WEBVTT - S1 E7: A Confusion of Sanity and Reality 0:00:01.880 --> 0:00:04.519 Rip Current. It is a production of I Heart Podcasts. 0:00:04.680 --> 0:00:08.039 The views and opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those 0:00:08.080 --> 0:00:11.520 if the host, producers or parent company listener discretion. 0:00:11.800 --> 0:00:12.319 Is it fine? 0:00:18.120 --> 0:00:20.159 The Quote of the People of this date issues the 0:00:20.280 --> 0:00:24.279 following order. All corporate enemies of the people will be 0:00:24.360 --> 0:00:27.320 shot on site at any time and at any place. 0:00:28.200 --> 0:00:31.840 This order is permanent until such time as all enemies 0:00:31.840 --> 0:00:35.840 for us have either surrendered or been destroyed. 0:00:38.080 --> 0:00:43.839 In closing, I wish to play the national anthem of 0:00:43.960 --> 0:00:53.040 the Simbanese Liberation Army. 0:00:56.280 --> 0:00:59.360 The Crusaders were really popular in the Bay Area at 0:00:59.360 --> 0:01:02.840 the time. They were a gateway a band into real jazz. 0:01:03.280 --> 0:01:06.560 They had music that was being played on the mainstream 0:01:06.680 --> 0:01:09.560 adult contemporary stations, but they were also being played on 0:01:09.600 --> 0:01:13.920 the progressive rock stations. My name is Joe Mada. I 0:01:13.920 --> 0:01:18.319 live in Portland, Oregon. During the time of the SLA, 0:01:18.440 --> 0:01:22.040 I lived in Berkeley. I wanted to be a music writer, 0:01:22.319 --> 0:01:25.880 but I was also got involved with a underground newspaper 0:01:25.920 --> 0:01:28.480 that was based in San Francisco called the San Francisco Phoenix. 0:01:28.560 --> 0:01:32.600 And my entire time that I spent writing there was 0:01:32.680 --> 0:01:36.400 no more than I'm guessing four to six weeks. The 0:01:36.440 --> 0:01:40.200 Crusaders had kind of an interesting connection with the Sla. 0:01:40.319 --> 0:01:44.200 Not of their choice, but the Sla chose one of 0:01:44.200 --> 0:01:48.320 their songs, which was Way Back Home, as their theme song. 0:01:48.400 --> 0:01:51.880 It was like their an anthem. I really liked the band, 0:01:52.000 --> 0:01:53.880 and they were going to be playing had a live 0:01:53.920 --> 0:01:58.480 performance at the Greek Theater in Berkeley. I contacted the 0:01:58.520 --> 0:02:01.000 publisher and I said, and I'm going to try to 0:02:01.040 --> 0:02:03.919 get a ticket. Would you like me to review the show. 0:02:04.560 --> 0:02:07.760 I was nineteen twenty years old and carried my notebook 0:02:07.800 --> 0:02:10.320 and penned into the Greek Theater and I think it 0:02:10.360 --> 0:02:12.520 was general mission. I was sitting up near the top 0:02:12.560 --> 0:02:15.400 of the stadium. It was a beautiful theater. It seemed 0:02:15.400 --> 0:02:18.960 like its seats several hundred, maybe even more than that, 0:02:19.000 --> 0:02:23.880 maybe in the low thousands of people. During the performance, 0:02:24.600 --> 0:02:27.880 in between one of the songs or a couple of songs, 0:02:27.919 --> 0:02:32.360 somebody stormed the stage and grabbed the microphone, and I 0:02:32.360 --> 0:02:35.560 want to say he grabbed it from the pianist, Joe Sample, 0:02:36.080 --> 0:02:40.600 and he screened into the microphone play Way back Home 0:02:40.760 --> 0:02:43.800 for the brothers and the sisters of the Sla. The 0:02:43.840 --> 0:02:47.520 guy was escorted off by the security at the theater, 0:02:47.720 --> 0:02:49.920 and I made note of it, but I didn't include 0:02:49.919 --> 0:02:53.200 it in my review. Within the next forty eight seventy 0:02:53.200 --> 0:02:57.920 two hours, the review was published, and under my byline, 0:02:58.320 --> 0:03:02.399 the publisher or the ed inserted some of his own 0:03:02.520 --> 0:03:08.360 language about the person who stormed the stage. I chose 0:03:08.440 --> 0:03:11.600 to stop writing for that because I didn't want to 0:03:11.600 --> 0:03:14.639 be associated with anything having to do with the SLA. 0:03:15.080 --> 0:03:19.600 It was such a controversial group for obvious reasons. They're 0:03:19.680 --> 0:03:22.800 very radical. They had murdered people in a bank. I 0:03:22.880 --> 0:03:25.280 was just a kid. I didn't want to be associated 0:03:25.320 --> 0:03:25.560 with that. 0:03:30.440 --> 0:03:31.680 I'm Toby Ball. 0:03:32.000 --> 0:03:34.000 And I'm Mary Catherine Garrison. 