← The Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told
The Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told
The Housewife Who Tried To Kill The President (Pt 2)
01:02:46
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- [00:00]
Indeed Advertiser
You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy. Just use Indeed. Stop struggling to get your job posts seen on other job sites with Indeed sponsored jobs. Your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates so you can reach the people you want faster. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on indeed have 45% more applications than non sponsored jobs. Don't wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed and listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility@ Indeed.com Arts. Just go to Indeed.com Arts right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need.
- [00:55]
A. Martinez
Hey it's hey Martinez. The news can feel like a lot on any given day, but you can't just ignore las noticias when it important world changing events are happening. That is where the Up first podcast comes in every single morning in under 15 minutes. We take the news and boil it down to three essential stories so you can keep up without feeling stressed out. Listen up first from NPR on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [01:19]
Ed Helms
Prohibition is synonymous with speakeasies, jazz, flappers, and of course, failure. I'm Ed Helms and on season three of my podcast Snafu, there's a story I couldn't wait to tell you. It's about an unlikely duo in the 1920s who tried to warn the public that prohibition was going to backfire so badly it just might leave thousands dead from poison. Listen and subscribe to snafu on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [01:50]
Jorge Cham
Have you ever wondered if your pet is lying to you?
- [01:52]
Unknown Speaker E
Why is my cat not here and.
- [01:53]
Unknown Speaker F
I go in and she's eating my lunch?
- [01:55]
Jorge Cham
Or if hypnotism is real, you will use this suggestion in order to enhance your cogn cognitive controls. But what's inside a black hole?
- [02:02]
Unknown Speaker F
Black holes could be a consequence of the way that we understand the universe.
- [02:05]
Jorge Cham
Well, we have answers for you in the new iHeart original podcast Science Stuff. Join me or hitcham as we answer questions about animals, space, our brains, and our bodies. So give yourself permission to be a science geek and listen to science stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [02:30]
Indeed Advertiser
Diversion aud.
- [02:34]
Unknown Speaker E
A note this episode contains mature content and descriptions of violence that may be disturbing for some listeners. Please take care in listening. Today's episode is Part two of our two part series about Sarah Jane Moore, the housewife who shocked the world when she tried to kill its most powerful leader. If you missed part one, I highly recommend that you pause me here, listen to that episode, and then come back once you're caught up. Trust me, that backstory is going to make what happens in this episode even more fascinating. And be sure to stick around after our main story because I'm interviewing Jerry Spieler, an incredible journalist who corresponded with Sarah Jane Moore for decades after Sarah Jane tried to shoot President Ford. Jerry got to know Sarah Jane better than many members of Sarah Jane's own family, and she's got tons of incredible stories to share that we just couldn't fit into our episodes. So definitely don't miss that. It's spring of 1974 and Sarah Jane Moore is standing on a quiet street corner in San Francisco's upscale Pacific Heights neighborhood. She squints to catch the license plate number of a green Toyota that passes by. Nope, not that one. A few days ago, Sarah Jane walked out of her apartment when a man she'd never seen before approached her. He said his name was Charles Bates and he said he'd like to take a meeting with her. What's this about? She asked. He flashed her his FBI badge. Bates told her the agency was working on a project and needed her help. He said he'd be happy to share more details, but not here. Could she meet him in a more secure location in a few days? Over the last two years, Sarah Jane transformed from a sheltered suburban housewife to full fledged anti government activist embedded into San Francisco's radical underground. Her dedication to the activist group called People in Need, or penn, became her anchor, her source of pride and her identity. Sarah Jane is pretty sure her activist work is the reason for the FBI's interest in her, but she's no leader. She's still learning the ropes. How had they noticed her and what could they want? From the curb on the hill where she's standing, Sarah Jane can see another green sedan pulling towards her. She recognizes the driver, Charles Bates, the agent who approached her outside her apartment. There's another man in the car with him, and when they pull up alongside Sarah Jane, they tell her to hop in back. The second man introduces himself as Burt Worthington. He tells her he and Bates are gathering information on certain members of San Francisco's activist groups and they've been observing Sarah Jane for a while. They've seen the way she has so quickly made space for herself inside some of these groups and they want her to learn everything she can about one of the leaders of the PEN program and then share it with them. Look, we need your help here, worthington said. These are dangerous people. They are out to destroy the country. Many of them are dupes of foreign governments, of the kgb. Bates explains what being an FBI informant will entail. She needed to continue attending meetings and take diligent notes. They want any details she can give them about the group leaders, personal lives and connections outside the activist community. They want Sarah Jane to write up regular reports, sign them with a code name, and then deliver them to a PO Box where an agent will pick them up. They want her to call them at least once a week from a payphone for updates, and they will compensate her for her time. Sarah Jane pauses for a moment. This whole thing was like something out of a spy novel. She asked the agents the only question she can think of. How should I behave? Just be yourself, they said. What the agents didn't know was that who Sarah Jane was was anyone's guess. Foreign welcome to the greatest True Crime stories ever told. I'm Mary Kay McBrayer. Today's episode we're calling the Housewife who Tried to Kill The President Part 2 It's the final episode of our two part series about the unlikely woman who wanted to kill former President Gerald Ford and the bizarre life she led, which the headlines never got quite right. In our last episode, we left Sarah Jane Moore with a.38 revolver in her hands just moments after she fired a bullet at President Gerald Ford outside of an event in San Francisco. A bystander wrestled Sarah Jane to the ground and police took her into custody shortly after. Sarah Jane may have looked matronly and unassuming, but as we learned last episode, President Ford was just the last in a string of people she had victimized, starting with the members of her own family. As a kid, she was a social outcast with an abrasive personality, and soon after leaving home, she began a pattern of jumping from career to career, relationship to relationship, and city to city. At one time she even abandoned four of her children and completely skipped town. In this episode, we'll get to see how Sarah Jane responds under the microscope of police custody, and find out what psychologists have to say about her bizarre detachment and manipulative behavior. But first, I'm going to back up a little bit to where we began this episode in the back of that green sedan where Sarah Jane got her first lesson in how to be a spy. Now you might be thinking, wait, I thought Sarah Jane was All in on this activism thing. It seemed like she had finally found her purpose after so many failed relationships and career attempts. Wasn't this radical underground scene her new calling? What on earth could have motivated her to start spying on this community that she cared about so much? Let me be honest with you here for a second. The most frustrating thing about telling Sarah Jane's story is that her motives are so unclear. She's constantly bouncing back and forth, jumping from one team to the other. As a storyteller, that's really hard to explain, and it can make for a confusing story. I have a theory that that's one reason more books and TV specials about Sarah Jane don't exist. She's a frustrating character to follow. But on the other hand, I think Sarah Jane's constant flip flopping tells us something important about her. Her closest