MAKING OF A MISFIT

As if from nowhere, the dumpy, determined woman descended one day in February 1974 on the headquarters of the Hearst food-giveaway program in San Francisco. "God has sent me," she declared and rapidly took over as bookkeeper for the charity operation, known as People in Need, or PIN, that Randolph Hearst and his wife Catherine, in response to demands of the Symbionese Liberation Army, had hastily set up in an attempt to win their daughter Patty's freedom. Within a short time, Sara Jane Moore had elbowed her way into the program's inner circle, but not without leaving some bruises. "She was pushy, nosy, and wanted to take over," said the program's former director, A. Ludlow Kramer.

Through her involvement with PIN, Sara Jane Moore soon became a kind of radical groupie. During the next 18 months, as she wandered through the small, semiclandestine parties, splinter groups and cells that make up "the Movement" in the Bay Area, Moore turned from enchanted novice into an FBI informer and then into a Marxist convert, only to be ostracized as a despised pariah after she confessed her informant role. The atmosphere of conspiracy and danger provided a sense of action and purpose that her life was lacking. "I was really nervous, but I was intrigued by the whole thing," she once said. "It was like a grade-B movie."

Moore liked to pretend that she was born into the Southern aristocracy. After wangling an invitation to visit the Hearst estate, she boasted that she had entered through the front door, implying that quality respected quality. Actually, she was born on Feb. 15,1930, into a middle-class family in Charleston, W. Va., where a candy-store keeper remembers that both she and, a few years later, Charles Manson, another Charleston resident, shopped for sweets. Her family name was Kahn; Moore is her mother's maiden name. After high school, she joined the WACS and received her first newspaper notice in the early 1950s by collapsing, suffering from amnesia, in front of the White House.

Nothing ever seemed to work out for her. She was married to four men, one of them twice, and abandoned three children, whom her parents finally adopted after frustrated attempts to have her arrested for failure to support them. She kept her fourth child, Frederick, 9, the offspring of her marriage to a former movie sound man named John Aalberg, whom Moore liked to describe to friends as "a biggie in Los Angeles--you'd know him." After the breakup of her most recent marriage, to a San Francisco-area doctor, she was forced to leave her $75,000 home in Danville for failure to meet mortgage payments, and she eventually moved into San Francisco's Mission District, an uneasy mixture of ethnic blue-collar families and counterculture groups.

Meanwhile, Sara Jane was having trouble holding a job for long, even though she was a competent accountant. "If she had only shut up and done her job, everything would have been fine," says one recent employer. "But she couldn't shut up for ten minutes."

Moore's abrasiveness soon got her into trouble in the Hearst food-giveaway program. "She has an amazing ability to move right in and drive everybody crazy," recalled Steven Weed, Patty's former fiance, who worked at PIN. Finally, Moore was evicted from PIN. "We marched her out of the office, screaming and crying, with two men holding her arms," recalled another PIN worker.

By then, however, she had already established a connection with the Hearst family. While at PIN, she had struck up a friendship with Wilbert ("Popeye") Jackson, the black ex-convict who had formed the United Prisoners Union, dedicated to advancing prison reform. (He was gunned down in San Francisco on June 8 by unknown assassins.) Popeye, hinting at contacts with the S.L.A., approached Randolph Hearst with an offer to intercede for Patty's release. Sensing an opportunity, Moore managed to become the go-between in the dealings. It was a role that caught the attention of FBI agents, who thought she might provide useful information. According to her account (see box), the FBI hired her in the spring of 1974 and gave her a code name and control officer.

Sara Jane hung around the U.P.U. offices, answering phones and trying to ingratiate herself. But Popeye's blatant sexual activities offended her sensibilities. She also grew weary of being conned for money by him and got angry when he damaged her auto. She decided he was not sincere about trying to help free Patty. Her verdict: "He did what he wanted to, and to hell with the rest of the world."

The FBI assigned Moore a new target: a still unidentified radical leader whom she called Tom.

Soon, under Tom's tutelage, she found herself increasingly attracted to Maoist and Marxist ideas. She attended movies, discussions and seminars, often dragging along her son. Finally, she asked to join Tom's study group, and as an earnest of her sincerity, told Tom about her role as an FBI informant. Tom replied that while he believed her conversion, he would have to take the matter up with his colleagues. She recollected: "I was afraid of Tom's group, and I was afraid of the bureau if they found out I told Tom."

Word of Moore's FBI connection spread through the radical community, and she was ostracized. Whenever she attended meetings, she was surrounded by a circle of empty seats. She sought to counteract her alienation by making a full confession of her past links to the FBI. To reporters, radio interviewers and anyone else who would listen, she would pour forth self-criticism and expound on Marxist and Maoist theories. Whereupon both the FBI and the radicals dropped her entirely. Still longing for the thrills of clandestine work, she cultivated ties with San Francisco police, who in turn put her in touch with the Treasury Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

Moore became fearful that she would be killed either by the FBI or vengeful radicals. "My life is in danger," she would say. "I know how to use a gun because I had military training, but if they want you they can surprise you at any time." She also was suffering more and more from a feeling of isolation, and becoming more and more nervous and overwrought.

The day after her arrest, Moore summoned Los Angeles Times Staff Writer Ellen Hume, one of the few people who had listened sympathetically to her earlier stories. To the reporter she tried to explain what drove her to an act that she says she really wanted to be prevented from committing. Dressed in a red sweater over a white nightgown, Moore talked for two hours by telephone in the glass-partitioned visiting room at the San Francisco county jail. "I knew I was rapidly reaching a point that all avenues of taking action were being closed off, one at a time," she said. "I was afraid of myself, that I would come apart, [go] out of control, afraid I would go around shooting people."

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