Sara Jane Moore, the former psychiatric patient who tried to assassinate President Gerald Ford during an era of astonishing violence and upheaval in California, died Wednesday at a nursing home in Franklin, Tenn., according to The New York Times.
Moore, who retreated to North Carolina after serving 32 years in federal prison but then was jailed again late in life, was 95. A cause of death was not reported.
As shocking as Moore’s attempt to kill the president was, it seemed a little less so during the frenetic 1970s.
It was 1975 in San Francisco. Charles Manson was on death row, kidnap victim-turned-accomplice Patty Hearst had just been arrested, and a very young governor named Jerry Brown was in his first year in office.
A former psychiatric patient, Moore chose this moment for a shock