0:03:33.960 --> 0:03:36.000 And this is rip current. 0:03:41.160 --> 0:03:46.920 And she just disappeared. She basically abandoned her children, at 0:03:47.000 --> 0:03:50.520 least to her mother, not a mysteret, but they could 0:03:50.520 --> 0:03:53.160 never find her. Her phone was then disconnected. 0:03:54.240 --> 0:04:04.760 Episode seven, A Confusion of Sanity and Reality. Joe Mayetta's 0:04:04.800 --> 0:04:08.880 experience at the Crusaders show at the Greek Theater illustrates 0:04:09.120 --> 0:04:12.920 just how culturally prominent the SLA would become and the 0:04:12.960 --> 0:04:16.560 strong feelings they would evoke. But this was still months 0:04:16.560 --> 0:04:21.120 in the future. In the immediate aftermath of Patty Hurst's kidnapping, 0:04:21.680 --> 0:04:25.479 the police, the media, the public, and the Hurst family 0:04:25.640 --> 0:04:28.640 were simply trying to figure out who the SLA were 0:04:29.120 --> 0:04:34.359 and what they wanted. On February twelfth, eight days after 0:04:34.400 --> 0:04:38.120 the kidnapping of Patty Hurst, the SLA sent an audio 0:04:38.120 --> 0:04:42.800 tape to several media outlets. On it, the SLA announced 0:04:42.839 --> 0:04:47.960 their ransom demand that Patty's father, Randolph Hurst, arranged to 0:04:48.000 --> 0:04:53.039 feed the poor in California. This was impossible to meet, 0:04:53.240 --> 0:04:56.280 but in an effort to do so locally, Hearst quickly 0:04:56.320 --> 0:04:59.080 got a program up and running to provide free food 0:04:59.320 --> 0:05:02.839 for the poor in the San Francisco Bay area. The 0:05:02.960 --> 0:05:07.520 program was called People in Need or PIN. It operated 0:05:07.560 --> 0:05:11.000 out of a block long warehouse by the San Francisco waterfront. 0:05:11.720 --> 0:05:15.960 A Los Angeles Times reporter named Charles T. Powers visited 0:05:16.000 --> 0:05:17.320 the site. 0:05:17.480 --> 0:05:21.400 The dominant impression is of a paranoid security consciousness, a 0:05:21.520 --> 0:05:25.120 vast concern for a favorable public relations image, and the 0:05:25.160 --> 0:05:29.160 confusion of a dozen petty officers and aging radicals who 0:05:29.240 --> 0:05:31.960 wander about with plastic cups of coffee in one hand 0:05:32.240 --> 0:05:35.880 and clipboards in the other, issuing mutually disregarded orders and 0:05:35.920 --> 0:05:40.479 declarations of policy emanating apparently from some unknown source. 0:05:42.600 --> 0:05:45.560 As he sought someone to talk to about touring the warehouse, 0:05:46.080 --> 0:05:48.920 he was directed to a woman with gray hair and 0:05:48.960 --> 0:05:50.560 a peck and peck pantsuit. 0:05:51.240 --> 0:05:54.320 My name is Sarah Jane Moore, and I'm chief flunky here. 0:05:55.480 --> 0:05:59.240 Moore, who had experienced as a bookkeeper, had volunteered to 0:05:59.279 --> 0:06:03.080 help with PINS financial record keeping, but with grander designs 0:06:03.120 --> 0:06:06.960 for her role. Ludlow Kramer, who ran the PIN program, 0:06:07.400 --> 0:06:09.599 said about Sarah Jane. 0:06:09.320 --> 0:06:12.359 She came on strong. She was like the employee who 0:06:12.400 --> 0:06:15.440 two weeks after hiring wants to run the company. She 0:06:15.520 --> 0:06:18.719 wanted in on the politics of the thing, the decision making. 