Assassination!: The Brick Chronicle of Attempts on the Lives of Twelve US Presidents (30 page)

Consequently shunned by her radical friends and useless to the FBI, Moore didn’t know what to do next. Then, on June 8, 1975, “Popeye” Jackson and his girlfriend were shot to death as they sat in a car in Moore’s neighborhood. An anonymous caller told Moore, “You’re next.”

Moore decided to buy herself a .44 caliber revolver and made trips to the shooting range for practice. She brought her son with her to live in an apartment in the East Bay suburbs for most of July but returned to San Francisco by August.

On September 5, Moore learned of Lynette Fromme’s attempt on President Ford’s life. On the 18th, Patty Hearst and another SLA member were captured by police. Terrified that she would be blamed for their arrest, Moore called the police and threatened the president, hoping they would take her into custody where she would be safe.

The police visited Moore and confiscated her .44 caliber revolver. Secret Service agents also interviewed her but decided she was not enough of a threat to warrant surveillance during the president’s visit to San Francisco.

The next morning, Moore dropped her son off at school and drove out to the East Bay suburbs to buy a new gun, this time a .38 caliber revolver. She loaded it while driving back across the Bay Bridge into San Francisco.

Feeling desperate and hoping to do something that would prove herself to the radical friends she had betrayed, Moore went to Union Square to join the throngs of others waiting to see the president as he emerged from his hotel.

Moore’s first shot missed the president’s head by about six inches, likely because she hadn’t adjusted the sights on her new gun. She was about to line up a second shot when a decorated ex-marine named Oliver Sipple shouted, “Gun!” and grabbed her arm, pulling her down.

Immediately after the shooting, Moore was dragged into the St. Francis Hotel, where she was questioned by police. She explained that she knew she’d fired too high and noted, “If I had had my .44 with me, I would have caught him.”

Sipple was immediately hailed by the press as a hero, but he did not want the media attention. He had not revealed to his family that he was gay and worried that now, since he was a well-known member of San Francisco’s gay community, such news would be leaked.

Indeed, newspapers soon hailed the “Homosexual Hero” who saved the president’s life. Sipple’s family back in Detroit was mortified. His father and two brothers endured taunting and laughter at the GM factory where they worked. Sipple’s mother stopped talking to him for years.

Sipple received a letter of thanks from President Ford but was never invited to the White House. As years went by, Sipple became a heavy drinker and sometimes told people he wished he had never acted to save Ford’s life. He died at age forty-seven in 1989.

After being examined by psychologists, Moore was found fit to stand trial. She pled guilty and made a statement before the court, affirming that she had known what she was doing, and then added, “To those of you who share my dream of a new revolution in this land of ours, I say, ‘Fight on.’”