loyalty isn't to any organization or person. It's to herself, her image, you could even say her ego. Sarah Jane wants to live a big, important life. She wants to feel significant and exceptional. She knows she's smart. She probably feels like the smartest person in a lot of the rooms she's in. And because of that, it's possible she feels like the rules don't apply to her. So from that perspective, Sarah Jane's willingness to work with the FBI starts to seem a little less out of left field. Yes, being in the radical groups gave Sarah Jane purpose. But being an FBI informant made her feel important in a way those groups never did. The government was coming to her for help. She had something they wanted, and she liked the way that made her feel, and so she said yes. But according to interviews with Sarah Jane from later in her life, there was another reason she agreed to go along with the informant work. She told reporters that she believed that keeping close ties to the FBI was actually in service to her activist friends. Working with the FBI meant that she was getting access to information about their inner workings, which she could share with the radicals when it would benefit them. And so Sarah Jane did both. She became a real life double agent. She continued sending information about her radical friends to the FBI, and she passed whatever bits of intel she could gather from her FBI contacts to her radical friends to avoid suspicion. She told the activists she used to be an FBI informant, and so she knew certain things about how they worked. But Sarah Jane's weaseling could only take her so far. She may have been charming and good at making connections, but Sarah Jane never quite understood how to build real trust with people. Just like the other kids in her neighborhood. In West Virginia, the activists could sense that something was off about Sarah Jane. According to interviews with fellow members of Sarah Jane's activist groups, she was intelligent and articulate, and she showed up with enthusiasm. She was also headstrong and difficult to work with. Someday she would show up to the PEN headquarters beaming with praise for how everyone was doing, and on other days she'd loudly complain about how much work she had to do and yell at anyone who interrupted her train of thought with a question. Her behavior was volatile and unpredictable, and eventually members of PENN had enough. One morning, Sarah Jane entered the headquarters and turned in the direction of her office, where she did her accounting volunteer work and stopped in her tracks. A group of high up volunteers were crowded around her desk, thumbing through papers. What are you doing? She shouted. No one touches my ledgers except me. If there's any checking to do, I'll do it. Now get the hell out of here. But the volunteers already saw what they needed to see. A quick look through her desk drawer revealed that Sarah Jane had done little, if any, of the accounting work she claimed to have been doing. The volunteers found checks that hadn't been deposited and a stack of unpaid invoices stuffed at the back of the drawer. The donation summary reports she had been asked to prepare were nowhere to be found. What Sarah Jane had been spending all her time doing in this office was a mystery. Two of the group's security guards then grabbed Sarah Jane under her arms and swiftly walked her toward the exit. She protested, but I'm the chief bookkeeper. No one knows how to do anything here. They're just a bunch of idiots. One of the men said, go home, Sarah Jane. Get some rest and don't come back here. You will not be let back in. And that was that. Sarah Jane was out. But rather than slow her down, her ejection from the PENN program was neither an emotional nor a practical setback for Sarah Jane. She simply moved on to other activist groups she attended meeting after meeting, introducing herself and making connections. Sarah Jane always knew how to charm people, and she turned out to be a natural at getting information. She would show up with an extra pack of cigarettes in her purse and share them with folks during long group conversations. FYI, the PI I used to date used to do this. Apparently, smoke breaks are where people let their guards down. People started opening up to her, and she was ready with pen and paper to take notes. But the career of an FBI informant doesn't last forever. Sooner or later, people start to smell a rat, especially in a small scene like the one in San Francisco. And once the suspicion starts, it can be impossible to regain that trust. According to Sarah Jane, at some point, word got out, whether true or fabricated, that she was in cahoots with the FBI. More groups began ostracizing her. Sarah Jane later said that she received death threats and that she began to fear for her life. Which is why On Monday morning, September 22, 1975, Sarah Jane called a gun dealer in the Bay area and asked if she could make a purchase. So here we are. It's the day of the shooting in September 1975, and Sarah Jane is on the phone with a small time gun dealer. She says she wants to meet him that morning to pick up a revolver. He agrees to meet her, and she leaves his home a few hours later. A.38 caliber Smith & Wesson. As we know from part one of this series, Sarah Jane drove from the gun dealer's house directly to the hotel in San Francisco where President Ford was attending an event. This may be my anxiety showing, but the quick turnaround here really stresses me out. Like you're planning an assassination for later today, but you don't have the weapon yet. This, if nothing else, is proof that she was living on the edge. Sarah Jane stood outside in the crowd with hundreds of other people with the gun in her purse and waited until he emerged from the building. Then she fired a single shot, which missed Ford's head by about 6 inches before she was tackled to the ground and apprehended by police. Now, by all accounts, Sarah Jane was acting pretty normal in the days and weeks leading up to the shooting. There was no escalating behavior. She didn't seem distressed or erratic. Well, no more erratic than usual. And there wasn't any talk of assassinating the president. Among her radical groups, President Ford may have been the face of a government they were highly critical of, but killing him wasn't something any of them were actually motivated to do. By all accounts, this shooting came out of nowhere and was something Sarah Jane did on her own. Now, it was going to be up to the police to uncover what got her from point A, attending activist meetings and informing for the FBI to point B, pointing a revolver at the sitting president and to decide what to do with her next. As we know from last week's episode, dramatic outbursts were nothing new for Sarah Jane. But this one was different. There was nowhere for her to run this time, no one to swoop in and apologize for her behavior. The world was finally going to get a close look at Sarah Jane Moore.
- [20:02]
Indeed Advertiser
You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy. Just use Indeed. Stop struggling to get your job posts seen on other job sites with Indeed sponsored jobs. Your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates so you can reach the people you want faster. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on indeed have 45% more applications than non sponsored jobs. Don't wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed and listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility@ Indeed.com Arts. Just go to Indeed.com Arts right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need.
- [20:56]
A. Martinez
Hey, it's Amartinez. The news can feel like a lot on any given day, but you can't just ignore la noticias when important world changing events are happening. That is where the Up first podcast comes in every single morning in under 15 minutes. We take the news and boil it down to three essential stories so you can keep up without feeling stressed out. Listen up first from NPR on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [21:21]
Ed Helms
Prohibition it's no secret that banning alcohol didn't stop people from living it up in the 1920s.
- [21:27]
Unknown Speaker E
When we're five years into prohibition, the government is starting to go, okay, this isn't working.
- [21:33]
Ed Helms
In fact, you might even say it backfired spectacularly. I'm Ed Helms, and on season three of my podcast, SNAFU, we're taking you back to the 1920s and the tale of Formula Six. Because what you probably don't know about prohibition is that American citizens were dying in massive numbers due to poisoned liquor, and all along an unlikely duo was trying desperately to stop the corruption behind it.
- [21:59]
Unknown Speaker E
They were like superhero crusaders turning the.
