The Secret Sits

Patty Hearst

October 13, 2021 John W. Dodson Season 1 Episode 37
The Secret Sits
Patty Hearst
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Show Notes Transcript

When I say Patty Hearst out loud, your first thoughts are probably of a young woman in a beret holding a machine gun.  This young woman, from one of the richest families in the United States of America has an extraordinary story, an account that many did not believe.  And no amount of money could buy her innocence, or could it?  I’m John Dodson welcome to The Secret Sits.


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#PattyHearst #PatriciaHearst #WilliamRandolphHearst #Kidnapped #SLA #SymbioneseLiberationArmy #DonaldDeFreeze #HiberniaBankRobbery #FLeeBailey #BillClinton #Pardon #JimmyCarter #JohnWaters #WestminsterKennelClub

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When I say Patty Hearst out loud, your first thoughts are probably of a young woman in a beret holding a machine gun.  This young woman, from one of the richest families in the United States of America has an extraordinary story, an account that many did not believe.  And no amount of money could buy her innocence, or could it?  I’m John Dodson welcome to The Secret Sits.

Patty Hearst’s grandfather was William Randolph Hearst, an American businessman, newspaper publisher, and politician known for developing the nation's largest newspaper chain and media company, Hearst Communications. His flamboyant methods of sensationalism influenced the nation's popular media by emphasizing melodrama and human-interest stories. Hearst entered the publishing business in 1887 after being given control of The San Francisco Examiner by his wealthy father, Senator George Hearst. Patty’s great-grandmother was Phoebe Hearst an American philanthropist, feminist and suffragist. The family was associated with immense political influence and a position of anti-Communism since before World War II.

Patricia Hearst, who prefers to be called "Patricia" rather than "Patty", was born on February 20, 1954, in San Francisco, California, the third of five daughters of Randolph Apperson Hearst, the final surviving son of William Randolph Hearst, and Catherine Wood Campbell. She grew up primarily in Hillsborough, and attended its Crystal Springs School for Girls and the Santa Catalina School in Monterey. She attended Menlo College in Atherton, California, before transferring to the University of California, Berkeley.

Patty's father was only one of a number of heirs, and did not have control of the Hearst interests, so her parents did not consider it necessary to take measures for their children's personal security. Patty was a sophomore at Berkeley, studying art history and she lived with her fiancé, Steven Weed, in an apartment in Berkeley.

On February 4, 1974, a group of men and women knocked on nineteen-year-old Patty Hearst’s apartment door and proceeded to kidnap her, driving away with Patty stowed in the trunk of their car and beating up her fiancé in the process. An urban guerrilla left-wing group, called the Symbionese Liberation Army or SLA for short, claimed responsibility for the abduction.

Now, let’s talk, just for a moment about the SLA.  In his manifesto "Symbionese Liberation Army Declaration of Revolutionary War & the Symbionese Program", Donald DeFreeze wrote: "The name 'symbionese' is taken from the word symbiosis and we define its meaning as a body of dissimilar bodies and organisms living in deep and loving harmony and partnership in the best interest of all within the body."

After the departure of Thero Wheeler, one of the group’s founding members, Donald DeFreeze was the SLA's only remaining black member. The group’s seven-headed SLA hydra-like cobra symbol was based on the seven principles of Kwanzaa, each head representing a principle. The Swahili words for these seven principles are: Umoja (unity), Kujichagulia (self-determination), Ujima (collective work and responsibility), Ujamaa (cooperative economics), Nia (purpose), Kuumba (creativity) and Imani (faith). The appearance of the symbol of the seven-headed cobra on SLA publications indicates that it was copied from the ancient Indian seven-headed nāga; carved stones depicting a seven-headed cobra are commonly found near the sluices of the ancient irrigation tanks in Sri Lanka and are believed to have been placed there as guardians of the water. 

The SLA formed as a result of the prison visitation programs of the radical left-wing group Venceremos Organization and a group known as the Black Cultural Association in Soledad prison.  The SLA formed after the escape from prison by Donald DeFreeze, who then went by the alias "General Field Marshal Cinque". He had been serving five years to life for robbing a sex worker. DeFreeze took the name Cinque from the leader of the slave rebellion which took over the slave ship Amistad in 1839. DeFreeze escaped from Soledad State Prison on March 5, 1973, by walking away while on work duty in a boiler room located outside the perimeter fence. 

