Woman Who Tried to Shoot Ford Paroled

That's a reference to former US President Gerald Ford and not the car.

I wasn't gonna touch this story at first, but then ran into this account.

Sara Jane Moore started the new year Tuesday a free woman more than three decades after a bizarre assassination attempt on President Ford that still baffles even her own attorney.

"I never got a satisfactory answer from her as to why she did it," said retired federal public defender James F. Hewitt.

Prison officials have offered no details on why Moore, 77, was paroled Monday from a federal penitentiary east of San Francisco, where she had been serving a life sentence. Moore had been behind bars for 32 years.

The one-time aspiring film actress was 40 feet away from Ford outside a hotel in San Francisco when she fired a shot at him on Sept. 22, 1975. As she raised her .38-caliber revolver and pulled the trigger, Oliver Sipple, a disabled former Marine standing next to her, pushed up her arm. The bullet flew over Ford's head by several feet.

The attempt came 17 days after a disciple of Charles Manson tried to kill the president in Sacramento.

Despite Moore's troubled background, which included five failed marriages, name changes and involvement with political groups like the Symbionese Liberation Army, her motives have never been clear.

In recent interviews, Moore said she regretted her actions, saying she was blinded by her radical political views and convinced that the government had declared war on advocates of left-wing politics.

"I was functioning, I think, purely on adrenaline and not thinking clearly. I have often said that I had put blinders on and I was only listening to what I wanted to hear," she said a year ago in an interview with KGO-TV. [emphasis mine]

Noticing my emphasis, does this sound lie a person who should be on the streets? She attempted an assassination, but doesn't really know why? One is incapable of shooting a firearm at 77 years of age?

Via Mail Tribune.