Patty Hearst: The Kidnaped Heiress

December 13th, 2010

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I was in my mid-twenties and living in Kenya when Patty Heast was kidnapped by SLA in February of 1974. When two months later I read about her taking part in the Hibernia Bank robbery I sought out all the sources I could about the story. I was intrigued and also somehow routing for her. I mean there she was – a rich heiress who had bonded with a revolutionary band – setting against all the privileges she had once embraced.

The robbery:

The audio in the film is not great, but she is saying, “I am Tania.” She orders customers to the floor. “We are not fooling around.”

After the robbery the SLA after released a tape in which Hearst says: “Greetings to the people, this is Tania. Our actions of April 15 forced the Corporate State to help finance the revolution. As for being brainwashed, the idea is ridiculous beyond belief. I am a soldier in the People’s Army.”

After a long manhunt and full media coverage, Hearst was captured with Wendy Yoshimura on September 18, 1975. When she filled out the booking forms, she listed her occupation as “Urban Guerilla.” She instructed her attorney to take the following message to the press: “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.”

Her story changed five months later when she was brought to trial. In a court ordered affidavit she claimed that SLA members had used LSD to drug her and forced her to take part in the bank raid.

Hearst was found guilty was found guilty and sentenced to 35 years in prison, but was only held in prison for about two years. Her sentence was commuted by President Jimmy Carter and as his last act before leaving office, President Bill Clinton granted her a presidential pardon.

The flipflop in Patty Hearst’s statements of her complicity in SLA activities has been widely discussed. Of course, on one had you have those who believe that she used the brainwashing defense to attempt to save herself from incarceration. Then their are others who see her as a victim of the Stockholm Syndrome.

Renown authority on prisoners of war, Margaret Singer, sided with the later viewpoint. Singer, who has studied terror victims including Maryknoll priests[8] recently released from the People’s Republic of China, strongly pleaded for understanding on Hearst’s behalf before, during and after the trial.

Court appointed doctor Louis Jolyon West as well as interviewers Drs. Robert Jay Lifton and Martin Theodore Orne agreed. Lifton went so far as to state after a 15 hour interview with Hearst that she was a “classic case,” of the Stockholm Syndrome. He went on to say that Hearst was “a rare phenomenon (in a first world nation)… the first and as far as I know the only victim of a political kidnapping in the United States.” He noted that SLA leader, Donald DeFreeze, also known as Cinque, had used a rather coarse version of a classic Maoist formula for thought control.

Hearst’s lawyer, F. Lee Bailey, argued that she had been coerced or intimidated into taking part in the bank robbery. But, she refused to give evidence against the other captured SLA members. This was seen as complicity by the prosecution team. Hearst invoked the 5th amendment 42 times in the trial.

Hearst quickly became the Bay Area’s most famous “leftist,” and posters of her wielding a sawed-off carbine in front of the SLA cobra popped up on kiosks and apartment walls throughout Berkeley. The caption read: “WE LOVE YOU, TANIA.” ” from Patty Cakes, Terror, nostalgia and the SLA, By Gordon Young

Another Patti, Patti Smith, in her 1974 cover of Hey Joe changes the words to sing of Patty Hearst.