The SLA are widely regarded by American law enforcement as the first domestic terrorist group to rise on the political left.  The association was organized in July of 1968 and began to function inside Vacaville prison.

Its stated goal was to return to black communities and society a motivated individual who understood his responsibility to his family, his employer, his community and himself. The group was to function primarily as an educational program, learning skills and developing pride among the inmates.

In its literature the organization uses the rhetoric of the left. It defines 16 of the group's goals, including proposals such as the following:

To unite all oppressed people, to assure the right of self‐determination to all people, to place industries and institutions in the hands of the people, to restore human and constitutional rights and to destroy the prison system.


Also, to take control of all state land and that of the “capitalist class” and return it to the people, to take control of buildings and apartments from the capitalist class and destroy the rent system, and to destroy “all forms of racism, sexism, ageism, capitalism, fascism, individualism, possessiveness and competitiveness.”

Patty's kidnapping was partly opportunistic, as she happened to live near the SLA hideout. According to testimony at trial, the group's main intention was to leverage the Hearst family's political influence to free two SLA members who had been arrested for Marcus Foster's killing. Faced with the failure to free the imprisoned men, the SLA demanded that Patty's family distribute $70 worth of food to every needy Californian – an operation that would cost an estimated $400 million. In response, Hearst's father took out a loan and arranged the immediate donation of $2 million worth of food to the poor of the Bay Area, in an operation called "People in Need." After the distribution descended into chaos, the SLA refused to release Patty.

According to Patty's later testimony, she was held for a week in a closet, blindfolded and with her hands tied, during this time SLA founder and leader Cinque (Donald DeFreeze) repeatedly threatened her with death. She was let out for meals and blindfolded, and subsequently began to join in the political discussions. She was given a flashlight for reading and SLA political tracts to memorize. Patty was confined in the closet for weeks, after which she said, "DeFreeze told me that the war council had decided or was thinking about killing me or me staying with them, and that I better start thinking about that as a possibility." Patty said, "I accommodated my thoughts to coincide with theirs." In a different account, Patty said she had been offered the choice of being released or joining the SLA.

When asked for her decision, Patty said she wanted to stay and fight with the SLA. The blindfold was removed, allowing her to see her captors for the first time. After this she was given daily lessons on her duties, especially weapon drills. Angela Atwood told Patty that the others thought she should know what sexual freedom was like in the unit; according to her lawyer, Patty was allegedly raped by William "Willie" Wolfe and later by DeFreeze.

During the time that Patty was held hostage, the SLA also began to brainwash her, set on turning Hearst into an accomplice for their revolutionary and terrorist goals. Patty was abused both physically and psychologically, and later claimed that she was isolated to the point that she felt that no one would rescue her, and that she was sexually abused by various gang members. Additionally, Patty claimed that she was constantly exposed to the group’s radical beliefs and was forced to record messages that would hurt her loved ones.

These brainwashing methods appeared to be taking effect after the SLA released a tape in which Patty, using her new name “Tania,” claimed that she had joined the SLA’s fight. A few days after the release of this tape, Hearst was spotted taking part in an SLA bank robbery clearly aiding the SLA’s cause. A tape released shortly after the robbery featured Patty explaining that the group members were her comrades, and that their criminal actions were necessary to support the gang’s plans for revolution. Calling her family offensive names, Patty denied vehemently that she was being brainwashed and dismissed such a ridiculous idea, reiterating that she was, “…a soldier of the people’s army.”

On April 3, 1974, two months after she was abducted, Hearst announced on an audiotape that she had joined the SLA and taken the name "Tania".

On April 15, 1974, Patty was recorded on surveillance video wielding an M1 carbine while robbing the Sunset District branch of the Hibernia Bank at 1450 Noriega Street in San Francisco. Patty identified under her pseudonym of "Tania", yelling, "I'm Tania. Up, up, up against the wall, mother fuckers". Two men entered the bank while the robbery was occurring and were shot and wounded. According to testimony at her trial, a witness thought that Patty had been several paces behind the others when running to the getaway car.

Attorney General William B. Saxbe said that Patty was a "common criminal" and "not a reluctant participant" in the bank robbery. James L. Browning Jr. said that her participation in the robbery may have been voluntary, contrasting with an earlier comment in which he said that she might have been coerced into taking part. The FBI agent heading the investigation said that SLA members were photographed pointing guns at Patty during the robbery. A grand jury indicted her in June 1974 for the robbery.

