According to an interview in Charleston (West Virginia) Gazette on Set. 24, 1975, Sara Jane Kahn was born in that city on February 15, 1930, into a comfortable middle class home, pictured here. Her family was Jewish, though they didn't seem to acknowledge it openly, and Sara Jane took her mother's maiden name as her own. The family regularly attended Randolph Street Baptist Church. Her father was an engineer for DuPont and her mother played violin in the Charleston Chamber Music Society. There were 5 children in the family (her position in this order was not readily known--was she oldest, like Lynette Fromme, or youngest like so many other assassins?). They seem to have been an artsy family--Sally Moore (as she prefered to be called) played flute and was the lead in the Senior play. An A student, bookish, quiet and non-frivilous, she hoped to become an actress. Nevertheless, a breach was forming between Sally and her father, described as a "non-nonsense disciplinarian," which widened when , as a teenager, Sally Moore developed an interest in the occult. Her first outward act of rebellion seems to have been becoming an Episcopalian, then going to a Catholic nursing school, from which, however, she was eventually expelled.

Moore seved briefly in the Women's Army Corps, then married a young Marine--also briefly. After the marriage ended she was found wandering aimlessly about Washington, apparently suffering from amnesia. She was treated at Walter Reed, then released. This was the first in a succession of five unsuccessful marriages. Immediately after the first marriage was annulled, she married an Air Force officer, with whom she had a son and a daughter; they divorced, remarried, and had another son. Then another divorce.

In 1958, Moore remarried again. This time she was living in California. Her husband was a minor executive in the film industry. Her older children were sent back to her parents in Charleston. Her promise to pay child support was not fulfilled. After unsuccessful efforts to compel her to pay, her parents gave up and adopted the grandchildren. The family did not hear of Sally again until her arrest.

At last Moore seemed free to pursue her own dreams. She studied diligently and became a CPA. However, years of intense study took a toll, as her fourth marriage disintegrated. By now Moore had another son. The couple separated, and Moore quickly remarried, to a Bay Area physician--so quickly, in fact, that her divorce had not yet become legal. Apart from this minor detail, Sally Moore had finally begun to live the  life of moderate luxury that she believed she deserved. However, instead of reveling in it, she became bored and depressed. The couple separated and in 1973 her fifth marriage was annulled. With her son in private school (thanks to the generosity of support payments), Sally took an accounting job, from which she was fired as general symptoms of withdrawal from life began to set in.

So where is Moore's head through all this? If status seeking consumed her early life, her arrival at status did not seem to bring happiness. She was lost. Her solution to this was to dabble in radical poltics. And where better than the Bay Area in 1973, at the height of the Patty Hearst affair. Sally volunteered her accounting services to the People In Need program that Randolph Hearst has set up in response to the ransom demand of Patty's kidnappers. Moore's dedication and skill helped her to gain the confidence of various radicals--she became a liaison between the millionaire Hearst and members of the radical community. Here was status of a new and satisfying kind. Suddenly this sheltered middle-aged woman was introduced, she recalled, to the

murky world of drugs, of wholesale screwing, of filthy language. Frequently I was the only person at parties who did not openly use drugs. This was the fringes of the movement--and it was really a shock to see how they lived.

I began to see that the leftist people I was working with were not enemies of this country--they were dedicated people working for qualitative change. They were not evil. Yes, they recognized revolution, they were dedicated to the armed overthrow of the Government --because they did not think there was any other way to do it.

What could she do to protect herself? How could she prove to the radicals that she was really one of them? The President's fated visit was announced. Moore purchased a .44 caliber pistol, made trips to the shooting range, and waited for the President's visit. A wrench was thrown into the works when the FBI finally accomplished the rescue/bust of Patty Hearst. Fearful that she'd be blamed by the radicals for tipping off the FBI, Moore called the San Francisio police to say that she was planning a test of their presidential security system. The Secret Service arrived promptly, and although they confiscated her weapon, they did not take her into custody, as she had apparently hoped, as they determined she was "psychologically incapable of assassination."

On the morning of the President's visit, Moore donned assassination gear--yellow polka-dot slacks and cowboy boots--took her 9 year old to school, and went to buy a new gun, a .38 calliber Smith and Wesson revolver. She drove recklessly through the city, hoping to get arrested, but no such luck. She was doomed.

She arrived in the city, parked her car and walked to the location where the President would appear. In an interview in the Los Angeles Times on Sept. 25, 1975, she stated:

There was a point when anything could have stopped me and almost did. The most trivial little thing and I would have said, "Oh, this is ludicrious. What am I doing standing here?" . . . There was a point when I was trapped. . . . I was actually up on the ropes, my hand in my purse, my finger on the trigger and the hammer back on the gun. I couldn't move, even if I had wanted to leave. I did try to leave once, but the crowd was just so tight.. . . . There was a point where I thought, "This has to be the most ridiculous thing I have done in my entire life. What the hell am I doing here, getting ready to shoot the President?" I turned around to leave. Couldn't get through the crowd.

Moore, after being convicted of escaping, in 1979.  Her next parole hearing is in May 2000.

Sources: Clarke, James W. American Assassins. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1982.
"Interview." Charleston Gazette 24 Sept. 1975:A1, B1.
"Interview." Los Angeles Times 23 Sept. 1975:1-19.
Keerdoha, Eileen. "Squeaky and Sara Jane." Newsweek 8 Nov. 1976:10.
"a.k.a Sara Jane." 30 Dec. 1999.  <http://www.lektrik.com/tmp/sarajane.htm>.
"Snapshots of the 20th Century." 30 Dec. 1999. <http://wvgazette.com/static/century/Gz0407.html>.
 

An interesting link reveals  how Kathleen Soliah commandeered Sara Jane's name.