RIP Current Podcast Premieres: Two Women Who Tried To Kill President Ford

iHeartPodcasts has announced the debut of Rip Current, a new podcast series about the only two times in nearly 250 years of U.S. history that a woman has tried to assassinate the sitting president — and the attempts happened 17 days apart in September 1975.

The first attempt was by Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, a protégé of infamous cult leader Charles Manson. She pulled a gun on Ford as he walked to the state capital building in Sacramento, CA, but hadn’t chambered a bullet, and the gun did not fire.

17 days later, Sara Jane Moore, a middle-aged housewife, aspiring radical, and undercover FBI informant, shot at Ford as he emerged from the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco but missed and was wrestled to the ground by a bystander. Fromme and Moore had never met.

Sara Jane Moore had been evaluated by the Secret Service earlier in 1975, but agents had concluded that she posed no danger to the president. The 45-year-old was detained by police on an illegal handgun charge the day before the assassination attempt but was released. The police confiscated her .44-caliber Charter Arms Bulldog revolver and 113 rounds of ammunition. Moore pleaded guilty to charges of attempted assassination on December 12, 1975. The following month, on January 15, 1976, she was sentenced to life in prison. On December 31, 2007, at the age of 77, Moore was released on parole.