On May 16, 1974, the manager at Mel's Sporting Goods in Inglewood, California observed a minor theft by William Harris, who had been shopping with his wife Emily while Patty waited across the road in a van. The manager and an employee followed Harris out and confronted him. There was a scuffle and the manager restrained Harris, when a pistol fell out of Harris' waistband. Patty discharged the entire magazine of an automatic carbine into the overhead storefront, causing the manager to dive behind a light post. He tried to shoot back, but Patty began aiming closer.

Patty and the Harris couple hijacked two cars and abducted the owners. One was a young man who found Patty so personable that he was reluctant to report the incident. He testified at the trial to her discussing the effectiveness of cyanide-tipped bullets and repeatedly asking if he was okay. Police had surrounded the main base of the SLA before the three returned, so they hid elsewhere. The six SLA members inside the hideout died, some in a gunfight with police and others in a resulting fire. It was initially thought that Patty had also died during the confrontation. A warrant was then issued for Patty’s arrest for several felonies, including two counts of kidnapping.

Emily Harris went to a Berkeley rally to commemorate the deaths of Angela Atwood and other founding members of the SLA who had died during the police siege. Harris recognized Atwood's acquaintance Kathy Soliah among the radicals whom she'd known from civil rights groups. Soliah introduced the three fugitives to Jack Scott, an athletics coach and radical, and he agreed to provide help and money.

Patty helped make improvised explosive devices. These were used in two unsuccessful attempts to kill police officers during August 1975, and one of the devices failed to detonate. Marked money found in the apartment when she was arrested linked Patty to the SLA armed robbery of Crocker National Bank in Carmichael, California; she was the getaway car driver for the robbery. Myrna Opsahl, who was at the bank making a deposit, was shot dead by a masked Emily Harris. Patty was potentially at risk for felony murder charges and could testify as a witness against Harris for a capital offense.

On September 18, 1975, Patty was arrested in a San Francisco apartment with Wendy Yoshimura, another SLA member, by San Francisco Police Inspector Timothy F. Casey and his partner, Police Officer Laurence R. Pasero, and FBI Special Agent Thomas J. Padden and his partners, FBI agents Jason Moulton, Frank Doyle, Jr., Larry Lawler, Monte Hall, Dick Vitamonte, Leo Brenneissen, and Ray Campos. While being booked into jail, Patty listed her occupation as "Urban Guerilla" and asked her attorney to relay the following message: "Tell everybody that I'm smiling, that I feel free and strong and I send my greetings and love to all the sisters and brothers out there."

At the time of her arrest, Patty’s weight had dropped to 87 pounds, and she was described by psychologist Margaret Singer in October 1975 as "a low-IQ, low-affect zombie". Shortly after her arrest, signs of trauma were recorded: her IQ was measured as 112, whereas it had previously been 130; there were huge gaps in her memory regarding her pre-Tania life; she was smoking heavily and had nightmares. Without a mental illness or defect, a person is considered to be fully responsible for any criminal action not done under duress, which is defined as a clear and present threat of death or serious injury. For Patty to secure an acquittal on the grounds of having been brainwashed would have been completely unprecedented.

Psychiatrist Louis Jolyon West, a professor at University of California, Los Angeles, was appointed by the court in his capacity as a brainwashing expert and worked without a fee. After the trial, he wrote a newspaper article asking President Carter to release Patty from prison.

Patty wrote in her memoir, Every Secret Thing (1982), "I spent fifteen hours going over my SLA experiences with Robert Jay Lifton of Yale University. Lifton, author of several books on coercive persuasion and thought reform, [...] pronounced me a 'classic case' which met all the psychological criteria of a coerced prisoner of war. [...] If I had reacted differently, that would have been suspect, he said."

Her first lawyer, Terence Hallinan, had advised Patty not to talk to anyone, including psychiatrists. He advocated a defense of involuntary intoxication: that the SLA had given her drugs that affected her judgment and recollection.

He was replaced by attorney F. Lee Bailey, (a name you may recognize from many prolific cases, the OJ Simpson case to name just one) Bailey asserted a defense of coercion or duress affecting intent at the time of the offense. This was similar to the brainwashing defense which Hallinan had warned was not a defense in law. Patty gave long interviews to various psychiatrists.

