A year after the death of president Gerald Ford, the woman who attempted to assassinate him more than three decades ago has been paroled. Sara Jane Moore, now 77, was given parole on December 31st. From the LA Times:

Moore, an accountant and a divorced mother of four, fired at Ford on Sept. 22, 1975, as the president was leaving a speaking engagement at the St. Francis Hotel in downtown San Francisco. Her single shot from a .38-caliber revolver missed Ford by several feet after Oliver Sipple, a disabled Vietnam War veteran, grabbed her arm and pulled her down.

It came a little more than two weeks after Lynnette Alice “Squeaky” Fromme, a follower of Charles Manson, pointed a loaded gun at Ford as he visited the state Capitol in Sacramento. Moore later said that Fromme’s effort did not inspire her own.

Before she fired at Ford, Moore had received psychiatric treatment several times and her attorneys were preparing an insanity defense. She pleaded guilty over their objections.

After she was sentenced, Moore expressed mixed feelings about her actions.

“Am I sorry I tried?” she said. “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.”