0:06:20.400 --> 0:06:24.760 Patty Hurst's boyfriend Stephen Weed said, she has an amazing 0:06:24.800 --> 0:06:29.760 ability to move right in and drive everybody crazy. Here's 0:06:29.839 --> 0:06:33.960 Jerry Spieler, the author of Housewife Assassin, the woman who 0:06:34.000 --> 0:06:35.599 tried to kill Gerald Ford. 0:06:36.839 --> 0:06:40.200 Sarah Jane fit in in terms of anybody who has 0:06:40.200 --> 0:06:42.720 a bookkeeping skills in such an event, you know, yes, 0:06:42.800 --> 0:06:45.240 please come help us. You know, she had her own office, 0:06:45.240 --> 0:06:48.640 but she became very difficult, and Richard Palladino, who is 0:06:48.640 --> 0:06:50.960 the security guy, said that she would yell at people 0:06:51.440 --> 0:06:54.200 and accuse them of disturbing her work. And then she 0:06:54.240 --> 0:06:58.039 would also walk around and tell everybody how wonderful they were, 0:06:58.080 --> 0:07:00.840 and after a while it became problematic. 0:07:02.560 --> 0:07:05.920 This talent for alienating people was a recurring theme in 0:07:05.960 --> 0:07:09.680 Moore's life, as was her ability to leave one chapter 0:07:09.720 --> 0:07:13.720 of her life behind and move forward unencumbered by her past. 0:07:14.600 --> 0:07:18.160 She barely even acknowledged that she had a past. 0:07:19.960 --> 0:07:23.560 Sarah Jane did not shy away from publicity. She seemed, 0:07:23.600 --> 0:07:26.720 in truth to court it. But while she was very 0:07:26.720 --> 0:07:30.360 forthcoming about her activities and actions, beginning with volunteering at Penn, 0:07:31.200 --> 0:07:34.360 she was strikingly tight lipped about anything that happened before that. 0:07:35.840 --> 0:07:38.440 In fact, she was known to create a fictitious backstory 0:07:38.440 --> 0:07:41.600 for herself if it suited her. For instance, she told 0:07:41.600 --> 0:07:43.920 Tohirst that she was the daughter of a rich timber 0:07:43.960 --> 0:07:47.800 and coal family in West Virginia. To others, she claimed 0:07:47.840 --> 0:07:50.600 that she had completed the requirements for an MBA degree, 0:07:51.040 --> 0:07:53.120 or that she had earned fifty thousand dollars a year 0:07:53.160 --> 0:07:56.760 as an accountant that's more than two hundred and eighty 0:07:56.840 --> 0:08:02.800 thousand in today's dollars. These claims were not true. In fact, 0:08:02.840 --> 0:08:05.760 she was born into a comfortable, middle class family in Charleston, 0:08:05.760 --> 0:08:09.520 West Virginia, the day after Valentine's Day in nineteen thirty. 0:08:10.920 --> 0:08:14.520 Her mother was a concert pianist with the Charleston Symphony Orchestra. 0:08:15.120 --> 0:08:18.160 Her father was an engineer, and I think her mother 0:08:18.600 --> 0:08:21.800 was a perfectionist in a lot of ways. But they 0:08:21.880 --> 0:08:25.000 lived in a community where her mom was sort of 0:08:25.040 --> 0:08:29.360 the block mom. If anything happened, people went to Ruth's 0:08:29.440 --> 0:08:31.560 house to get help or whatever. 0:08:33.000 --> 0:08:36.200 Her father, according to Spieler, had very strict limits and 0:08:36.240 --> 0:08:39.679 a cutting tongue that could slice through his children's self confidence. 0:08:41.000 --> 0:08:44.079 Despite this, Sarah Jane's upbringing seems to have not involved 0:08:44.080 --> 0:08:46.840 the kinds of intense conflict with her parents that plagued 0:08:46.880 --> 0:08:48.360 Lynette Fromm's teenage years. 0:08:49.679 --> 0:08:53.880 She came from a very talented, supportive home. Her brother's 0:08:53.920 --> 0:08:57.040 skip told me as her parents were very much there 0:08:57.120 --> 0:09:00.600 for the kids in terms of their activities, girls Scouts 0:09:00.679 --> 0:09:04.840 and garden club and all these kinds of things. She 0:09:05.000 --> 0:09:07.960 was active in school, she was in the Spanish club 0:09:08.000 --> 0:09:11.720 and theater group, but she was sort of off to 0:09:11.800 --> 0:09:15.080 the side. I guess you could describe her in terms of, 0:09:15.200 --> 0:09:17.480 you know, she had a sort of different attitude towards 0:09:17.480 --> 0:09:19.960 things or very competitive towards things. 0:09:20.679 --> 0:09:23.160 In a prelude to her adult life, Sarah Jane had 0:09:23.160 --> 0:09:26.720 a hard time connecting with friends. Her brothers and sisters 0:09:26.760 --> 0:09:29.800 got along fine with kids in school, but Sarah Jane 0:09:29.800 --> 0:09:34.040 was an outlier. And then when she was sixteen, she 0:09:34.160 --> 0:09:35.240 briefly went missing. 