She Tried to Kill a President. He Loved Her Anyway.

She Tried to Kill a President. He Loved Her Anyway.

January 19, 2026 at 10:37PM

When Phil Chase was 85 years old, he fell in love with Sara Jane Moore, who served more than 30 years in prison for attempting to shoot President Gerald Ford in 1975. The couple spent eight years together, during which Chase’s children saw their father grow quiet, distant, and increasingly deferential to Moore, who “could be syrupy sweet” but also “had a volcanic temper.” Steven Kurutz reconstructs the couple’s relationship, a worrying union whose heart and trajectory remain, in many ways, chillingly unclear.

Family get-togethers were often marred by Sara Jane’s chilling comments. Mr. Motzkin recalled a dinner during which Sara Jane said she had missed President Ford only because of the faulty sighting on the gun she had used. She would have succeeded in killing him, she said, if she had sighted the weapon herself. On another occasion, Suzy listened to her stepmother discuss how to make a prison shank.

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from Longreads https://longreads.com/2026/01/19/sara-jane-moore-president-ford-marriage/
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