- [22:03]
Unknown Speaker F
Page on a system that didn't work.
- [22:05]
Unknown Speaker E
Wasn'T fair, and was corrupt.
- [22:08]
Ed Helms
So how did Prohibition's war on alcohol go so off the rails that the government wound up poisoning its own people? To find out, listen and subscribe to snafu on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [22:25]
Jorge Cham
Have you ever wondered, if your pet is lying to you, why is my.
- [22:28]
Unknown Speaker E
Cat not here and I go in.
- [22:29]
Unknown Speaker F
And she's eating my lunch?
- [22:30]
Jorge Cham
Or if hypnotism is real, you will use the suggestion in order to enhance your cognitive control. But what's inside a black hole?
- [22:37]
Unknown Speaker F
Black holes could be a consequence of the way that we understand the universe.
- [22:41]
Jorge Cham
Well we have answers for you in the new I Heart Original podcast Science Stuff. Join me, Jorge Cham as we tackle questions you've always wanted to know the answer to about animals, space, our brains and our bodies. Questions like can you survive being cryogenically frozen?
- [22:56]
Unknown Speaker F
This is experimental.
- [22:57]
Unknown Speaker E
This may never work for you.
- [22:58]
Jorge Cham
What's a quantum computer?
- [23:00]
A. Martinez
It's not just a faster computer, it.
- [23:02]
Unknown Speaker F
Performs in a fundamentally different way.
- [23:03]
Jorge Cham
Do you really have to wait 30 minutes after eating before you can go swimming? It's not really a safety issue, it's.
- [23:09]
Unknown Speaker E
More of a comfort issue.
- [23:10]
Jorge Cham
We'll talk to experts, break it down, and give you easy to understand explanations to fascinating scientific questions. So give yourself permission to be a science geek and listen to science stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [23:35]
Unknown Speaker E
Immediately after she was handcuffed by police, Sarah Jane was taken to a secure room inside the St. Francis Hotel for questioning. There, officers removed her handcuffs and turned on their tape recorders. They listened as Sarah Jane gave a rambling account of everything she did that morning and a vague but emotional retelling of her assassination attempt. According to the officers who were there that day, even though Sarah Jane spoke with eloquence and enthusiasm, right away she was making very little sense. She evaded the officer's questions, even the most straightforward ones. Every chance she had to speak, she launched into a twisted and lengthy word salad that never actually got them closer to understanding why she did this. To me, she's the person who corners you at the party and tells you at length about their weird niche interest for 40 minutes. Even though you have done nothing to deserve this monologue, search YouTube for a video interview with her and you'll understand what I'm talking about. Eventually, when officers realized they weren't going to get very far with her, they tucked her into the back of a police car and dropped her off at San Francisco County Jail, where she would stay until her trial. Sarah Jane requested a public defender named James Hewitt to represent her, and Hewitt realized right away that their best bet would be an insanity defense. I like to imagine that he stopped her mid sentence about why Esperanto should be a real language and said, your brain is broke. That didn't happen, but it's fun to imagine the first step in preparing that insanity defense would be to determine whether Sarah Jane was mentally fit to stand trial. Those close to Sarah Jane spent years trying to understand her bizarre and often destructive behavior. Now it was the professional's turn. Over the next few months, as Sarah Jane Awaited her trial in a county jail cell. A group of mental health specialists visited sarah jane to interview her and run assessments. Hewitt, her attorney, hopes that these assessments Would offer some kind of concrete diagnosis that might support his insanity plea, or at least lay the groundwork for some kind of believable story he could use to explain her behavior to a jury. Unfortunately for hewitt, the psychiatrist had just as much trouble understanding sarah jane as the police officers did when they interviewed her after the shooting. In their reports to hewitt, the psychiatrist said that in her own charming way, Sarah jane was frustratingly uncooperative. For one thing, she wouldn't discuss her upbringing or background at all. She was cagey, Constantly either dodging questions or shifting the conversation Into a direction she wanted to go in. Eventually, though, the specialists were able to come up with some hypotheses. According to their reports, Sarah jane might either have a hysterical personality disorder, A borderline personality disorder, or bipolar disorder. The psychologist described a pattern of excessive emotionality, Attention seeking, Excessive need for approval, Extreme episodes of mania and depression, and an unquenchable need for admiration, as well as a complete lack of empathy. One doctor described the way she presented as pleasant, intelligent, and sometimes witty and bantering. She is always neatly dressed in the limited county prison wardrobe. She apparently goes to great efforts to present the best possible appearance. She particularly seems to find it important not to give any impression of being flustered or in any way under great tension. All of this posturing could fool people for a while, but she could only keep up the facade for so long. The same doctor said, you never know to what extent she doesn't have things straight. Now, I'm going to take a quick moment to editorialize here. So often in the stories I research for this show, all we have to go on is either personal accounts from the criminals we cover or descriptions of their behavior from those close to them. It's a rare treat to have actual psychological assessments to reference. And even though psychologists at the time Couldn't quite agree on a diagnosis for sarah jane, the fact that they could put words to the bizarre and manipulative behaviors We've seen her demonstrate Gives us that much more clarity about her. Yes, she did seek attention and approval to an unusual degree, and yes, she did struggle to empathize with the people around her. It wasn't just an abrasive personality. Sarah jane had a real darkness inside of her, One that she had used multiple times to manipulate people to get what she wanted. But despite their reports about her mental health challenges, the psychologists agreed that their findings weren't enough to prove that she was mentally unfit to stand trial. In other words, she was well enough to face a judge. So a few months later, she did. Now, there's one piece of Sarah Jane's life that we haven't touched on yet in this episode. It's something pretty significant that you might assume would have been weighing heavily on her at this the safety and whereabouts of her son Frederick, who was nine years old by now. As Sarah Jane was making her way through the court system, conferring with her lawyer and being evaluated by doctors, the San Francisco juvenile authority was watching over Frederick. With a father who Sarah Jane had never really allowed in the picture, Frederick was left alone in the world to watch his mother's name get plastered across newspapers around the country. The tragic thing is, Frederick had family. A lot of it. Remember Sarah Jane's four other children whom she'd abandoned years ago to live with their grandparents in West Virginia? Poor Frederick knew nothing about them and they knew nothing about him. He was completely cut off from anyone in the world but his mother, who might very well be spending the rest of her life behind bars. On October 30, 1975, a month after the shooting, Frederick sat small and bewildered in the San Francisco youth guidance center for a hearing that would decide where he'd be spending possibly the rest of his life. Social workers tried hard to find someone to take responsibility for Frederick. If no one stepped up, he would have to be surrendered to the foster care system. Thankfully, a sweet middle aged couple named Charles and Gail Roberts agreed to take him in. The Roberts were acquaintances of Sarah Jane's in San Francisco and they volunteered to take Frederick once they realized the chances of Sarah Jane going to prison were pretty