medicine, a fine occupation for
a smart girl like her. She was accepted into a
top tier nursing school, and she excelled there and minished
gave her glowing reviews, and it seemed like maybe Sarah
Jane had finally found her thing. But after just one semester,
(15:10):
without explanation, Sarah Jane changed her mind. In nineteen forty eight,
she dropped out and announced to her parents that she'd
be joining the Women's Army Corps instead. All right, they thought,
she's never mentioned anything about the army before, but at
least she's got a plan, and Sarah Jane was nothing
(15:34):
if not driven. She told her parents she had her
sights set on becoming a commissioned officer, and like in
most things she attempted to do, Sarah Jane was kind
of kicking ass. She earned top marks on the qualifying
tests and military arms training, and it seemed like she
was right on track to becoming an officer. But just
(15:57):
as she was rounding toward the finish line, Sarah Jane
took another abrupt turn that no one saw coming. In
nineteen forty nine, she got married marine's staff Sergeant Wallace E.
Anderson was his name, and they probably met on the
base where Sarah Jane was in training. They got married quickly,
(16:19):
and in spite of the fact that marrying would bar
Sarah Jane from ever becoming an officer, which up until
this point seemed like her dream. In the space of
just two years, Sarah Jane had gone from high school
graduate to nursing student, to army cadet, and now to housewife.
(16:41):
Her family was confused, as was I at learning of
this particular pivot, but they were happy that she seemed
happy at least. Also, I am completely aware and perhaps
a good example of the fact that people can make
impulsive and inconsistent decisions in their early adulthood but ultimately
end up mostly fine and level headed. But that was
(17:05):
not the case with Sarah Jane. Now, we're not going
to get too deep into Wallace or her marriage to him, because,
believe it or not, Sarah Jane changes her mind about
him pretty quickly. But I mentioned him here because there's
one incident from this period of Sarah Jane's life that
is just too strange not to highlight. It was on
(17:27):
one of those early days of her marriage that Sarah
Jane decided to go on a public tour of the
White House. She and Wallace were living in Pennsylvania at
the time, and Wallace must have been on duty because
Sarah Jane made the trip out to DC by herself.
It was a beautiful spring day. The cherry blossoms were
decorating the National Mall, and Sarah Jane, who was just
(17:50):
twenty years old at the time, wore a neat little
pastel suit to match. At the end of the tour,
Sarah Jane separated herself from the group and started wandering
across the White House lawn. After she'd made it a
few yards away, Sarah Jane suddenly went rigid and collapsed
(18:11):
onto the ground. Secret Service agents and other bystanders rushed
in to see what was wrong. Apparently she had fainted.
When she regained consciousness a few moments later, Sarah Jane
told the gathered crowd that she didn't know who or
where she was. When the Secret Service agents couldn't find
(18:31):
any form of ID on her, the only thing they
could think to do was to check her into the
Walter Reed Army Hospital. Here's where it gets really weird.
As the nurses undressed Sarah Jane to get her into
her hospital gown, they found something totally bizarre tucked up
into the bodice of her dress. It was a handful
(18:55):
of printed photographs, all of Sarah Jane. Over the next
few days, because Sarah Jane's identity was still a mystery,
her fainting spell got picked up by the local news.
Newspapers published a few of the photos she carried with
her and asked whether anyone could identify this mystery woman.
(19:15):
It didn't take long for her husband and her mother
to catch the story and rushed to the hospital to
id her. And would you believe it, her memory mysteriously
returned right after they showed up. Police leader concluded that
Sarah Jane had purposely traveled to the White House without
her idea. Now, we may never know exactly what was
(19:37):
behind this bonker's incident, but what I can say is
that it fits into a pattern of bizarre outbursts from
Sarah Jane that not only demand attention from everyone around her,
but forced them to redefine what normal behavior looks like
just like she did when she disappeared in high school.
Sarah Jane went on after this amnesia spell as if
(20:02):
nothing was wrong. Is almost like little by little, she
normalized the insanity of these behaviors. For Sarah Jane, these
feigning spells and mysterious games of hooky were harmless enough,
but they were paving the way for something much weirder
and much more dangerous. Now back to Sarah Jane's marriage
(20:23):
to Wallace Anderson. Practically as soon as his name escaped
your lips, Sarah Jane had divorced him and moved on
to her second husband, Air Force Captain Sidney Lewis Manning.
And you may notice a pattern here. Sarah Jane loves
military types, especially high ranking ones. That's one thing about
(20:44):
her that I can understand. Sarah Jane and Sidney began
their marriage by moving into family housing on the Air
Force base in Tucson, Arizona, where Sydney was stationed. In
nineteen fifty one, at age twenty one, she became pregnant
with their first child, and two more babies followed quickly
(21:06):
after that. Sarah Jane now had her feet firmly planted
in the world of motherhood, and this new persona was
sticking just about as well as the others she tried on.
