Patty Hearst Socialites Information

Patricia Campbell Hearst (born February 20, 1954) is an American author and actress. A granddaughter of the American publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst, she became internationally known for events following her 1974 kidnapping by a left-wing terrorist group, the Symbionese Liberation Army. Hearst was found 19 months after being abducted, by which time she was a fugitive wanted for serious crimes committed with members of the group. She was held in custody, and there was speculation before trial that her family's resources would enable her to avoid time in jail.

At her trial, the prosecution suggested that Hearst had joined the Symbionese Liberation Army of her own volition. However, Hearst testified that she had been raped and threatened with death while held captive. In 1976, she was convicted for the crime of bank robbery and sentenced to 35 years in prison, later reduced to 7 years. Her sentence was commuted by President Jimmy Carter, and she was later pardoned by President Bill Clinton.

Hearst's grandfather, William Randolph Hearst, created the largest newspaper, magazine, newsreel, and movie business in the world. Her great-grandmother was philanthropist Phoebe Hearst. The family was associated with immense political influence and a position of anti-Communism since before World War II.

Patricia Hearst, called "Patty", was born in San Francisco, California,[a] the third of five daughters of Randolph Apperson Hearst and Catherine Wood Campbell. She grew up primarily in Hillsborough, and attended the Crystal Springs School for Girls there and the Santa Catalina School in Monterey. She attended Menlo College in Atherton, California, before transferring to the University of California, Berkeley.

Hearst'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. At the time of her abduction, Hearst was a sophomore at Berkeley, studying art history. She lived with her fiancé, Steven Weed, in an apartment in Berkeley.

On February 4, 1974, 19-year-old Hearst was kidnapped from her Berkeley apartment. She was beaten and lost consciousness during the abduction. Shots were fired from a machine gun during the incident. An urban guerrilla group, called the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), claimed responsibility for the abduction.

The SLA was formed through contacts made by a study group, coordinated by a University of California, Berkeley professor. It was organized to tutor black inmates, and over time the group's ethos became increasingly radicalized. Eventually, its members came to consider black convicts as heroic political prisoners, victimized by a racist American society.

On March 5, 1973, Donald DeFreeze escaped from prison in California. Radical penal activists Russell Little and William Wolfe, who later became SLA members, took DeFreeze to Patricia Soltysik's house. DeFreeze became the leader of the SLA. After his prison acquaintance Wheeler left, DeFreeze was the only African American in the group. By the time the group became active, most of its members were women. Some of them, such as Soltysik and her roommate Nancy Ling Perry, have been described as having lesbian relationships. Other members included William and Emily Harris, and Angela Atwood.

DeFreeze was suspected by many of being a government provocateur, but his race and prison time gave him unquestioned authority in the SLA. He also had sexual dominion over women in the group. The group acquired resources by robbing homes in the San Francisco Bay Area. The first proposed operation, assassinating the head of the state penitentiaries, was cancelled because of possible repercussions for inmates. Instead, then, the group targeted and killed Marcus Foster, a black educator whom the SLA considered a fascist for bringing police onto school campuses.

DeFreeze's estimation of the military strength of the dozen-strong SLA group was hyperbolic; he gave himself a concomitantly grandiose title of "field marshal". Soltysik developed the group's ideological materials, saying that it was opposed to "racism, sexism, agism [sic], fascism, individualism, competitiveness, possessiveness and all other institutions that have made or sustained capitalism."

Hearst's kidnapping was partly opportunistic, as she happened to live near the SLA hideout. According to testimony, the group's main intention was to leverage the Hearst family's political influence to free two SLA members who had been arrested for Foster's killing. Faced with the failure to free the imprisoned men, the SLA demanded that the captive'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 Hearst.

According to Hearst's later testimony, she was held for a week in a closet, blindfolded and with her hands tied, during which time DeFreeze repeatedly threatened her with death. She was let out for meals and, blindfolded, began to join in the political discussions. She was given a flashlight for reading and SLA political tracts to learn. Hearst 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." Hearst said, "I accommodated my thoughts to coincide with theirs."

When asked for her decision, Hearst 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 weapons drills. Angela Atwood told Hearst that the others thought she should know what sexual freedom was like in the unit; Hearst was raped by William "Willie" Wolfe and later by DeFreeze.

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" (inspired by the nom de guerre of Haydée Tamara Bunke Bider, Che Guevara's comrade).

On April 15, 1974, Hearst 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. Hearst identified under her pseudonym of "Tania". Two men who entered the bank while the robbery was occurring were shot and wounded. According to later testimony at her trial, a witness thought Hearst had been several paces behind the others when running to the getaway car.

Within days, United States Attorney General William B. Saxbe said Hearst 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, contradicting an earlier comment in which he said that Hearst may have been coerced into taking part. The FBI agent heading the investigation had said SLA members were photographed pointing guns at Hearst during the robbery. A grand jury indicted her in June 1974 for the robbery.

On May 16, 1974, a store 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 Hearst waited across the road in a van. Accompanied by a female employee, the manager followed Harris out and confronted him. During the ensuing scuffle, Harris was restrained, and his pistol fell out of his waistband. Hearst, who had first used guns with her father, discharged the entire magazine of an automatic carbine into the overhead storefront, causing the manager to dive behind a lightpost. When he tried to shoot back, Hearst, firing single shots with another weapon, brought her fire closer to him.

Escaping from the area, Hearst and the Harris couple hijacked two cars and abducted the owners. One, a young man, found Hearst so personable that he was reluctant to report the incident. At the trial he testified to her having discussed the effectiveness of cyanide-tipped bullets and repeatedly asking if he were okay. Police had surrounded the main base of the SLA before the three returned, so the trio hid elsewhere. On May 17, 1974, the six SLA members inside died in a gunfight with police. It was at first thought that Hearst had also died. Her father publicly worried that she might be killed in revenge. To allay his fears, the abduction victim gave police a more complete account of what took place with her. A warrant was issued for Hearst's arrest for several felonies, including two counts of kidnapping.

According to one account, Hearst and the Harrises (now the only survivors of the SLA unit that abducted her) bought a car blocks away while the siege was going on. It broke down when they happened to stop in an African-American neighborhood, leaving them with a total of $50. They walked a few hundred yards from the car and hid in a crawlspace under a residential building. When a late night party started in the room above, Hearst readied her weapon, saying "the pigs" were closing in on them. In whispers, the Harrises begged her to calm down. Disguised as derelicts, they spent the next two weeks in San Francisco flophouses.

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