high. Frederick would end up living with them until he graduated high school nearly 10 years later. Not much is known about Frederick's life after this point because to the Robert's credit, they were very protective of his privacy and rarely spoke to the media. What we do know is that they worked as hard as they could to give him a normal life. So now, 20 years after she abandoned her first four children, Sarah Jane was effectively doing it again. Back in jail, Sarah Jane was preparing for her court case. Her actions on September 22nd were undeniable. Plenty of people saw what she did. It was caught on film. There was no chance in her attorney's mind that she could convince a jury she was not guilty. Hewitt was sure her best bet was an insanity plea, or in official words, not guilty due to diminished capacity. Hewitt could lean into her questionable psych assessments and draw on examples of Sarah Jane's unusual behavior from her early life to paint a picture of a capable woman who wasn't in her right mind during the incident. She may have been reckless in her actions, but she didn't mean to cause harm. The judge would give her a few years of jail time, but it would be nothing like the potential life sentence that a full on presidential assassination attempt could get her if she pled not guilty. Unfortunately for Hewitt, Sarah Jane didn't appear to be concerned about her jail time. In fact, she was completely uncooperative in her conversations with him. She wouldn't answer any of his questions about the days and months preceding the shooting, and she refused to say anything about her past. When he asked her about her motive for the shooting, she simply said that it was complicated. For Sarah Jane, the most important thing was that she wasn't labeled crazy. Once again, it seemed Sarah Jane was more concerned about the image she was projecting with the story she wanted to tell about herself than with her actual circumstances. You can imagine how frustrating this would be for someone whose job it was to help Sarah Jane. Hewitt couldn't understand why Sarah Jane could possibly be prioritizing her image this way when so much was on the line. He was later quoted as saying, I can only assume she would rather go down in history as a crusader than a demented malcontent. Sarah Jane's psychologists had some interesting things to say about her preoccupation with her image, too. One doctor described her as a blank slate who would periodically adopt different roles and play them out until they were used up. The role she was playing on September 22, he said, was Sarah Jane Moore the vanguard of a vast and implicable movement. And she couldn't stand to have that role tarnished, even if it meant spending her life in prison. In the end, James Hewitt had no hope of convincing Sarah Jane to plead not guilty. She insisted on maintaining the story that she was not only mentally fit to stand trial, but that she was of sound mind. On the day she shot at The President on January 16, 1976, Sarah Jane pled guilty to attempting to assassinate the President of the United States and had a sentencing hearing where she had a chance to read a statement to the judge. There's a section of her statement that I'm going to read to you now because I think it really captures just how defiant she was and totally unclear of her own motives. She said. Do I think assassination is a valid political tool? Yes. Am I sorry I tried? Yes and no. Yes. Because it accomplished little except to throw away the rest of my life. And no, I'm not sorry I tried because at the time it seemed a correct expression of my anger. And if successful, the assassination just might have triggered the kind of chaos that could have started the upheaval of change. So not only is she claiming to be totally in control of herself and her actions on this day, but the only thing she regrets is the prison term she's about to have. The judge sentenced her with the maximum life in prison and no one in the courtroom reacted. Not that there was anyone there to support Sarah Jane anyway. None of her five children, none of her siblings, none of her ex husbands, her parents or friends showed up. Sarah Jane began serving her sentence the very next day. Stepping off the bus for her first day at Alderton Women's Reformatory in Alderton, West Virginia, Sarah Jane might have felt a bit of nostalgia, even comfort. The prison complex was nestled in some quaint woods with a lazy river and a railroad track running behind it, and it was only 145 miles from her hometown of Charleston. But that's before she got to Davis hall, the maximum security unit where she would be living. Davis housed prisoners from federal prisons all over the United States. Windows at Davis were made of several layers of unbreakable polycarbonate plastic and an eight foot fence with razor wire on top surrounded the facility. Cells at Davis were cinder block rooms with barred windows and heavy metal doors, the kind of thing you might draw as a kid if your teacher asks you what a prison looked like. The isolation lockup, also known as solitary or the shoe, was another cinder block room separate from the regular cells and about half the size of them. It was just 5ft by 8ft and was surrounded by metal bars on all sides. Double metal interlocking bars with heavy bolts made sure no one could get out. Sarah Jane didn't know it then, but she would end up spending many, many days inside that room Room.
- [38:13]
Indeed Advertiser
You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy. Just use indeed. Stop struggling to get your job posts seen on other job sites with indeed sponsored jobs. Your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates so you can reach the people you want faster. According to INDEED data, sponsored jobs posted directly on indeed have 45% more applications than non sponsored jobs. Don't wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed and listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs. More visibility@ Indeed. Dot com. Just go to Indeed.com Arts right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need.
- [39:07]
A. Martinez
Hey, it's Amartinez. The news can feel like a lot on any given day, but you can't just ignore La Noticias when important world changing events are happening. That is where the Up first podcast comes in. Every single morning in under 15 minutes, we take the news and boil it down to three essential stories so you can keep up without feeling stressed out. Listen up first from NPR on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [39:32]
Ed Helms
Prohibition it's no secret that banning alcohol didn't stop people from living it up in the 1920s.
- [39:38]
Unknown Speaker E
When we're five years into prohibition, the government is starting to go, okay, this isn't working.
- [39:44]
Ed Helms
In fact, you might even say it backfired spectacularly. I'm Ed Helms, and on season three of my podcast SNAFU, we're taking you back to the 1920s and the tale of Formula Six. Because what you probably don't know about prohibition is that American citizens were dying in massive numbers due to poisoned liquor. And all along an unlikely duo was trying desperately to stop the corruption behind it.
- [40:10]
Unknown Speaker E
They were like superhero crusaders turning the.
- [40:14]
Unknown Speaker F
Page on a system that didn't work.
- [40:16]
Unknown Speaker E
Wasn'T fair, and was corrupt.
- [40:19]
Ed Helms
So how did Prohibition's war on alcohol go so off the rails that the government wound up poisoning its own people? To find out, listen and subscribe to snafu on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [40:36]
Jorge Cham
Have you ever wondered if your pet is lying to you?
- [40:38]
Unknown Speaker E
Why is my cat not here and.
- [40:40]
Unknown Speaker F
I go in and she's eating my lunch?
- [40:41]
Jorge Cham
Or if hypnotism is you will use the suggestion in order to enhance your cognitive control. But what's inside a black hole?
- [40:48]
Unknown Speaker F
Black holes could be a consequence of the way that we understand the universe.
- [40:52]
Jorge Cham
Well, we have answers for you in the new I Heart original podcast Science Stuff. Join me Jorge Cham as we tackle questions you've always wanted to know the answer to about animals, space, our brains and our bodies. Questions like can you survive being cryogenically frozen?