0:09:36.400 --> 0:09:39.679 She just disappeared for three days. Nobody knew where she was, 0:09:40.080 --> 0:09:42.120 and then she just showed back up and there was 0:09:42.160 --> 0:09:45.719 no explanation. She was fine. You know, the family was hysterical, 0:09:45.720 --> 0:09:47.920 but what happened to Sarah Jane? And then when she 0:09:47.960 --> 0:09:51.000 showed up again, she just refused to talk about what happened, 0:09:51.600 --> 0:09:54.199 and so they ended up just having to let it go. 0:09:56.120 --> 0:09:58.360 This is another pattern that would show up again and 0:09:58.440 --> 0:10:02.560 again in her adulthood, leaving a situation without providing any 0:10:02.559 --> 0:10:06.600 sort of explanation and not looking back. And as we'll see, 0:10:06.920 --> 0:10:10.480 this habit would play out in more and more extreme ways. 0:10:11.120 --> 0:10:14.520 Sarah Jane was very smart. Her IQ was reportedly near 0:10:14.559 --> 0:10:17.560 one pint forty. She got good grades in high school, 0:10:17.559 --> 0:10:21.800 and then after graduation the chaos of her adult life began. 0:10:23.080 --> 0:10:26.800 She went to nursing school and then quit. You know, 0:10:26.880 --> 0:10:29.080 she had the brains and the ability to do whatever 0:10:29.120 --> 0:10:29.680 she wanted. 0:10:31.200 --> 0:10:34.679 She joined the Women's Army Corps or WAX, then briefly 0:10:34.679 --> 0:10:39.000 married a marine named Wallace Anderson. Because of military regulations, 0:10:39.040 --> 0:10:42.000 the marriage essentially caught off any possibility that Sarah Jane 0:10:42.000 --> 0:10:45.640 could advance to a leadership position in the WAX. This 0:10:45.720 --> 0:10:47.760 might have been a moot point because around this time 0:10:47.840 --> 0:10:51.880 she suffered a series of fainting spells. These incidents came 0:10:51.920 --> 0:10:54.280 to a head in the spring of nineteen fifty when, 0:10:54.720 --> 0:10:57.560 after a tour of the White House, she fainted on 0:10:57.600 --> 0:11:02.560 the lawn. When she revive, Moore was disoriented, saying she 0:11:02.600 --> 0:11:05.560 didn't know who or where she was. She was not 0:11:05.640 --> 0:11:09.240 in uniform and had no identification, though for some reason, 0:11:09.320 --> 0:11:13.720 she was carrying several photos of herself. While she recovered 0:11:13.720 --> 0:11:17.040 at Walter Reed Army Hospital, newspapers ran photos of this 0:11:17.160 --> 0:11:21.280 mystery woman seeking information. Both of her parents, living now 0:11:21.280 --> 0:11:24.040 in separate states, saw the photos and came to d 0:11:24.200 --> 0:11:29.240 c in hospital. Sarah Jane quickly recovered her memory. The 0:11:29.320 --> 0:11:34.240 FBI investigated and concluded that she'd purposely left her identification behind. 0:11:35.240 --> 0:11:37.960 Was this fainting episode real or a fake, or a 0:11:37.960 --> 0:11:41.840 combination of the two, or something else entirely. This is 0:11:41.880 --> 0:11:45.559 one of the difficulties in assessing Sarah Jane's life how 0:11:45.640 --> 0:11:49.280 much of her strange behavior was calculated. When she was 0:11:49.320 --> 0:11:53.000 examined by the psychiatrist Gustav Wiland after her assassination attempt 0:11:53.040 --> 0:11:56.960 on Gerald Ford, he noted, I found a confusion of 0:11:57.000 --> 0:12:00.400 sanity and reality. You never know to what exct. She 0:12:00.480 --> 0:12:04.679 doesn't have things straight. These kinds of observations come up 0:12:04.720 --> 0:12:07.239 time and time again, and accounts of Sarah Jane. 0:12:08.160 --> 0:12:13.360 Nobody can seem to crack her psyche on that kind 0:12:13.400 --> 0:12:14.119 of behavior. 0:12:15.720 --> 0:12:19.240 The question of how much her unusual, even disturbing behavior 0:12:19.400 --> 0:12:24.000 was calculated and how much was mental illness continues throughout 0:12:24.000 --> 0:12:24.559 her story. 