On February 4, 1974, Patricia Hearst, the 19-year-old granddaughter
of publishing icon William Randolph Hearst, is kidnapped from her Berkeley, California
apartment. Stephen Weed, Hearst's fiancé, was beaten unconscious by the two
abductors. Soon, a ransom demand came from the Symbionese Liberation Army
(SLA), a radical activist group led by Donald DeFreeze.
DeFreeze had formed the SLA in 1973 after he escaped from
prison. About two years before Hearst's kidnapping, an SLA
bomb-making factory had been discovered by the police. On November 6,
1973, the SLA shot and killed Marcus Foster, Oakland's superintendent of
schools, with bullets laced with cyanide. The SLA instructed Patty’s father Randolph
Hearst to distribute $70 in food for ever poor person from Santa Rosa to Los
Angeles. Hearst agreed to give away $2 million to the poor in Oakland in
exchange for his daughter’s release. The Black Muslims, Malcolm X’s former
organization, were chosen to manage the food distribution, which turned into a
riot when more than 10,000 people showed up and fought for the food.
Afterwards, the SLA demanded an additional $6 million giveaway. Hearst refused
and they did not release Patty.
The Hearst saga took a strange and unexpected turn two
months after the abduction, when the SLA robbed the Hibernia Bank in San
Francisco. The surveillance cameras clearly showed that Patty Hearst was one of
the machine gun-toting robbers. Soon after followed a taped message from the
SLA in which Hearst claimed that she had voluntarily joined the SLA and was now
to be known as "Tania." On May 17, 1974, police were tipped that the
SLA leaders were at a Los Angeles home. With 400 police and FBI agents outside
the house, a tremendous gun battle broke out. The police threw gas canisters
into the house and then shot at them, sparking a fire in which DeFreeze and
five other SLA members died. However, Hearst was not inside. She was not found
until September 1975. Patty Hearst was put on trial for armed robbery and
convicted, despite her claim that she had been coerced, through repeated rape,
isolation, and brainwashing, into joining the SLA. Prosecutors believed that
she actually orchestrated her own kidnapping because of her prior involvement
with one of the SLA members. Despite any real proof of this theory, she was
convicted and sent to prison. President Carter commuted Hearst's sentence after
she had served almost two years. Hearst was pardoned by President Clinton in
January 2001.
No comments:
Post a Comment