THE ASSAILANT: MAKING OF A MISFIT

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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."