0:12:25.720 --> 0:12:28.880 Sarah Jane I think was very attractive in a lot 0:12:28.920 --> 0:12:32.280 of ways, not just physically pleasing, but very smart and 0:12:32.440 --> 0:12:36.600 her ability to get people signed on with her. I 0:12:36.640 --> 0:12:38.480 think she had a vision of what her life should 0:12:38.480 --> 0:12:40.200 be like, and when it didn't turn out that way, 0:12:40.400 --> 0:12:43.680 she looked for the nearest exit, so to speak. That's 0:12:43.720 --> 0:12:48.800 a repeated behavior throughout her life, these sort of short 0:12:48.920 --> 0:12:49.920 stints at things. 0:12:51.520 --> 0:12:54.840 This would over time lead to five marriages to four 0:12:54.880 --> 0:12:59.920 men and five divorces. Soon after the White house fainting spell. 0:13:00.480 --> 0:13:05.640 Sarah Jane divorced Wallace Anderson and left the wax within months. 0:13:05.679 --> 0:13:09.040 She was remarried, this time to an Air Force captain 0:13:09.120 --> 0:13:13.439 named Sidney Manning. By nineteen fifty three, she had two children, 0:13:13.600 --> 0:13:17.640 Sidney Junior and Janet. Sarah Jane struggled to play the 0:13:17.640 --> 0:13:20.960 part of a nineteen fifties homemaker. Her mother called her 0:13:21.000 --> 0:13:23.559 daily and worried about her parenting of the young children. 0:13:25.280 --> 0:13:28.480 Sarah Jane and sid divorce in nineteen fifty four, and 0:13:28.520 --> 0:13:32.760 then reconciled and remarried, moving the family from Tucson, Arizona, 0:13:32.800 --> 0:13:37.120 to southern Los Angeles. She had a third child, Melissa, 0:13:37.760 --> 0:13:40.800 a mentally disabled girl whom Sarah Jane's mother arranged to 0:13:40.840 --> 0:13:44.720 be raised by a foster family. Sarah Jane didn't see 0:13:44.760 --> 0:13:45.520 Melissa again. 0:13:47.760 --> 0:13:54.360 She envisioned some glamorous military wife lifestyle, but it wasn't 0:13:54.400 --> 0:13:56.360 as glamorous as she thought it would be. You know, 0:13:56.440 --> 0:13:58.840 she was stuck at home with the kids, and she 0:13:58.920 --> 0:14:01.360 was living on this millitary base kind of thing, and 0:14:01.400 --> 0:14:04.839 it wasn't glamorous. Her mom came to visit, and one 0:14:04.880 --> 0:14:07.080 of her brothers came to visit, and they were kind 0:14:07.120 --> 0:14:09.600 of disturbed at what they saw in terms of Sarah 0:14:09.640 --> 0:14:12.920 Jane being sort of overwhelmed and not really as present 0:14:13.000 --> 0:14:14.840 as they would like her to be with the kids, 0:14:15.600 --> 0:14:17.040 but she did take care of her children. 0:14:19.160 --> 0:14:22.160 During this time, Sarah Jane attended some Hollywood parties and 0:14:22.200 --> 0:14:24.760 got a taste of what seemed like a more glamorous life. 0:14:26.200 --> 0:14:29.160 In October of nineteen fifty five, she divorced, said for 0:14:29.200 --> 0:14:33.480 a second time there would not be another reconciliation, but 0:14:33.600 --> 0:14:37.760 she was pregnant again. When Christopher was born, she found 0:14:37.760 --> 0:14:40.640 herself living in Los Angeles as a single mother, caring 0:14:40.640 --> 0:14:45.320 for three small children. Then came Christmas of nineteen fifty six, 0:14:46.000 --> 0:14:49.400 where she committed the most extreme act to date of 0:14:49.440 --> 0:14:50.840 shedding her past. 0:14:51.680 --> 0:14:55.400 She called her mom and said, you know, I really 0:14:55.480 --> 0:14:58.360 need some time at home with you and the kids, 0:14:58.400 --> 0:15:00.600 and I'm going to come home. And so they send 0:15:00.640 --> 0:15:04.360 her tickets, and her brother Dana, goes to the airport 0:15:04.440 --> 0:15:07.640 to pick her up, and he sees people getting off 0:15:07.640 --> 0:15:10.359 the plane, getting off the plane, getting off the plane, 0:15:10.720 --> 0:15:13.280 and then finally he sees what we used to call 0:15:13.320 --> 0:15:18.280 the steward is carrying baby Christopher, and then her oldest 0:15:18.360 --> 0:15:23.320 son helding his sister's hand walking down the stairs. But 0:15:23.440 --> 0:15:27.600 there's no Sarah Jane, and Dana is flu mixed. It's like, 0:15:28.800 --> 0:15:33.800 where's Sarah Jane with the kids. And her parents tried 0:15:33.800 --> 0:15:36.360 to find her. They called the police, they called sid 0:15:36.400 --> 