Sara Jane Moore, who attempted to assassinate Ford, dies at 95

Sara Jane Moore, who attempted to assassinate President Gerald Ford in 1975, died Sept. 24 at a nursing home in Franklin, Tennessee, her friend Demetria Kalodimos told the Nashville Banner. She was 95. Her death came two days after the 50th anniversary of the shooting outside the St. Francis Hotel in downtown San Francisco, where Moore confronted the president on Sept. 22, 1975.

Accounts differ on the exact sequence of shots fired that day. Some reports say Moore fired a single round from a .38 caliber revolver before being subdued, while other accounts say she fired twice and that a bystander, Marine veteran Oliver Sipple, deflected a second shot that then struck a taxi driver, who suffered nonfatal injuries. Authorities later said the revolver had a faulty sight, a defect that investigators concluded may have prevented a fatal outcome.

Moore, then 45 and living in the Bay Area, pleaded guilty to attempted assassination and was sentenced to life in federal prison. She escaped briefly in 1979 but was captured within hours and later received an extension to her sentence. After serving more than 32 years, she was paroled in 2007 and relocated to the Nashville area, where she spent...