Prologue

"There comes a point when the only way you can
make a statement is to pick up a gun." -- Sara Jane Moore


In September 1975, when I saw the photos of Sara Jane Moore being driven off to jail after her attempt on the life of President Gerald R. Ford, I, like so many others, I found the idea that this snub-nosed, apple-cheeked, middle-class mom had fired a weapon at the president almost impossible to believe.

At age forty-five, Sara Jane Moore was several years older than I was at the time, but we had one thing in common: We both had young sons. I pictured my child alone in the world as his mother was carted off to a federal prison and my heart immediately went out to this little boy.

On October 15, 1975, I received a hand-written note from Sara Jane, inviting me to visit her. The note was sent to me in care of the Los Angeles News Journal, where I worked. She had read an article I had written about a class-action suit against Sybil Brand Institute, Los Angeles County’s women’s jail, and she thought I would be a sympathetic ear. Further, she would begin serving her sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution at Terminal Island in San Pedro, California, just five miles from where I lived with my husband and young son. I was intrigued.

As the day for my visit approached, I tried to imagine what she would be like. It was January 1976. I couldn’t wait to meet the woman who had attempted to assassinate a U.S. president, a woman the newspapers described as sharp-tongued, scatterbrained, uncommunicative, and uncooperative. But the woman who approached me at the prison was not like that at all. She entered the room with confidence, extending her hand to me with a warm and friendly gesture, rather like central casting’s good-natured Aunt Millie. Middle-aged, of medium height, blue-eyed, with short, curly brown hair—a rounded suburban housewife. She could easily have been my neighbor. She looked me straight in the eye with her own clear gaze.

“I’m so glad you came,” she said, smiling broadly.
 
The disconnect was stunning. She behaved as if we were meeting for lunch at Chez Pannise, a five star restaurant in Berkeley, rather than sitting in the middle of a human storage facility. “By the way,” she asked with interest, “how old did you say your son is?” I had to stop her right then and there. I could see where this smooth talking Southern Woman was trying to take me. Maybe I never tried to murder anyone, but I did grow up in Los Angeles and I wasn't totally without some street savvy.

"Listen Sara Jane," I began.

She jumped in, "Oh, call me Sally. All my friends call me Sally."
"Ok, Sally. Sara Jane, look, I did not come here because I'm a fan of yours. I also didn't come here to save you and I'm certainly no sympathizer. I think what you tried to do was very wrong. I came because I'm a journalist and you asked me to come. I told you in my letter I'm not assigned to write about you. So, what is it you wanted to talk to me about?"

She ignored my speech and went on to tell me that need help getting birthday and Christmas gifts to her son. Could I help with that?

This was the quintessential Sara Jane, the persona she presents to the world. But this was not the only Sara Jane I came to know over the next thirty years. She might have been sitting in prison, but prison would only be a backdrop for her many personas: the gracious hostess, the efficient manager, the homey and talented seamstress and handcrafter, the valiant fighter for justice, or whoever she decided she would display to the world. That day, she was the gracious hostess. This was her reality; and like so many others in her life, I took it at face value for many years. It took me far too long to understand that her reality generally wasn’t the reality the rest of us inhabit.

I would also eventually discover that Sara Jane was charming and gracious when she wanted to be. For a long time she got a lot of support from me multiple ways – I served as a sounding board, as someone to send gifts to her son on her behalf and to send clothes to her during the years when the inmates were allowed to wear street garments. Once a year she could also receive a gift box, which usually contained toiletries, as long as I had it sent directly from a business.
 
I was happy to provide her with other conveniences, such as reading material. I knew that the women were always hungry for good reading as the mobile bookmobile had a limited selection, and that books were shared widely in the population. And, during those times when I could afford it, I sent her a small monthly allowance.

On my visits Sara Jane would “perform” and talk as if she were still entertaining in her suburban country club home in Danville, California, thirty miles from the city by the Bay.
 
Her letters to me were similar: perfectly printed, grammatically flawless, and excruciatingly detailed. They usually began with a “Thank you for . . .” and she always remembered to ask about my son and to highlight the similarities in our lives. No challenges, no questions, just polite and newsy letters and phone calls.
 
I never had a reason to doubt what she told me, and I never questioned her or checked on anything she said. It didn’t matter, and I just assumed as a given that what she said was true. After all, why would she lie to me?

In 2003, my schedule became more flexible and I went to see Sara Jane. It had been more than a year since my last visit.
When I explained that I had some time on my hands, Sara Jane said, "Well, now you should get back to your real writing."

"What do you suggest I write about?"

"Maybe it is finally time to write my book."