0:15:38.400 who you know, said I can't find her. I don't 0:15:38.400 --> 0:15:43.000 know anything about that, and she just disappeared. She basically 0:15:43.400 --> 0:15:47.760 abandoned her children, at least to her mother and not 0:15:47.880 --> 0:15:50.920 on the street, but they could never find her. Her 0:15:50.960 --> 0:15:54.920 phone was then disconnected and that was it. She was 0:15:54.960 --> 0:15:57.680 no longer the mother of these three children. In her mind. 0:15:58.960 --> 0:16:02.800 The split was to She was never in contact with 0:16:02.880 --> 0:16:08.120 her children again. Eventually, Sarah Jane's parents would unsuccessfully try 0:16:08.120 --> 0:16:11.800 to have her arrested for lack of child support. If 0:16:11.800 --> 0:16:15.600 this seems unusual or even pathological, it's not the only 0:16:15.640 --> 0:16:19.600 indication Sarah Jane struggled with mental health. The New York 0:16:19.640 --> 0:16:22.920 Times later reported that she had been hospitalized at least 0:16:23.000 --> 0:16:27.040 seven times for mental health reasons over the years. Her 0:16:27.080 --> 0:16:31.600 strange and disagreeable behavior also prevented Sarah Jane from maintaining 0:16:31.640 --> 0:16:35.400 employment throughout her adulthood. As a co worker said of her, 0:16:36.040 --> 0:16:38.000 if she had only shut up and done her job. 0:16:38.120 --> 0:16:40.720 Everything would have been fine, but she couldn't shut up 0:16:40.760 --> 0:16:47.200 for ten minutes. This combination of constant reinvention, mental health issues, 0:16:47.240 --> 0:16:50.240 and difficult personality next led her to a new husband 0:16:50.760 --> 0:16:52.520 who was able to provide the life that she had 0:16:52.600 --> 0:16:55.840 envisioned for herself, even if that life didn't in the 0:16:55.960 --> 0:17:00.160 end prevent her from returning to her old habits of escape. 0:17:01.120 --> 0:17:11.640 After the break, three times divorced and having abandoned three 0:17:11.720 --> 0:17:14.240 children with her parents in West Virginia and a fourth 0:17:14.280 --> 0:17:17.639 to foster parents, Sarah Jane married a man with a 0:17:17.680 --> 0:17:20.959 money and social cachet that her previous husbands had lacked. 0:17:22.280 --> 0:17:26.560 John Alberg was a very accomplished sound designer with RKO 0:17:26.720 --> 0:17:28.680 and Juan Oscars. 0:17:29.760 --> 0:17:32.679 Moore met Alberg while working as an accountant at RKO 0:17:32.800 --> 0:17:37.560 Movie Studios. According to Jerry Spieler, The FBI reported that 0:17:37.600 --> 0:17:40.400 Sarah Jane had nearly earned a graduate degree in business, 0:17:40.440 --> 0:17:43.959 but didn't name the college. Sarah Jane told friends that 0:17:44.000 --> 0:17:48.720 she had taken accounting classes at UCLA. John Alberg was 0:17:48.760 --> 0:17:51.119 one of the most prominent sound mixers in the film 0:17:51.160 --> 0:17:55.679 industry between nineteen thirty six and nineteen fifty four. He 0:17:55.800 --> 0:17:59.639 was nominated for ten Oscars for sound production, including for 0:17:59.720 --> 0:18:04.160 film classic Citizen Kane and It's a Wonderful Life. Though 0:18:04.160 --> 0:18:05.960 he didn't win in any of these years, he was 0:18:06.040 --> 0:18:08.200 over time given three technical awards. 0:18:09.600 --> 0:18:12.719 When she met John, one thing they said they had 0:18:12.800 --> 0:18:16.560 in common as neither of them had any family, so 0:18:16.880 --> 0:18:20.800 he didn't know anything about her previous life. This was 0:18:20.840 --> 0:18:25.280 Sarah Jane reinventing herself to this man, who was a 0:18:25.359 --> 0:18:28.760 very accomplished person in Hollywood. 0:18:29.880 --> 0:18:32.880 Later in San Francisco, she would complain to friends about 0:18:32.880 --> 0:18:35.639 the pressure to maintain a certain image in Los Angeles. 