The other mothers in the Air Force community could clearly
see that Sarah Jane was struggling. She had a hard
time keeping up with all the tasks of running a household,
(21:27):
which I mean, I completely get that, you forget to
switch over one load of laundry before it sours and
it blows the whole process to smotherings. But worse, and
probably more important, Sarah Jane just didn't seem to like
being a mother. She fed her kids on an erratic schedule,
(21:48):
The energy of the house was chaotic, but in an
abnormal way, and Sarah Jane seemed resentful of it all.
This wasn't the grandeur she had envisioned for her life,
and her marriage wasn't doing any better. With each new
addition to the family, Sydney and Sarah Jane grew further apart.
(22:10):
He started taking more overseas assignments, leaving Sarah Jane even
more isolated and unhappy. Eventually, he filed for divorce, and
once it was finalized, he quickly lost touch with both
Sarah Jane and his children. In nineteen fifty six, Sarah
Jane made one of her very rare calls to her mother.
(22:34):
She needed help. She said she wanted to visit West
Virginia with the kids and stay with Ruth and Olaft
for a bit. Ruth was thrilled. She had been watching
Sarah Jane's home life unravel from afar for the last
few years, and she thought that maybe this would be
her chance to finally help Sarah Jane get a handle
on this whole motherhood thing. The fights were booked and
(22:58):
Ruth and Olaf prepared for their stay. Sarah Jane's brother, Dana,
who still lived in West Virginia, was in charge of
collecting Sarah Jane and the kids from the airport when
they arrived. On the day of the flight. The plane
landed right on time, just before sunset. Dana stood at
the tarmac and watched the ground crew roll the big
(23:21):
staircase up to the plane's exit door. As the door
opened and the first passengers got off, Dana watched for
the faces of his sister and her kids. Passenger after
passenger walked down the staircase and was greeted by friends
and loved ones on the ground, but no Sarah Jane. Finally,
(23:44):
after every other passenger had left, Dana watched as little
Sidney Junior, who was just four years old at the time,
grabbed the handrail and carefully walked down the steps alongside
his three year old sister. Behind them was a flight
attendant holding their nine month old brother in her arms.
(24:07):
Dana was confused Sarah Jane was not with them. Sarah
Jane's parents were shocked when Dana arrived home without her.
They were sure something terrible had happened. They called the
airline right away, but the airline's staff had no information.
(24:27):
When they tried her home phone number and found that
it was disconnected, they called the police. Days went by
with no word from Sarah Jane. Sarah Jane's parents even
ended up calling Sydney, the children's father, at his air
Force base, but he had no idea where Sarah Jane
could be. After weeks of panic and confusion, the cons
(24:49):
finally had to accept what they didn't want to believe
was true. Sarah Jane was not hurt or sick or abducted.
She had orchestrated this whole thing. She had disappeared again,
and this time she had left her children behind. Two
(25:10):
and a half months went by without a single word
from Sarah Jane, and then one day she called. And
she called collect from a payphone. For those who weren't
alive when payphones were a thing, call and collect meant
that the person receiving the call is the one who
has to pay the charge. It's a funny little detail,
(25:30):
but it must have just been salt in the wound
for Sarah Jane's parents. Not only did Sarah Jane leave
her kids on her parents doorstep, but she wouldn't even
pay the two dollars to make the phone call to
let them know she was okay. Her parents, of course,
begged her to come home and take care of her kids.
(25:50):
They would help as much as they could, but the
children needed their mother. Sarah Jane agreed and promised she'd
be back. She never said. When five more months and
a few sporadic phone calls came and went, Sarah Jane
never showed up. That's when the calls stopped altogether. In
(26:12):
an act of desperation and exhaustion, the cons eventually called
the police to have Sarah Jane arrested for child neglect,
but by then even the police couldn't find her. Sarah
Jane had actually disappeared this time. To be honest, if
Sarah Jane hadn't gone on to attempt to assassinate a
(26:34):
US president, this incident could have been the focus of
this entire episode. It's worth pausing to recognize the amount
of trauma her actions are causing her family during this time.
The crimes we normally cover on this podcast often tend
to be violent and fatal, so it could be easy
to cruise past an incident like this without acknowledging how
(26:55):
emotionally destructive it is. Not only have these children had
to watch their parents get divorced, but now, only a
few months later, they're being abandoned by both of them.
It's difficult to fathom the pain of that. And let's
not forget how life altering this was for Sarah Jane's parents.
