Assasination Attempt Gerald Ford
Gerald Rudolph Ford (July 14, 1913 – December 26, 2006) was the 38th President of the United States, serving from 1974 to 1977, and the 40th vice president serving from 1973 to 1974. As the first person appointed to the vice-presidency under the terms of the 25th Amendment, when he became President upon Richard Nixon's resignation on August 9, 1974. He also became the only President of the United States who was elected neither President nor Vice-President. |
There have been multiple assassination assays and plots on Presidents of the United States; there have been over 20 known attempts to kill sitting and former Presidents as well as Presidents-elect. Four attempts on sitting Presidents have succeeded:
The assailant, a petite, red haired, freckle-faced young woman named Lynette Fromme, approached the president while he was walking near the California Capitol and raised a .45 caliber handgun in the direction to him. Before she was able to fire off a shot, Secret Service agents dealt with her, and wrestled her to the ground. Seventeen days later, another woman, Sarah Jane Moore, a susceptible-to-mental-breakdown accountant, tried to assassinate Ford while he was in San Francisco. Her attempt was impeded by a bystander who instinctively grabbed Moore’s arm when she raised the gun. Although she fired one shot, it did not fall upon its target.
Lynette Fromme was a member of the notorious Charles Manson family, a group of drug-addled groupies who followed cult leader Manson. Manson and other members of his "family" were accused and condemned to prison for murdering former actress Sharon Tate and others in 1969. Subsequently, Fromme and other female members of the cult started an order of "nuns" within a new group called the International People's Court of Retribution. This group terrorized corporate executives who leaded environmentally destructive businesses. Fromme herself was still so enamored of Manson that she bequeathed the plot to kill President Ford in order to win Manson’s approval.
Fromme was convicted of attempted murder and was condemned to life in prison in West Virginia. She fled in 1979, but was caught from the interior of 25 miles of the prison. Strangely, Ford’s second would-be assassin, Moore, was jailed in the same facility and escaped in 1989. She turned herself in two days later and, like Fromme, was transferred to a higher-security prison. Both women remain imprisoned today.
After Fromme’s assassination attempt, Ford impassively continued on to the Capitol to speak before the California legislature. The main topic of his speech was felony.
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