contemplative
Moore was a former nursing school student, Women's Army Corps (WAC) recruit, and accountant. She had been divorced five times and had four children before she turned to revolutionary politics in 1975. According to friends of hers, she was obsessed with Patty Hearst. After Hearst was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army, her father Randolph Hearst created the organization People in Need (P.I.N.) to feed the poor. Moore was a bookkeeper for P.I.N. and also an FBI informant. She had been picked up by police on an illegal handgun charge the day before the Ford incident, but was released. The police confiscated her .44 caliber pistol and 113 rounds of ammunition.
On September 22, 1985, Moore was about 40 feet away from President Ford at the St. Francis Hotel. She fired a single shot at him with a .38 caliber revolver while standing in the crowd across the street from the hotel. She was using a gun she bought in haste that morning. Fortunately for Ford, the sights were six inches off the point-of-impact and she narrowly missed him. FBI agent Richard Vitamanti measured the location the next day. After realizing she had missed, she raised her arm, intending to fire again, but Oliver Sipple, an ex-Marine, dived towards her, knocking her arm the second time, and saving President Ford's life.
Sipple later said in an interview: "I saw [her gun] pointed out there and I grabbed for it. [...] I lunged and grabbed the woman's arm and the gun went off." The single shot which Moore did fire from her .38 caliber revolver ricocheted off the entrance to the hotel.
Moore pleaded guilty to attempted assassination and was sentenced to life in prison. At her sentencing hearing Moore stated: "Am I sorry I tried? Yes and no. Yes, because it accomplished little except to throw away the rest of my life. And, no, I'm not sorry I tried, because at the time it seemed a correct expression of my anger."
In 1979, Moore escaped from the Alderson Federal Prison Camp in Alderson, West Virginia, but was captured only hours later. After her return, she was transferred to a more secure facility, and she served the remainder of her term at the federal women’s prison in Dublin, California.
In an interview in 2004, former President Ford described Moore as "off her mind" and said that he continued making public appearances, even after two attempts on his life within such a short time, because "a president has to be aggressive, has to meet the people."
On December 31, 2007, at age 77, Moore was released from prison on parole after serving 32 years of her life sentence. Ford had passed away a year and five days before her release. She will be under supervised parole at least until December of this year. When asked about her crime in a recent interview, Moore stated, "I am very glad I did not succeed. I know now that I was wrong to try."