(27:16):
Ruth and Olaf had already done the whole parenting thing
with their children, and they were just getting ready to
settle into retirement. But now it was back to diaper
changes and baseball practice and college tuition. They wouldn't be
settling down for at least another eighteen years. So when
I say that Sarah Jane left a trail of victims
(27:37):
behind her. It may not be the kind of victims
you're used to hearing about in our stories, but they
were victims all the same. Eventually, Ruth and Olaf filed
to adopt their grandchildren outright so they could collect some
Social Security benefits and save some money to put them
through college. What they can never do, though, was heal
(27:58):
the wound of being left by a mother for reasons
they would never understand. But Sarah Jane wouldn't disappear completely
from her children's lives. Twenty years from now, they'd see
her again, but this time it would be on the
front page of the newspaper. Only Sarah Jane knows exactly
(28:40):
what she did in the years after she abandoned her kids.
The records that exist suggest that she was probably living
in Los Angeles, but she covered her tracks well enough
that law enforcement was never able to locate her. It's
possible that she used aliases and even in different Social
Security number. From what we can tell, it seems like
(29:03):
she studied accounting and began to support herself as a bookkeeper,
and surprise surprise, she also managed to find a new
husband and just a real quick polling question for our listeners.
You know, we have a lot of episodes that feature
serial monogamous women who get married many, many times, and
(29:24):
I just wonder sometimes, how how did they find these guys? Like,
how did they convince them to get married? I don't
even think it's necessarily a regional or time period related thing.
My brain just doesn't compute it anyway. Her new husband's
name was John Alberg, and he worked in Hollywood, y'all,
(29:45):
this poor guy. He was known around town as a
kind and genuine man, and he was head over heels
in love with Sarah Jane. But just a month after
their wedding and days after discovering she was pregnant with
his child, when know it, Sarah Jane had had enough.
She left John and moved to San Francisco, where she
(30:06):
decided she would raise the baby alone. Why san Francisco.
It's hard to know why Sarah Jane did anything, But
the one thing we do know about Sarah Jane is
that she wanted to live a big life. She wanted
to be at the center of things. Where better to
be in the mid nineteen seventies than San Francisco, the
(30:29):
epicenter of the political and cultural revolution that was turning
America upside down. For those of us who weren't alive
at this time, me included, it can be hard to
understand what a gigantic paradigm shift was going on in
the nineteen sixties and seventies in America. The buttoned up,
(30:49):
Ozzy and Harriet days when wives had dinner on the
table at five o'clock sharp were no more. Clothes were
getting looser, hair was getting longer, and women were leaving
their girdles and braws at home. In the fifties, most
Americans were content to live by the traditional values of
hard work, family and patriotism. But once the seventies rolled around,
(31:15):
political activism was ramping up all around the country. People
were upset. The Vietnam War seemed to be getting more
nonsensical and hopeless. Racial inequality was becoming more and more
difficult to ignore. In the South, feminism and civil rights
were on everyone's mind and were creating an atmosphere of
both optimism and tension. Enemy Number one for many radicals
(31:39):
was the President Gerald Ford. For one thing, Ford kept
America entangled in the Vietnam War. He also chose to
pardon Richard Nixon after his involvement in the Watergate scandal,
which seemed to most people like an obstruction of justice
and hanging over all of that, there were questions about
(31:59):
whether Ford was even a legitimate president. Now here's something
I didn't know until I started researching this story. Gerald
Ford was the first person in America to ever become
president without being elected. It sounds crazy, but it's true.
When Nixon's Vice President, Spiro Agnew resigned in nineteen seventy three,
(32:24):
Nixon appointed Ford to fill Agnew's place. Then, when Nixon
resigned a year later, Ford automatically ascended to the presidency.
It's a bizarre return of events, and it made many
Americans feel like the democratic process was crumbling under their feet.
(32:45):
So suffice it to say left wing Americans were upset
about it in the seventies, and San Francisco had become
their home base. You can imagine how the energy of
a city like this would have appealed to a bright,
ambitious woman like Sarah Jane when she struggled to find
purpose as a housewife. The energy of these young, forward
(33:08):
thinking activists was seductive. They had purpose, they were doing
something that mattered or at least it seemed that way
to Sarah Jane. She decided she wanted to be one
of them, so she began to try on her most
compelling and influential persona to date political activist. Once she
(33:32):
arrived in San Francisco, Sarah Jane began to transform from
an isolated conservative military wife who was uninterested and uninvolved
in politics into something very different. She started reading, hanging
out on college campuses, and informing herself about the political
issues of the day. She found easy retail work during
(33:56):
the day at a linoleum flooring shop where she earned
enough to pay for rink and food, and in the
evenings she started driving to the warehouse district where she'd
heard some of the radical groups were holding their meetings.