- [41:07]
Unknown Speaker E
This is experimental. This mean never worked for you.
- [41:10]
Jorge Cham
What's a quantum computer?
- [41:11]
A. Martinez
It's not just a faster computer, it.
- [41:13]
Unknown Speaker E
Performs in a fundamentally different way.
- [41:14]
Jorge Cham
Do you really have to wait 30 minutes after eating before you can go swimming? It's not really a safety issue, it's more of a comfort issue. We'll talk to experts break it down and give you easy to understand explanations to fascinating scientific questions. So give yourself permission to be a science geek and listen to science stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [41:45]
Unknown Speaker E
By this point, it should come as no surprise that Sarah Jane caused trouble in prison. Wardens at nearly every facility Sarah Jane spent time at quickly labeled her as an agitator. She, of course, rejected that label. She wasn't a troublemaker. She was a political prisoner. Her story was always that she was being targeted because she was a critic of the US Government. Any flack she received from corrections officers was, in her mind, a sign that she was being singled out. At the slightest whiff of mistreatment, Sarah Jane would act out a routine random urine test sent her into a fit. Anytime her mail arrived late or she missed out on something in the mess hall, she lodged a complaint. She would even go on hunger strikes. Once she even tried to escape. And she was nearly successful. For every one of these displays, she was given time in solitary. Sometimes it was weeks, sometimes months. That's months at a time in a little 5x8 cell with nothing to do but read, write and think. Other inmates at Alderton probably didn't mind much when she was locked away in the shoe. By all accounts, it seems they found her pretty hard to be around. Sarah Jane was known to assert herself as a leader among her fellow prisoners and lobby for certain things from the staff. Her crusades never actually led to acceptance or loyalty from her fellow prisoners. In fact, according to some letters she wrote to reporters while she was in prison, she was frequently harassed both verbally and physically. I have to tell you, every time I start to feel a little sympathy for Sarah Jane, she undercuts it by positioning herself as the victim. One of the most fascinating and revealing stories from her time in prison has to do with her family. According to her letters from prison, Sarah Jane frequently complained of loneliness and lamented the fact that no one ever visited her. I wish I was closer to someone who knows me so I could have regular visits, she wrote. Now, as I have mentioned, Alderton happened to be 145 miles, or about three and a half hours, from Sarah Jane's hometown in West Virginia. Sarah Jane's parents, siblings, and three of her children were still living in West Virginia at the time, and they did attempt to visit her. Just three days after Sarah Jane arrived in Alderton, her daughter Janet drove to the prison to see her. Janet was 24 years old now, and it would have Been the first time she'd seen her mother since being sent away at the age of three. When Janet arrived at Alderton and requested a visit, Sarah Jane told the prison staff that she didn't have a daughter. So Janet was sent away. Can you imagine? She drove three and a half hours one way only to be turned away by her incarcerated, estranged mother. And Janet wasn't the only member of the family who attempted a visit. One of Sarah Jane's brothers also called the warden at Alderton and asked if he could meet with Sarah Jane, but she refused to see him as well. We'll never know why she was so resistant to contact with her family, but one thing is for sure, that line of I wish I was closer to someone who knows me was just a bullshit ploy for sympathy. Sarah Jane ended up getting shuffled around to a few different facilities through her time in prison. And there's a lot more I could tell you about the next few decades of her life. But by all accounts, it seems like her attitude cooled off the longer she was behind bars. She was still defiant, and she still ended up spending a few more months in the shoe. But despite all that, on December 31, 2007, Sarah Jane Moore was released to serve five years of parole. She was 77 years old, and she had been incarcerated for 32 of those years. Stepping off the bus for her first day at Alderton Women's Reformatory in Alderton, West Virginia, Sarah Jane might have felt a bit of nostalgia, even comfort. The prison complex was nestled in some quaint woods with a lazy river and a railroad track running behind it. And it was only 145 miles from her hometown of Charleston. But that's before she got to Davis hall, the maximum security unit where she would be living. Davis housed prisoners from federal prisons all over the United States. Windows at Davis were made of several layers of the unbreakable polycarbonate plastic, and an eight foot fence with razor wire on top surrounded the facility. Cells at Davis were cinder block rooms with barred windows and heavy metal doors. The kind of thing you might draw as a kid if your teacher asks you what a prison looked like. The isolation lockup, also known as solitary or the shoe, was another cinder block room separate from the regular cells and about half the size of them. It was just 5ft by 8ft and was surrounded by metal bars on all sides. Double metal interlocking bars with heavy bolts made sure no one could get out. Sarah Jane didn't know it then, but she would end up spending many, many days Inside that room. So let's return to the question I posed at the beginning of this episode. How is it that this bright, capable, unassuming, suburban mom could find herself within six inches of killing the 38th president of the United States? She was given every opportunity for a successful, happy life. She could have raised a loving family. She could have had a supportive marriage. She could have even led a fulfilling life as an activist. On the other hand, Sarah Jane consistently showed signs of being disturbed, or at least of questionable decision making. Why didn't the FBI pick up on these signals? What was their vetting process like before hiring her as an informant? Did they set her up to do something radical? Law enforcement has been asking themselves these questions since the day of the shooting. In fact, for the first 25 years Sarah Jane was in prison, two Secret Service agents would visit her once a year on the anniversary of the shooting to question her at length about her motivations. Sarah Jane was, of course, evasive and never gave them much information, Surprising no one. But they continued to hope that speaking with her would help them establish some patterns. Their goal was both to understand her unique motivations, but also to clarify the profile they used to spot other possible assassins. The information they gathered is, of course, confidential, But I have a little armchair theory. Sarah Jane Moore was a woman with undiagnosed mental health issues that manifested as delusions of grandeur, Attention seeking behavior, and manipulation of those close to her. She wasn't driven by a commitment to any cause. What she was driven by was a desire to feel important, to do something that mattered, to be at the center of things. And if those in power wouldn't let her into the center of things, she would figure out a way to get there. That's why she could never fathom putting her children's lives before her own. That's why she acted alone and told no one of her plans. That's why she fought so hard against being labeled insane during her trial. The more you learn about her, the less about her feels real. She tries on one Persona after another, but nothing seems to fit. For all the Personas she has tried on and discarded, for all the twists and turns her life has taken, the one thing that remained consistent for Sarah Jane was how hard she worked at crafting her image. One thing she never failed to prioritize was the way she looked to the outside world. And that remains true even to this day. Because as of this recording, Sarah Jane Moore is still alive. She's 94 years old. It's not clear where she's living but she did make her way into the news in 2019 when she was arrested at JFK Airport in New York for leaving the country without telling her parole officer. In 2015, when she was 85 years old, Sarah Jane gave what might be her last live television interview. With a polite smile and a glint in her eye, she spoke to a CNN anchor about why she did what she did and how she characterizes her crime. Now, 40 years later. One of the most telling moments for me came when the anchor asked her what she thinks about her time served.
