Widower Philip Chase married Sara Jane Moore, fracturing his family

Philip Chase, a retired psychologist and widower, married Sara Jane Moore in December 2010, more than five months after they met on the dating site eHarmony. Moore had tried to assassinate President Gerald R. Ford in 1975 and had been paroled in 2007 after serving more than 30 years of a life sentence.

Their relationship began in July 2010, when Phil, then in his mid-80s, struck up a long-distance correspondence with a woman who gave the name Sarah Kahn. His daughter Suzy later discovered through an online search that Kahn was Sara Jane Moore, who fired a .38-caliber revolver at President Ford outside the St.

Francis Hotel and was subdued after missing her target. Moore had been an activist, an F.B.I. informant and a high-profile inmate whose life and crimes were the subject of reporting and a biography. The marriage deeply divided the Chase family. Suzy and her brother Cru warned their father, but Phil defended Moore, calling her at the time "mightily confused and emotionally fragile" and saying she made him happy.

Suzy saved emails, tapes and transcripts and later used recordings to document the upheaval. Tensions escalated into estrangement: Cru and Phil stopped speaking for three years after Moore accused Cru of violating her parole restrictions; they later reconciled when Phil visited her while she was hospitalized.

Key Topics

Politics, Philip Chase, Sara Jane Moore, Gerald Ford, St. Francis Hotel, Eharmony