0:18:37.000 --> 0:18:39.640 She hinted that she had undergone cosmetic surgery to live 0:18:39.680 --> 0:18:42.600 up to the physical ideals that were expected there. But 0:18:42.960 --> 0:18:45.280 of course, with Sarah Jane, there was no way to 0:18:45.280 --> 0:18:49.240 know what the truth was. For instance, she became pregnant 0:18:49.240 --> 0:18:52.159 by John Alberg. She would later tell the woman she 0:18:52.240 --> 0:18:55.680 considered her best friend, a Bay Area radical named Joyce Halverson, 0:18:56.560 --> 0:18:59.880 that her interest in Patti hurst kidnapping was in part 0:19:00.160 --> 0:19:03.000 you to threat she received in La to kidnap her child. 0:19:04.040 --> 0:19:09.520 The kidnapping threats never happened. By the time her fifth child, Frederick, 0:19:09.600 --> 0:19:12.040 was born, she had left Alburg after one month of 0:19:12.080 --> 0:19:15.440 marriage and moved north to the Bay Area. 0:19:15.600 --> 0:19:18.840 Her comment to me in the letters that I had 0:19:19.000 --> 0:19:21.760 was she couldn't live in Los Angeles anymore. She had 0:19:21.840 --> 0:19:25.440 to leave, So she moved to San Francisco and had 0:19:25.560 --> 0:19:30.680 the baby, Frederick, and then met her next husband, Willard Carmel, 0:19:31.480 --> 0:19:34.280 who was a physician with Kaiser and he lived up 0:19:34.320 --> 0:19:37.800 in Danville. Nobody knows what she told Willard about why 0:19:37.840 --> 0:19:41.320 she was pregnant alone in San Francisco. She never explained 0:19:41.359 --> 0:19:41.720 that to me. 0:19:42.960 --> 0:19:45.480 Her marriage to Willard allowed her to continue the well 0:19:45.520 --> 0:19:48.440 healed lifestyle that she'd become accustomed to with John Auberg 0:19:48.440 --> 0:19:49.320 in Los Angeles. 0:19:50.560 --> 0:19:53.880 Danville and where she lived in the Blackhawk country Club 0:19:53.920 --> 0:19:55.879 community is definitely not middle class. 0:19:55.880 --> 0:19:56.959 It's upper class. 0:19:57.080 --> 0:20:00.600 It's a very expensive community, and they what we call 0:20:00.640 --> 0:20:05.800 the East Bay is very conservative, and that after a 0:20:05.840 --> 0:20:08.119 while rubbed Sarah Jane the wrong way. But for a 0:20:08.160 --> 0:20:13.040 while she was very much the Danville community housewife, but 0:20:13.480 --> 0:20:16.240 had some issues around them. 0:20:16.880 --> 0:20:19.359 Sarah Jane was living the white picket fence lifestyle that 0:20:19.400 --> 0:20:23.840 she probably envisioned for herself. A young child, a doctor husband, 0:20:24.400 --> 0:20:27.439 a house, and a wealthy community. She even worked on 0:20:27.440 --> 0:20:31.480 the nineteen seventy campaign of a conservative Republican named George Murphy, 0:20:32.000 --> 0:20:34.879 who was running for re election to the Senate. He 0:20:35.080 --> 0:20:38.159 was the first famous actor elected to statewide office in 0:20:38.160 --> 0:20:40.200 California When I. 0:20:40.320 --> 0:20:43.480 Was the George Murphy, a star of death Bomb Highway 0:20:43.600 --> 0:20:45.720 nine nine, a suspense. 0:20:45.280 --> 0:20:48.280 Played for you, edited and directed by William Spear. 0:20:52.440 --> 0:20:55.280 Saddled by his continuing support for the Vietnam War and 0:20:55.359 --> 0:20:57.840 reports that he was continuing to receive a salary for 0:20:57.920 --> 0:21:01.000 an old position while in the Senate, Murphy lost the 0:21:01.040 --> 0:21:05.639 election to a Democrat named John Tunney. Sarah Jane's neighbors 0:21:05.640 --> 0:21:08.520 were put off by her manner and campaigning for Murphy. 0:21:08.600 --> 0:21:12.760 She was too talkative, too self aggrandizing, not tuned into 0:21:12.760 --> 0:21:17.600 other people's responses. As throughout her life, her personality often 0:21:17.640 --> 0:21:19.360 graded on those around her. 0:21:19.960 --> 0:21:23.520 She wanted to paint her front door purple, and the 0:21:23.960 --> 0:21:27.720 community guidelines said you can't do that, and so that 0:21:28.040 --> 0:21:32.240 started off a rift between her and her neighbors. Covenants 0:21:32.240 --> 0:21:35.720 and restrictions basically had you know, you can only paint 0:21:35.720 --> 0:21:38.399 your house this color, and you know you can't have 0:21:38.480 --> 0:21:40.760 cars on the street, or you can't have an RV 0:21:40.920 --> 0:21:43.439 on the street, and all the stuff that goes around 0:21:43.480 --> 0:21:45.600 with a planned community like that. 0:21:47.200 --> 0:21:50.120 Her community had rules and covenants prohibiting a whole host 0:21:50.200 --> 0:21:52.639 of things in order to keep the development looking clean 0:21:52.720 --> 0:21:57.200 and homogeneous. The rules did not allow purple front doors. 