- [51:34]
Unknown Speaker F
You then were given five years of parole. Are you still on parole?
- [51:39]
G
Yes, I am. The, the rules say that after five years of clear conduct, it's like your mandatory release. You're supposed to be released from parole. And I am now seven years of clear conduct and have yet to be released from parole.
- [51:54]
Unknown Speaker F
And why is that? I mean, I believe that you have gone on and proven as best you can to the court that you are now an upstanding citizen. You've turned over a new leaf. So what do they tell you?
- [52:06]
G
Well, I was always a pretty good citizen. Let's not talk about turning over a new leaf.
- [52:12]
Unknown Speaker E
So apparently the fact that she abandoned four of her children on her parents doorstep 20 years before the shooting doesn't register in Sarah Jane's mind as bad behavior. Either that or more likely, it doesn't jive with the version of herself, the spirited but harmless housewife that she wants on display. In this interview, Sarah Jane goes on about her parole.
- [52:35]
G
The first time that they turned me down, I was shocked because one would have thought the incident had happened the day before. The way they talked about me. And I just, I was in total shock. And they repeated much the same this. They're supposed to release you unless they're, unless they feel that you're going to commit another offense. And I don't know what offense I would commit. Jaywalking, perhaps?
- [53:00]
Unknown Speaker F
Well, I mean, there you have it. I mean, I say you've turned over a new leaf and you bristle at that. But you tried to kill the President of the United States back then.
- [53:09]
G
Yes, but it makes it sound like I was a totally different person. And I was pretty much the person I am now. Had gotten into something over my head, I will admit that. Had quit listening to reason. So for a little while I was at different person. But in terms of being your ordinary normal citizen who gets up and goes to work and, and you know, I think the most. Yeah, I think the only criminal I'd had before, had I gotten a ticket for jaywalking.
- [53:45]
Unknown Speaker E
Sure, she's served more than 30 years in prison. Maybe it's time to just let this woman live her life. But on the other hand, when you hear her speak about her crime this cavalierly and with so little apparent remorse, you can't help but wonder what else she might be capable of. This has been part two of our two part series about Sarah Jane Moore, the woman who Tried to Kill the President. I'd like to shout out the book Housewife the Woman who Tried to Kill President Ford by Jerry Spieler one more time. That was our primary source for this series and it's the best reporting and account of Sarah Jane Moore's life, crimes, trial and prison sentence that's out there. Jerry Spieler is a fantastic journalist who spent decades writing letters and making phone calls to Sarah Jane while she was in prison. She had access to Sarah Jane in a way that no other reporter ever did, and she has lots to tell us about what Sarah Jane is like behind the scenes. Did Jerry ever get past Sarah Jane's carefully crafted image? Find out from Jerry herself after the break.
- [55:06]
Indeed Advertiser
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- [56:00]
A. Martinez
Hey, it's amartinez. The news can feel like a lot on any given day, but you can't just ignore la. No. When important world changing events are happening, that is where the Upverse podcast comes in every single morning in under 15 minutes. We take the news and boil it down to three essential stories so you can keep up without feeling stressed out. Listen up first from NPR on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts, Prohibition.
- [56:26]
Ed Helms
It's no secret that banning alcohol didn't stop people from living it up in the 1920s.
- [56:31]
Unknown Speaker E
When we're five years into prohibition, the government is starting to go, okay, this isn't working.
- [56:37]
Ed Helms
In fact, you might Even say it backfired spectacularly. I'm Ed Helms, and on season three of my podcast Snafu, we're taking you back to the 1920s and the tale of Formula 6. Because what you probably don't know about Prohibition is that American citizens were dying in massive numbers due to poisoned liquor. And all along, an unlikely duo was trying desperately to stop the corruption behind it.
- [57:04]
Unknown Speaker E
They were like superhero crusaders turning the.
- [57:07]
Unknown Speaker F
Page on a system that didn't work.
- [57:09]
Unknown Speaker E
Wasn'T fair, and was corrupt.
- [57:12]
Ed Helms
So how did Prohibition's war on alcohol go so off the rails that the government wound up poisoning its own people? To find out, listen and subscribe to snafu on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [57:29]
Jorge Cham
Have you ever wondered, if your pet is lying to you, why is my.
- [57:32]
Unknown Speaker E
Cat not here and I go in.
- [57:33]
Unknown Speaker F
And she's eating my lunch?
- [57:34]
Jorge Cham
Or if hypnotism is real, you will use the suggestion in order to enhance your cognitive control. But what's inside a black hole?
- [57:41]
Unknown Speaker F
Black holes could be a consequence of the way that we understand the universe.
- [57:45]
Jorge Cham
Well, we have answers for you in the new I Heart original podcast, Science Stuff. Join me, Jorge Cham, as we tackle questions you've always wanted to know the answer to about animals, space, our brains and our bodies. Questions like, can you survive being cryogenically frozen?
- [58:00]
Unknown Speaker E
This is experimental. This may never work for you.
- [58:03]
Jorge Cham
What's a quantum computer?
- [58:04]
A. Martinez
It's not just a faster computer.
- [58:06]
Unknown Speaker E
It performs in a fundamentally different way.
- [58:07]
Jorge Cham
Do you really have to wait 30 minutes after eating before you can go swimming? It's not really a safety issue.
- [58:13]
Unknown Speaker E
It's more of a comfort issue.
- [58:14]
Jorge Cham
We'll talk to experts, break it down, and give you easy to understand explanations to fascinating scientific questions. So give yourself permission to be a science geek and listen to science stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [58:35]
Unknown Speaker E
Hi, Jerry, thank you so much for coming on and talking to me. I heard that there's a really interesting story about how the book came about. Can you tell us?
- [58:44]
Unknown Speaker F
Yes, I call it the Backstory and I'll describe it. I was living in Los Angeles and I was working for the Times down there. Sarah Jane Moore in 1975 was in San Francisco when she took a shot at President Ford. And what was not out at the time is she missed his head by six inches. And that was never in the press, but I wasn't covering her. I was assigned to do a story about Sybil Brand jail, which is the largest women's jail in the country. And there was a class action suit against the jail because the law library wasn't equal to the men's library. So I was asked as a reporter to cover that story, which I did, and it appeared in the paper. And Sarah Jane was closer to San Diego, being evaluated by psychiatrist because she pleaded guilty. And when somebody pleads guilty, the court wants to know that they're in their right mind to do that and not plead not guilty. And so while she was being evaluated by the psychiatrist, she got a copy of the newspaper and she saw the story I wrote about women in prison in her mind. If I write about women in prison, I, I'm sympathetic to women in prison. No, I write about murderers too. I'm not sympathetic. But she wrote to me and said, I'd like to meet you.
