Patty Hearst

Background:

Patty Hearst was born on February 20^th, 1954 in San Francisco, California. Her parents, Randolph Hearst and Catherine Campbell Hearst were very wealthy newspaper moguls, and her father was the editor and president of the San Francisco Examiner. Patty was forced to attend Christian and Catholic schools for her entire elementary and junior high school career. When she was a sophomore in high school, her father gave her permission to transfer to the Crystal Springs School on the grounds of the Crocker Estate. While she was here she met Steven Weed, a young teacher straight out of Princeton. He was her math tutor. After several months of tutoring, their relationship became romantic. Patty was seventeen, and Steven was twenty-three. Upon graduating from high school at 17, Patty went to Menlo College, where she was assigned to a dormitory room, but she spent the majority of her time at her boyfriend, Steven’s house. Weed got offered a job at Berkeley, and so Patty moved in with him after he accepted the position there. They became engaged, and at the end of 1973, the Hearsts formally announced their engagement.

The Abduction:

Patty Hearst was the most famous person to be abducted by the SLA the night of her abduction, but she was not the first. Peter Benenson was unloading groceries out of his car in the parking lot by his house when two women and a man abducted him. They bound and gagged him, and placed him on the floorboard of his vehicle. He remained blindfolded on the floor of the car during the Patty Hearst abduction. Patty Hearst was abducted on February 4, 1974. A woman went to the door of Hearst and Weed’s apartment, claiming that she had been in a fender bender in the parking lot, and needed to use their telephone. Weed had answered the door, and before he could answer her, two heavily armed men made their way passed the female and began to beat Weed extensively. The woman then produced her hidden firearm as the men continued to beat Weed. Patty was dragged from her home in her bathrobe and panties by the three SLA members, placed into the trunk of the vehicle, screaming the entire time. Many people around the apartment complex heard Patty screaming, but by the time the police got there, Patty and her abductors were long gone. Patty was only in that particular car for a few minutes. The SLA members switched her into a waiting station wagon, where she was placed on the floorboard and Benenson was released.

Perpetrators:

The people who abducted Patty Hearst was a group of eight people led by Donald Defreeze, known by the SLA members as Cinque Mutme. The SLA stands for the Symbionese Liberation Army. The SLA first gained recognition by fessing up to the 1973 slaying of Oakland school superintendent, Marcus Foster. Joe Remiro and Russell Little had been officially charged with the murder, and were being held in jail. Hearst was originally abducted to be used as a negotiation tool for their release. Patty was bound and blindfolded for 57 days. She was only allowed to come out of the closet where she was being held to urinate and to bathe every once in a while. She was not always allowed to come out when she had to use the restroom, so she was held in a closet, soaked with urine.

The SLA members called her a prisoner of war, and she was put through endless mental cruelty and torture. The SLA demanded that her father donate seventy dollars worth of food to every poor person in California, and detailed instructions were given to the Hearst family about the distribution of the food. The SLA knew that Hearst would never be able to meet the demand, and they used that to show how Hearst cared nothing for the poor. This was not the ransom demand; it was only a gesture to show that Hearst was trustworthy before the SLA would give the ransom demand. On February 13^th, Hearst told the SLA that the demand was impossible to meet.

The SLA decided to include Patty into their sexual realm. They told her that since she had been with them for such an extended period of time, that Patty was like one of the members. The male members of the SLA could only have sex with other members of the SLA. So, they forced themselves onto Patty on numerous occasions. After their repeated sexual attacks, they gave Patty an ultimatum: Join or Die. They decided that the hideout they were staying in was getting too dangerous. They decided to move to a different hideout. They wanted to move Patty without having her noticed, so they placed her into a garbage can, and moved her to a new location.

After a few days of being in the new hideout, Cin went to Patty and told her that she had two options: She could either go home to be with her family, or she could join the ranks of the SLA as a freedom fighter. Patty Hearst stated that she believed in their cause and she wanted to join the SLA. She taped a statement and sent it to her family and news stations. The statement was as follows," I have been given the choice of being released in a safe area or joining the forces of the Symbionese Liberation Army and fighting for my freedom and the freedom of all oppressed people. I have chosen to stay and fight…I have been given the name Tania, after a comrade who fought alongside Che in Bolivia…I have learned how vicious the pig really is, and my comrades are teaching me to attack with even greater viciousness." The Hearsts and Weed did not believe it, they asked for Patty to tell them to their faces. They believed that Patty had been brainwashed to believe that the SLA were fighting for a good cause.

The Robbery and other Crimes:

On April 15^th, 1974, media burst forth with tapes of Patty and the SLA robbing the San Francisco branch of the Hibernia Bank, wounding one person. Hearst, now known as Tania, was at the robbery covering her comrades. She was heavily armed and backing up all of the members that were taking part in the robbery. The next crime that Patty took part in was a shootout in Los Angeles. May 16^th, 1974, Bill Harris was caught shoplifting at Mel’s Sporting Goods, and when he ran, Patty opened fire on the store from across the street out of a van allowing him and his wife to escape. They sped off in the van and went on a spree of hijacking cars by pretending they were interested in buying them from the owners who had them up for sale. While they were on test drives, they stole the cars. The Harrises and Tania went to Costa Mesa for a year, but then resurfaced in the United States. The FBI had gotten tips from Walter Scott, brother of SLA member Jack Scott, on the whereabouts of Patty and the Harrises.

Many people believed that the trial would not be a fair one because of Patty Hearst’s fame and family recognition, and her family status was almost positively going to affect whether Patty got a fair trial or not. The trial was doomed from the get go. The judge, Oliver Carter went against the ethics code for judges and granted interviews with Time Magazine and the New York Times. He claimed in these interviews, that he knew the Hearsts very well, and that he had known Patty ever since she was a small child. The Hearsts claimed that this was an outright lie. Joel Fort, an expert witness called by the prosecution, claimed that Carter was the worst judge that he had ever witness on the stand. The prosecution was being led by James Browning, a Nixon appointee who had not tried a case in 7 years, and the defense went through a slew of lawyers, but was finally led by F. Lee Bailey, a lawyer with many wins under his belt.

Prior to and during the trial, Patty underwent psychological evaluations to determine whether she had been brainwashed. The psychiatrists all determined that she had experienced a definite change in mental state from before the abduction to the present. People also were not just trying her based on the crime, the robbery of the bank. They were trying her as a member of the SLA. They consistently asked her sexually charged questions and also referred to the other SLA members as her lovers and friends, instead of abductors. The jury found Patty Hearst guilty of the crime of bank robbery. When Patty went for final sentencing, the judge had changed. Oliver had died of a heart attack, and Judge William Orrick, who had not witnessed any of the trial, sentenced Patty to 7 years in prison. He claimed that appropriate punishment was necessary to show that crimes get punished, regardless of your wealth.

She appealed the jury’s decision, but the Supreme Court refused to hear her appeal. She was ordered to report to the Federal Correctional Institution at Pleasanton, California to finish out her sentence. After serving six months in prison, she was released with time served in return for her testimony against other SLA members.

The Media:

During the entire ordeal, the situation got a tremendous deal of press coverage. The media framed Patty as being a victim, and made her out to be a beautiful woman who was fighting for a good cause. The other members of the SLA were from all types of backgrounds, ethnicities, and family statuses. The media played heavily on the fact t that the SLA was an interracial group fighting for the freedom of all Americans. Even though the Vietnam War was going on at this time, the media placed a tremendous deal of emphasis on the war at home, and the SLA were a big part of it.