Patty alone was arraigned for the Hibernia Bank robbery; the trial commenced on January 15, 1976. Judge Oliver Jesse Carter ruled that Patty’s taped and written statements after the bank robbery, while she was a fugitive with the SLA members, were voluntary. He did not allow expert testimony that stylistic analysis indicated the "Tania" statements and writing were not wholly composed by Patty. He permitted the prosecution to introduce statements and actions Patty made long after the Hibernia robbery, as evidence of her state of mind at the time of the robbery. Judge Carter also allowed into evidence a recording made by jail authorities of a friend's jail visit with Patty, in which she used profanities and spoke of her radical and feminist beliefs, but he did not allow tapes of psychiatrist Louis Jolyon West's interviews of Patty to be heard by the jury. Judge Carter was described as "resting his eyes" during testimony favorable to the defense by West and others.

According to Patty’s testimony, her captors had demanded she appear enthusiastic during the robbery and warned she would pay with her life for any mistake. Her defense lawyer F. Lee Bailey provided photographs showing that SLA members, including Camilla Hall, had pointed guns at Patty during the robbery. In reference to the shooting at Mel's Sporting Goods Store and her decision to not escape, Patty testified that she was instructed throughout her captivity on what to do in an emergency. She said one class in particular had a situation similar to the store manager's detention of the Harrises. Patty testified that "when it happened, I didn't even think. I just did it, and if I had not done it and if they had been able to get away, they would have killed me."

Testifying for the prosecution, Dr. Harry Kozol said Patty had been "a rebel in search of a cause", and her participation in the Hibernia robbery had been "an act of free will. "Prosecutor James L. Browning Jr. asked the other psychiatrist testifying for the prosecution, Dr. Joel Fort, if Hearst was in fear of death or great bodily injury during the robbery, to which he answered, "No", but Bailey angrily objected. Fort judged Patty as amoral, and said she had voluntarily had sex with Wolfe and DeFreeze, which Patty denied both in court and outside. Prosecutor Browning tried to show that writings by Patty indicated her testimony had misrepresented her interactions with Wolfe. She said she had been writing the SLA version of events and had been punched in the face by William Harris when she refused to be more demonstrative about what she regarded as sexual abuse by Wolfe. Judge Carter allowed testimony from the prosecution psychiatrists about Patty’s early sexual experiences, although these had occurred years before her kidnapping and the bank robbery.

In court, Patty made a poor impression and appeared lethargic. An Associated Press report attributed this state to drugs she was given by jailhouse doctors. Bailey was strongly criticized for his decision to put Patty on the stand, then having her repeatedly decline to answer questions. According to Alan Dershowitz, Bailey was surprised by the judge, who had appeared to indicate Patty would have Fifth Amendment privilege: the jury would not be present for some of her testimony, or would be instructed not to draw inferences, on matters subsequent to the Hibernian Bank charges for which she was being tried, but he changed his mind.

After a few months, Patty provided information to the authorities, not under oath, out of fear that sworn testimony could have been used to convict her, of SLA activities. A bomb exploded at Hearst Castle in February 1976. After Patty testified that Wolfe had raped her, Emily Harris gave a magazine interview from jail alleging that Patty’s keeping of a trinket given to her by Wolfe was an indication that she had been in a romantic relationship with him. Patty said she had kept the stone carving because she thought it was a Pre-Columbian artifact of archeological significance. The prosecutor James L. Browning Jr. used Harris' interpretation of the item, and some jurors later said they regarded the carving, which Browning waved in front of them, as powerful evidence that Patty was lying.

In a closing prosecution statement that hardly acknowledged that Patty had been kidnapped and held captive, prosecutor Browning suggested that Patty had taken part in the bank robbery without coercion. Browning, who later became a judge, also suggested to the jury that as the female SLA members were feminists, they would not have allowed Patty to be raped.

In her autobiography, Patty expressed disappointment with what she saw as Bailey's lack of focus in the crucial end stage of her trial; she described him as having the appearance of someone with a hangover, and spilling water down the front of his pants while making a "disjointed" closing argument. Bailey's final statement to the court was, "But simple application of the rules, I think, will yield one decent result, and, that is, there is not anything close to proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Patty Hearst wanted to be a bank robber. What you know, and you know in your hearts to be true is beyond dispute. There was talk about her dying, and she wanted to survive."

