Those of you who recall the kidnapping of Patty Hearst, and the turbulent spectacle that followed, probably still can’t believe it happened. Those who don’t likely never will.
It was a story of an heiress, a doe-eyed wisp of a young woman abducted from her Berkeley apartment by extremists. What followed was like a plot from an overwrought movie of the week: Hearst’s self-professed radicalization, a sensational bank robbery, a shootout in a South Los Angeles neighborhood that caused a house to burn — was she in there? was she not? — as TV networks broadcast the stunning scene to the four corners of the country.
“I was in high school at the time,” said Tom Jennings, producer of an episode of the Smithsonian Channel series “The Lost Tapes” that recounts Hearst’s odyssey. It airs Nov. 26.
“I’m from Ohio,” Jennings said. “It was huge news there. It was like, how does this stuff happen?”
Hearst, then 19, was kidnapped by two men with rifles on Feb. 4, 1974. They were members of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA). The group targeted Hearst, daughter of Randolph Hearst and granddaughter of William Randolph Hearst, founder of the Hearst Newspaper empire.
Three days after the kidnapping, a letter was delivered to Berkeley radio station KPFA. It was the first of many communiques by which the world learned about the SLA and the apparent transformation of its trophy hostage. Per “The Lost Tapes” format, episodes have no narration, no host. It’s a challenge for a filmmaker. The communiques were a treasure trove for Jennings. When was the last time you heard an extremist group with the mantra, “Death to the fascist insect that preys upon the life of the people”?
“They were so good,” Jennings said of the tapes. “We could let her tell the story. We get to see her descent into madness.”
“Mom, Dad, I’m OK,” a seemingly composed Hearst said on the first tape. “I’m not being starved or beaten. These people aren’t just a bunch of nuts.”
Prominent East Bay defense attorney Daniel Horowitz begs to differ. Horowitz was an activist living in Berkeley at the time. “I was very involved in the fight against the Vietnam War,” he said. “In high school, I was politically very left. These people seemed like mindless, lost souls with no political focus.”
On that first tape, SLA founder Donald DeFreeze demanded Randolph Hearst give free food to the needy. The Hearst Corp. funded a $4 million food distribution in the Bay Area. It was a disaster. One 18-wheeler was stopped, its doors flung open and the food hurled into the street.
On the next tape, Patty Hearst claimed that her captors agreed to let her go, or accept her as a comrade in arms. “I have chosen to stay and fight,” she said. “I have been given the name Tania.”
Twelve days later, Tania was caught on surveillance video hefting a rifle as her new comrades robbed a bank in San Francisco. People wondered: Was her firearm loaded? Was she coerced into participating, a puppet used to drive a false narrative? Analyzing Patty was becoming a parlor game, especially in the Bay Area.
“In this age of criticism of manipulated news, you have to say they sure made a tremendous effort of manipulating the news media,” Jennings said of the SLA. The major networks were all over the story. Local reporters practically camped out on the front porch of the Hearsts’ Hillsborough mansion.
In mid-May, SLA members attempted to shoplift socks from a sporting goods store in Los Angeles. Police traced the suspects to a residence in South L.A. Asked to surrender, SLA members opened fire. Police responded with gunfire and tear gas. With millions of people watching on TV, the house burned. Two days later, it was announced that six SLA members had died in the fire. DeFreeze was among them. Patty Hearst was not.
However, she was charged with 22 felony counts, and the FBI determined she had acted of her own free will during the bank robbery.
Hearst was captured Sept. 18 in San Francisco with SLA members Bill and Emily Harris. A photo shows a smiling Hearst in custody, giving a slightly raised clenched fist despite being handcuffed. Reunited with her parents, whom she had called “pigs” on tape, she quickly disavowed the SLA. It seemed a suspiciously quick pivot for some.
Horowitz, who knew Bill Harris and shared an office with attorney Sheldon Otis, who represented SLA member Steve Soliah, believes Hearst’s story — that she feared her captors and did what she was told.
“The fear factor had to be astounding to her,” Horowitz said. “To be taken by these people zealously advocating a system of beliefs that was somewhat incoherent, fearing for her life. Stockholm Syndrome is not hard to understand.”
Compared with the riotous weeks after her kidnapping, Hearst’s plodding journey through the legal system was almost anti-climactic. She was convicted of two felonies on March 20, 1976, and sentenced to seven years in prison. She filed an appeal and was released on bail in November 1976.
In May 1978, the appeal was denied and she returned to prison. On Feb. 1, 1979, President Jimmy Carter commuted her sentence. She was released from the federal prison in Dublin on a cold winter morning.
“In some ways, it’s very timely with all the unrest in the country (currently),” Jennings said. “We’re holding up a mirror to when there was unrest, the Vietnam War, Watergate, all kinds of confusion in the country. Then you have Patty Hearst kidnapped by this group no one had heard of before. It’s a little corner of American history that people have forgotten.”