One of the groups Sarah Jane became involved with was
called People in Need or PIN. Like many of the
left wing groups of this era, PIN was all about
(34:19):
social change through protests, strikes, and other forms of activism.
They advocated for peace, an end to the Vietnam War,
civil rights, women's rights, LGBTQ rights, and workers' rights. Sarah
Jane was immediately captivated by the way PEN members were
(34:41):
actually doing something about the issues she thought were plaguing society.
Life here seemed to have a purpose in a way
that none of her previous lives ever did. Maybe she
could do something important here. Maybe this could be her
opportunity to finally live her big life. At her first meeting,
(35:04):
Sarah Jane introduced herself to the people in charge as
a passionate activist with extensive experience in accounting, and asked
if they needed help with their books. She didn't look
like an activist with her preppy, suburban mom blouses and cardigans,
but they did need help. Within just a few weeks,
(35:25):
Sarah Jane had found her way into one of the
group's messy offices and asserted herself as the lead accountant.
But even though she had managed to make herself at
least a little bit useful, she had trouble making friends
the same way her girl Scouts and classmates sensed that
something was off about her. The other volunteers at PENN
(35:47):
found Sarah Jane's personality off putting. Her attitude was volatile,
and she seemed to be more concerned with her status
as a member of the organization than with its mission.
But even though she wasn't very well liked. It wasn't
a reason to kick her out, at least not yet.
(36:08):
So Sarah Jane settled into a routine, spending her days
at the flooring shop and her nights at PEN meetings
and events. The activism work consumed her free time and
eventually her identity, and she loved every minute of it.
(36:33):
On a Saturday morning in September nineteen seventy five, a
few years into her work with Penn, Sarah Jane opened
up the San Francisco Chronicle to find a report that
President Gerald Ford would be visiting the Bay Area. He
would be in downtown San Francisco at the Saint Francis
Hotel on September twenty second for a luncheon with the
(36:56):
World Affairs Council. He wouldn't be making any public appearances,
it said, but he'd be traveling in his motorcade to
the airport sometime that afternoon. And that's when an idea
popped into Sarah Jane's mind. She may not fit in
with the young, bleeding heart hippies and the activist community.
(37:19):
She knew a few things that they didn't know about
the way the world worked. She knew that sometimes small
actions weren't enough. Sometimes, in order to make big changes,
you had to make a statement. Sometimes, if people didn't
see things the way you did, you had to make
them pay attention. Sarah Jane knew how to make people
(37:44):
pay attention. This would be her moment, her chance to
be the main character she always wanted to be. It
was with this conviction that Sarah Jane drove herself to
the Saint Francis Hotel on September twenty second, nineteen seventy five,
with a thirty eight revolver in her purse, and aimed
(38:04):
it at the President. A single gunshot rings out, Screams
pierce the air. The crowd scrambles. The President Ford does
not fall. The bullet flies five inches to the right
(38:27):
of his head and chips the wall behind him. Sarah
Jane is standing with her hands still holding the gun
in the air, but before she can take another shot,
a burly man behind her lunges grabs her arm and
pulls it down just long enough for a police officer's
nearby to take her gun and pin her to the ground.
(38:51):
Sarah Jane has missed her chance, and she won't get
another one. Newspapers the next morning would scramble to find
information about this woman who seemed to have come out
of nowhere to assassinate the president. What the reporters didn't
know was that Sarah Jane hadn't actually come out of nowhere.
(39:12):
In fact, law enforcement knew all about her, but not
because of her nefarious passed. Actually, law enforcement knew about
Sarah Jane because she'd been working with the FBI for months.
(39:49):
Join me next week on the greatest true crime stories
ever told to find out how Sarah Jane got mixed
up with the FBI and how she went from working
for the government to trying to take it down. That's
in part two of our two part series about Sarah
Jane Moore, the woman who tried to kill the President.
(40:10):
I'd like to shout out Jerry Spieler's book Housewife Assassin,
The Woman who Tried to Kill President Ford, which was
our biggest source for today's episode. It's really the only
place you'll find detailed information about Sarah Jane's life, and
I highly recommend getting a copy. All other sources we
used are cited in the show notes. Plus, at the
(40:34):
end of next week's episode, I get to interview Jerry
Spieler about Sarah Jane, so I hope you'll come back
for that too. For more information about this case and
others we cover on the show, visit diversion audio dot com.
The Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told is a production
of Diversion Audio. I'm Mary Kay mcbraer and I hosted
(40:58):
this episode. This episode was written by Grace Heerman. Our
show was produced by Emma Dumouth, edited by Antonio Enriquez,
Theme music by Tyler Cash. Executive produced by Scott Waxman.
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