0:21:58.400 --> 0:22:01.480 Sarah Jane lost this fight, but it was another example 0:22:01.520 --> 0:22:05.000 of her irritating the people around her. Her marriage to 0:22:05.000 --> 0:22:07.440 Willard Carmel lasted four years. 0:22:08.400 --> 0:22:12.879 Sarah Jane did a one to eighty after living in 0:22:12.960 --> 0:22:15.920 Danville for a while and going through the divorce. That's 0:22:15.920 --> 0:22:18.480 when Patty Hurst got kidnapped. 0:22:19.800 --> 0:22:24.040 On February twentieth, nineteen seventy five. Sarah Jane arrived at 0:22:24.040 --> 0:22:27.960 the chaos of Penn Headquarters with her bookkeeping experience and 0:22:28.000 --> 0:22:31.960 the ambition to become a leader. She also possessed the 0:22:32.000 --> 0:22:34.800 self assurance to hold her own in an environment rife 0:22:34.840 --> 0:22:39.920 with strong personalities and rivalries. As journalist Carol Polgash wrote 0:22:39.920 --> 0:22:44.199 of her, Sarah was unintimidated, a fact she spread to 0:22:44.240 --> 0:22:47.840 anyone who would listen. She could handle anyone, ignore any 0:22:47.840 --> 0:22:51.720 foul language, and maintain her cool, she would say. In 0:22:51.800 --> 0:22:55.679 his book My Search for Patty Hurst, Patty's boyfriend Stephen 0:22:55.760 --> 0:22:59.000 Weed describes going to the Penn headquarters at a time 0:22:59.040 --> 0:23:02.520 when Ludlow Kramer, the Washington Secretary of State and the 0:23:02.560 --> 0:23:05.600 man in charge of the pen program, was away in 0:23:05.720 --> 0:23:09.600 Washington State along with his deputy. Sarah Jane, who had 0:23:09.600 --> 0:23:12.600 the title of executive Secretary, had been left in charge. 0:23:13.560 --> 0:23:15.720 Weed starts by describing the squalor. 0:23:16.840 --> 0:23:20.280 The walls were smeared and dirty. There was garbage everywhere. 0:23:20.800 --> 0:23:24.000 In short, the offices had become a crash pad for 0:23:24.080 --> 0:23:26.840 anyone who walked in off the street. The smell of 0:23:26.880 --> 0:23:29.960 marijuana filled the air. People were lying on the floor 0:23:30.000 --> 0:23:33.400 and sleeping bags and winos were slumped in the alcove. 0:23:34.920 --> 0:23:37.480 Sarah Jane got the warehouse guards to remove these people, 0:23:37.600 --> 0:23:40.200 despite the protests of a long haired sixteen year old 0:23:40.200 --> 0:23:43.600 who thought it was elitist. The next day, she came 0:23:43.640 --> 0:23:46.560 in to find the warehouse volunteers, including a young warehouse 0:23:46.600 --> 0:23:50.639 foreman named Mike, masked around a secretary named Nancy who 0:23:50.680 --> 0:23:52.720 had been coming down from a drug trip all night. 0:23:53.920 --> 0:23:55.920 Weed wrote, We've got. 0:23:55.720 --> 0:23:58.200 To get her out of here. Sarah snapped, we can't 0:23:58.240 --> 0:24:01.520 let the whole program come to a grind because of Nancy. 0:24:02.280 --> 0:24:04.560 People like Nancy is what the program is all about. 0:24:04.960 --> 0:24:07.680 No it's not. We're here to get Patty out. 0:24:09.040 --> 0:24:12.040 Sarah Jane took Nancy to another room and told her 0:24:12.040 --> 0:24:15.320 that she was a detriment to the program. Nancy said 0:24:15.359 --> 0:24:17.360 she'd leave if she was a problem, but didn't want 0:24:17.400 --> 0:24:22.000 to go. Mike came into the room. According to Weed, 0:24:22.080 --> 0:24:24.840 Sarah Jane told Mike to get out there and get 0:24:24.840 --> 0:24:28.600 those people to work. Mike protested that he couldn't leave Nancy, 0:24:28.640 --> 0:24:32.240 who was now sobbing. Eventually, Sarah Jane had a volunteer 0:24:32.320 --> 0:24:36.480 take Nancy home. Two days later, Mike came into Sarah 0:24:36.560 --> 0:24:40.800