- [60:17]
Unknown Speaker E
Wow.
- [60:18]
Unknown Speaker F
And I'm thinking, huh, I've never met an assassin before. I wonder what she's like for real. I've never been in a prison before. So I said, sure, you know, so it had to happen. She saw she shot in 9.75, but by time she had her hearing and her, you know when she was going to be sentenced? It was January of 76. And I got on her visitors list and I went to meet her because I was curious. And I was sitting in this like human warehouse, this big room, and I'm sitting on a chair and a woman comes out of the door across from me and she's walking towards me. She's in civilian clothes. And I just figured she's somebody that works there. She walks up to me and she grabs my hand like this and she says, are you Jerry? And I said, yes. She said, oh, thank you for coming, it's so lovely of you. And I'm thinking, are we going out to lunch? Who is this person? This is not a presidential assassin. But that was Sarah Jane. That's how we met. And I told her, look, I'm not here because I'm your fan. I don't agree with what you did. I'm not here to save you. I was just interested in who you are. But know that I don't agree with what you did. It was wrong. It was the wrong approach for whatever reasons you had. Assassinating the President was not the right approach. Okay, that's fine. She said she loved newspaper reporters. She never met a reporter she didn't love. No, we kept in touch. I was curious about her. She also had a 9 year old son and I felt bad for him, so I sent him birthday cards and gifts for his birthday on her behalf. And that just went along for 20 years or so. I was a journalist. I had no vision of being an author ever. It was not my mission in life to write a book. So 20 some years later, when she asked me to write her book, I said, no, write your own book. Write your own story. I don't write books. They're too hard and they take too long. I write 1500 words and I'm out of here.
- [62:44]
Unknown Speaker E
That's great.
- [62:44]
Unknown Speaker F
She nagged. She nagged. And, you know, over the years, I don't go home and research everybody I talk to. If I talk to you, you know, we have a conversation, I don't go home and start researching what you said, right? If she said the sky was brown, I don't care. This guy's brown. Had no influence on my life. So she'd talk about her garden club or her home or her this or her that. I go, yeah, yeah, yeah. But then when she wanted me to write about her, I started doing some research. Everything on the Internet about her was wrong. Half of what she told me were lies. That's when my spidey sense, my journalism spidey sense started going off. And I realized that the real story had never been told. And I contacted the FBI. I contacted the secret service. But before that, I contacted a Catholic priest, Father Bill O'Reilly, in Berkeley at St. Joseph of the workers church, who was a major political activist. He marched with Cesar Chavez. He did this, he did that, and he knew Sarah Jane. And I asked if I could talk to him about her. Nothing confidential, of course. And he said, sure. And he wrote to Sarah Jane, and he said, oh, I understand. Jerry Spieler is going to write your book. That's so wonderful. She was furious. She called me on the phone, and I used to accept her phone calls, screaming at me, how dare you? How dare you contact him? I will tell you what to say, and I will tell you who you can talk to. And I said, sarah Jane. Her nickname was Sally. It doesn't work that way. If you want me to write your book, you got to let me do my job, and you got to let me talk to people. No, I won't do that. And I said, well, then we don't have a deal. And she said, I am no longer at home to you. Bang. She slammed down the phone. There I was. Could I write this book without her? And my husband, who's a big fan of mine, said, well, if anybody can do it, Jerry, you can. So I said, you know, now that I realize 50% of what she told me were lies. What's the real story?
- [65:11]
Unknown Speaker E
Right.
- [65:12]
Unknown Speaker F
The Secret Service and the FBI and the San Francisco Police were wonderful. They talked to me, and I found she had a hearing in San Francisco at Superior Court with Judge Samuel Conti, who was on the bench. And the way it works is the FBI gets assigned to do research on the case. The FBI case agent was Richard DiMante. And it took me multiple attempts to get to him because nobody would give me his phone number. They would all say, I'll tell him you're looking for him. I needed to talk to him because he was the guy.
- [65:54]
Unknown Speaker E
Right.
- [65:55]
Unknown Speaker F
Finally, after multiple attempts, because FBI and Secret Service and police are not going to give you somebody else's phone number. They don't do that. They will tell that person Jerry Spieler is looking for you. Here's her contact information. Right after three attempts, I got a phone call one night. I answered the phone, and here's this voice. Is this Jerry Smeeler? Yeah, this is Vito. Richard Vitamante to you. I hear you're looking for me. What do you want? That's exactly how it went. I went, I'm writing a book about Sarah Jane Moore. I understand you were the case agent. Can you talk to me about the case? Yeah, but I'm not going to do it over the phone and I'm not going to do it by email. I live in Walnut Creek, California. You want to talk to me, you come up here. Well, fortunately, I'm in Palo Alto, Northern California. Not that far. Is yesterday too soon? And I drive up there, and he has a lovely home, and he invites me in. And we're sitting in his living room, and he's just chatting me up. And I realize he wants to see. He's an FBI agent, by the way. If I'm some kind of conspiracy nut job, okay? And I'm not.
- [67:13]
Unknown Speaker E
Right? Right.
- [67:14]
Unknown Speaker F
And he says, okay. It's been 30 years. It's time to set the record straight. I have to call Washington. I'll let you know. But 10 days later, he calls me back. My poor husband. His arm was sore. I kept hitting him. Is he going to call me? Okay, I've got the file. You come up here and I'll share it with you.
- [67:37]
Unknown Speaker E
Okay?
- [67:38]
Unknown Speaker F
I walk in and he has everything spread out on his kitchen counter. Where she was standing, where he was standing. How close she was, how close she came. None of this was in the press.
- [67:53]
Unknown Speaker E
Why?
- [67:54]
Unknown Speaker F
Because Ford was safe and they didn't want the public to know how close we came to another presidential assassination. She missed his head by six inches. Why? Because the sight was off of the gun by six inches. He said to me, and I quote, if the gun hadn't been faulty, she would have killed the man. She had him between the eyes.
- [68:22]
Unknown Speaker E
Wow.
- [68:23]
Unknown Speaker F
And all of the unindicted co conspirators, the group called Tribal Thumb, nobody had ever heard of them. They were dangerous. They killed people. They groomed her to do this. They knew nobody would see her coming. Because she looked like your neighbor lady.
- [68:42]
Unknown Speaker E
Right.
- [68:43]
Unknown Speaker F
She looked like somebody that wants to kill the President.
- [68:46]
Unknown Speaker E
Definitely not. According to their profile, no.