On March 20, 1976, Patty Hearst was convicted of bank robbery and using a firearm during the commission of a felony. She was given the maximum sentence possible of 35 years' imprisonment, pending a reduction at final sentence hearing, which Carter declined to specify.

Then, unexpectedly, Judge Carter died, so it came to Judge William Horsley Orrick Jr. to determined Patty’s sentence. He gave her seven years imprisonment, commenting that "rebellious young people who, for whatever reason become revolutionaries, and voluntarily commit criminal acts will be punished".

Patty suffered a collapsed lung in prison, the beginning of a series of medical problems, and she underwent emergency surgery. This prevented her from appearing to testify against the Harrises on 11 charges, including robbery, kidnapping, and assault; she was also arraigned for those charges. She was held in solitary confinement for security reasons; she was granted bail for an appeal hearing in November 1976 on the condition that she was protected on bond. Her father hired dozens of bodyguards.

Superior Court judge Talbot Callister gave her probation on the sporting goods store charge when she pleaded no contest, saying that he believed that she been subject to coercion amounting to torture. California Attorney General Evelle J. Younger said that, if there was a double standard for the wealthy, it was the opposite of what was generally believed and that Patty had received a stiffer sentence than a person of lesser means might have. He said that she had no legal brainwashing defense, but pointed out that the events had started with her being kidnapped.

Patty’s bail was revoked in May 1978 when appeals failed, and the United States Supreme Court declined to hear her case. The prison took no special security measures for her safety until she found a dead rat on her bunk on the day when William and Emily Harris were arraigned for her abduction. The Harrises were convicted on a simple kidnapping charge, as opposed to the more serious kidnapping for ransom or kidnapping with bodily injury, and they were released after serving a total of eight years each.

Representative Leo Ryan was collecting signatures on a petition for Patty’s release several weeks before he was murdered while visiting the Jonestown settlement in Guyana. Actor John Wayne spoke after the Jonestown cult deaths, pointing out that people had accepted that Jim Jones had brainwashed 900 individuals into mass suicide but would not accept that the Symbionese Liberation Army could have brainwashed a kidnapped teenage girl.

President Jimmy Carter commuted Hearst's federal sentence to the 22 months served, freeing her eight months before she was eligible for her first parole hearing. Her release on February 1, 1979 was under strict conditions, and she remained on probation for the state sentence on the sporting goods store plea. She recovered full civil rights when President Bill Clinton granted her a pardon on January 20, 2001, his last day in office.

Two months after her release from prison, Patty married Bernard Lee Shaw, a policeman who was part of her security detail during her time on bail. They had two children, Gillian and Lydia Hearst-Shaw. Patty became involved in a foundation helping children with AIDS, and is active in other charities and fund-raising activities.

Patty published the memoir Every Secret Thing, co-written with Alvin Moscow, in 1981. Her accounts actually resulted in authorities considering bringing new charges against her. She was interviewed in 2009 on NBC and said that the prosecutor had suggested that she had been in a consensual relationship with Wolfe. She described that as "outrageous" and an insult to rape victims.

Patty produced a special for the Travel Channel titled Secrets of San Simeon with Patricia Hearst, in which she took viewers inside her grandfather's mansion Hearst Castle, providing unprecedented access to the property.

She has appeared in feature films for director John Waters, who cast her in Cry-Baby, Serial Mom, Pecker, Cecil B. DeMented and A Dirty Shame. All brilliant Waters films, if you have not seen them.  She collaborated with Cordelia Frances Biddle on writing the novel Murder at San Simeon, based upon the death of Thomas H. Ince. Ince was a famous silent film producer and director who mysteriously died of an -air quotes- illness on grandpa Hearst’s yacht.  

Patty has participated with her dogs in dog shows, and her Shih Tzu Rocket won the "Toy" group at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show at Madison Square Garden on February 16, 2015. At the 2017 show, Hearst's French bulldog Tuggy won Best of Breed.

I would love to know what you think about this case.  Do you believe that Patty was a hapless victim or was she actually dedicated to the SLA.  Write us an e-mail at TheSecretSitsPodcast@gmail.com or follow us on Twitter @secretsitspod.  All of our other social media info can be found in the show notes for this and every episode.  I’m John Dodson and thank you for spending your time with us here on The Secret Sits.  Audio Engineering by Gabriel Dodson.  Original artwork provided by Tony Ley.