We talked about what it would mean for me to transition from a regular visitor to an official journalist, with privileges to bring in a tape recorder and paper for notes -- more than just a plastic sandwich-sized bag full of change for the vending machines.
As I began to sketch out datelines and create lists of people, Sara Jane started cancelling our visits. She would call me at the last minute the same morning I was to be driving 70 minutes to prison. Breathless on the phone with some sudden prison issue about why I couldn't get in to see her.

On our last visit, I began gently to ask her about growing up in Charleston, West Virginia. Her back stiffened and her head twisted in my direction.

“How did you know that I was from Charleston? I never told you where I grew up.”

"I know you didn't tell me. You didn't have to. It was all over every news story ever written about you," I said.
 
Through clenched teeth, she replied, "That may be. But I didn't tell you."

This interchange was one of several small red flags to me. Sara Jane's demand for control was going to be a problem.
I had put out requests for interviews to many people who were still alive these twenty-eight years after the assassination attempt, to talk to them about who Sara Jane had been earlier in her life. One person was Father Bill O'Donnell, a Catholic Priest at St. Joseph the Worker Church in Berkeley. Sara Jane had initially met him when they both attended a rally in support of the Delano grape strike that focused on migrant workers’ rights and was led by led by Cesar Chavez; that was apparently in late 1968. They had maintained contact into the 70’s, and Fr. Bill was there to counsel Sara Jane after she was arrested in 1975.
 
Being the honorable man he was, Father Bill wrote to Sara Jane about my request for the interview. On an August evening in 2003, Sara Jane called me at home. At first she was calm on the phone, but I could hear the tension in her voice. Her voice rose in angry volume: “How dare you ask to talk to Father Bill!”

She did not like that I was doing research about the book without her direct and detailed involvement. I told her that since it had increasingly difficult to visit and speak with her; I had figured I might move forward more rapidly by interviewing people she knew.
 
She proceeded to tell me exactly how this project was going to be done: she would approve my book proposal to be sure it was the book she wanted to publish; she would supply my list of interviewees; and she would read and approve everything I wrote. Then she demanded to see and review my contract with my agent, and she said would call him after that review.

My response was simple. "That is not how I work." If I am going to write your book, you must give me some room. And, you need to cooperate with me. You need to talk with me about your life. Your entire life."

I waited through an uneasy couple of minutes of silence, as she pondered how to phrase her response. After one more very audible breath, and with great intensity, she clearly enunciated each word:" I am no longer at home to you." Then she slammed down the phone.

That was the last time Sara Jane Moore and I spoke to each other. She never participated in the active writing of this book; on the other hand, we’d had twenty-seven years of conversations and letters prior to that date that I could refer to.
When I began to research the life of the woman who was Sara Jane Kahn. I began to uncover hints and increasingly large pointers informing me that there was much more to the story than I’d ever heard from her directly. I also ran into many false leads and dead ends. I became more determined to find out the story behind this woman I thought I knew.

My search eventually led me to a hilltop home in Charleston, West Virginia, where Sara Jane grew up surrounded by love. Her story must begin there.

Copyright Geri  Spieler  
2008 - 2009
All rights reserved

Table of Contents:

Acknowledgments
Prologue

1. The Girl Who Disappeared
2. The Unhappy Housewife
3. The Doctor's Wife
4. Changing Times
5. San Francisco's Radical Undergound
6. The Would-be Activist
7. The Accountant
8. Federal Stanglehold
9. Fired
10. The Spy
11. The Mission
12. Doubling
13. Hunted
14. Testing Security
15. The Unlikely Assassin
16. "I Acted Alone"
17. Guilty
18. Making a Statement
19. The Prisoner
20. Settling in and Becoming the Queen
21. Solitary
Afterword

Appendix
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Gallery of Photos

   Sara Jane Moore in June 1975 being interviewed by a reporter from the Berkeley Barb about her work  

with the People in Need food giveaway
program.  The food giveaway was created by  Randolph Hearst in response to the  SLA demands to release Hearsts daughter,  Patti Hearst.




Sara Jane Kahn's high school graduation photo, Class of 1947
Stonewall Jackson High School,
Charleston, WV



Wilbert Popeye Jackson, 1974, leader of  the United Prisoners Union. Popeye was a key figure in Sara Jane Moore's activities  with  People in Need and her "education" of the

 radical political groups in the Bay Area. Sara Jane was blamed for Popeye's murder  in 1975.



Patty Singer and baby at the United Prisoners Union head quarters in San Francisco. Singer was Popeye's girlfriend and mother of their son.
She blamed Sara Jane for tagging after Popeye and when he didn't respond, she spread rumors  that Popeye was spying for Hearst.