- [68:49]
Unknown Speaker F
And I interviewed President Ford, who was alive at the time. He was lovely. He was so nice. I didn't think he'd want to talk to me about this woman who tried to kill them, but he did. I requested an interview and he said yes. So that's the backstory of how I came to meet her, how I kept in touch with her. We exchanged letters over the years. A lot of what's in the book came from the letters. Things that she told me that she never told anyone, how I got the file opened by the FBI. And the truth now, she got out of prison in 32 years. Why? Because in 1987, life was 30 years. Now life is life. You don't get out. But she did, and she's been out. And she got remarried.
- [69:52]
Unknown Speaker E
Fascinating.
- [69:54]
Unknown Speaker F
To somebody who worked in the government. It's like, what? And she tried to kill the President. You're getting married again.
- [70:00]
Unknown Speaker E
Okay, that is so interesting to me. So did you talk to her anymore after her release or after she hung up on you?
- [70:07]
Unknown Speaker F
No.
- [70:08]
Unknown Speaker E
No, that was the end. For real?
- [70:09]
Unknown Speaker F
For real. That was the. And, yeah. And there was nothing to say. You know, if you ask her, she'll say the book is all lies. But I had a fabulous publisher the first time around. And the second time around, Diversion, the first publisher was Macmillan. And we had lawyers go over every single word of my book. And I was thrilled because as a journalist, I kept copious notes. I have a whole file cabinet of notes and vetted information because I wanted people to know that there was tremendous amount of research and everything you read in that book is accurate. And no one has ever challenged anything in my book. And when Diversion came along, after macmillan stopped publishing it, and they came along and said, we want to publish the book, and they came up with a much better title and did a great job publishing it, made an audiobook. I mean, the relationship with Diversion has just been fantastic. They've Just been wonderful. Really wonderful.
- [71:17]
Unknown Speaker E
Yeah, I love diversion too.
- [71:19]
Unknown Speaker F
Yeah, yeah, they're. They're great.
- [71:21]
Unknown Speaker E
Okay, so she just really dropped you for real. Which is fascinating because she was so pumped that you got there like that. Like, she asked you to come.
- [71:28]
Unknown Speaker F
Yeah.
- [71:28]
Unknown Speaker E
And then she did. You didn't follow her rules, and then she was like, get out. And you were like, okay, I have everything I need from you. It was mostly lies. Anyway, Fascinating. What is she like in person?
- [71:40]
Unknown Speaker F
She is charming. She does control the conversation, which isn't a surprise. You know, she is a chameleon. You know, in the book you'll see how she completely reinvents herself over and over and over again. And the piece that I wanted to highlight, and I have a quote, you know, in the book, in my notes, in my letters, is when she abandoned her children. And then she goes to work at RKO Studios and she meets an Oscar winning sound designer there. They end up getting married. She says in her letter, we have a lot in common. Neither of us has any family. This is a woman who'd been married a couple times and had like four kids.
- [72:25]
Unknown Speaker E
Right.
- [72:26]
Unknown Speaker F
And she just completely reinvents herself as a little southern belle. That's Sarah Jane.
- [72:35]
Unknown Speaker E
I just had one more question. Has like two parts, though. So the first part is, where's the best place to find your work if people are obsessed with you and want to know more about you and what you do and then what are you working on next?
- [72:50]
Unknown Speaker F
So my website, jerryspeeler.com and I just had another book published. It was. It's called Housewife Assassin. That's historical fiction based on my grandmother's life. I have a trilogy, actually. And the second book has been written about the daughters. But each book stands alone. So book one is out. Regina of Warsaw. Love, Loss and Liberation, based on my grandmother's life. Book two is Revenge of the Sisters and it's a revenge book. Nobody gets shot, nobody gets beaten up. But three girls have events that shape their lives and they get revenge on each of these people. And I don't know what the third book is yet, but they can find me on my website. They can contact me through my website or just jerryspeeler.com and I love to talk to people. I love to talk to anyone about the book.
- [73:42]
Unknown Speaker E
Oh, that's wonderful. We'll link to those things in our show notes as well. So listeners, if y'all are like driving right now, you don't have to like pull over. It'll be there for you. The notes will be there for you and you can follow the links and get in touch with Jerry that way.
- [73:54]
Unknown Speaker F
Thank you Mary Kay.
- [73:55]
Unknown Speaker E
Absolutely. Thank you so much for coming to talk to me. I love talking to you. This is a fascinating story and thank you so much for sharing it with us.
- [74:05]
Unknown Speaker F
Thank you for having me. It was been a pleasure.
- [74:17]
Unknown Speaker E
For more information about this case and others we cover on the show, visit diversionaudio.com the greatest true Crime Stories Ever Told is a production of Diversion Audio. I'm Mary Kay McBrayer and I hosted this episode. This episode was written by Grace Heerman. Our show is produced by Emma Demuth, Edited by Antonio Enriquez Theme music by Tyler Cash Executive produced by Scott Waxman Join me next week when I'll be telling you about the real life story of love, loss and betrayal surrounding Agatha Christie, one of the world's most prolific mystery writers. Because she wasn't just a creator of dramatic stories, she actually lived one too.
- [75:17]
Indeed Advertiser
You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday? How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy. Just use Indeed. Stop struggling to get your job posts seen on other job sites with Indeed sponsored jobs. Your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates so you can reach the people you want faster. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on indeed have 45% more applications than non sponsored jobs. Don't wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed and listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit. To get your jobs more visibility@ Indeed.com Arts, just go to Indeed.com Arts right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need.
- [76:11]
A. Martinez
Hey, it's Amartinez. The news can feel like a lot on any given day, but you can't just ignore la. No, when important world changing events are happening, that is where the Up first podcast comes in. Every single morning in under 15 minutes, we take the news and boil it down to three essential stories so you can keep up without feeling stressed out. Listen up first from NPR on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [76:36]
Ed Helms
Prohibition is synonymous with speakeasies, jazz, flappers, and, of course, failure. I'm Ed Helms, and on season three of my podcast Snafu, there's a story I couldn't wait to tell you. It's about an unlikely duo in the 1920s who tried to warn the public that prohibition was going to backfire so badly it just might leave thousands dead from poison. Listen and subscribe to SNAFU on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [77:06]
Jorge Cham
Have you ever wondered, if your pet is lying to you, why is my.
- [77:09]
Unknown Speaker E
Cat not here and I go in.
- [77:10]
Unknown Speaker F
And she's eating my lunch?
- [77:11]
Jorge Cham
Or if hypnotism is real, you will use the suggestion in order to enhance your cognitive controls. But what's inside a black hole?
- [77:18]
Unknown Speaker F
Black holes could be a consequence of the way that we understand the universe.
- [77:22]
Jorge Cham
Well, we have answers for you in the new iHeart original podcast, Science Stuff. Join me or Hitcham as we answer questions about animals, space, our brains, and our bodies. So give yourself permission to be a science geek and listen to science stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.