Patty Hearst

Patty Hearst
Arrest photo
Born	Patricia Campbell Hearst (1954-02-20) February 20, 1954 San Francisco, California, U.S.
Nationality	American
Other names	Patty Hearst Patricia Hearst Shaw
Occupation	Heiress, socialite, actress
Known for	Being taken hostage by the Symbionese Liberation Army and later recruited as a member
Spouse(s)	Bernard Shaw (1979–2013; his death)
Children	Lydia Hearst-Shaw Gillian Hearst-Shaw
Parents	Randolph Apperson Hearst Catherine Wood Campbell
Relatives	William Randolph Hearst (grandfather) George Hearst (great-grandfather) Anne Hearst (sister) Amanda Hearst (niece)

Patricia Campbell "Patty" Hearst (born February 20, 1954), now known as Patricia Campbell Hearst Shaw, is an American newspaper heiress, socialite, actress, kidnap victim, and convicted bank robber. Her kidnapping case is held by many as an example of Stockholm syndrome.

Patty Hearst is the granddaughter of the late publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst, popularly known as the subject of Orson Welles's roman à clef film Citizen Kane.^[1] In 1974, Patty Hearst gained notoriety during the waning days of the counterculture era when she was kidnapped by, and later joined, the Symbionese Liberation Army. Apprehended after having taken part in a bank heist with other SLA members, Hearst was imprisoned for almost two years before her sentence was commuted by President Jimmy Carter.^[2] In 2001, she was granted a presidential pardon by President Bill Clinton in his last official act before leaving office.^[2][3]

Early life

Hearst was born in San Francisco, California, the third of five daughters of Randolph Apperson Hearst and Catherine Wood Campbell. She grew up primarily in Hillsborough. She attended Crystal Springs School for Girls in Hillsborough and the Santa Catalina School in Monterey. Among her few close friends she counted Patricia Tobin, whose family founded the Hibernia Bank, a branch of which Hearst would later aid in robbing.

Kidnapping and the SLA

Patty Hearst yelling commands at bank customers^[1]

On February 4, 1974, the 19-year-old Hearst was kidnapped from her Berkeley, California apartment, which she shared with her fiancé Steven Weed, by a left-wing urban guerrilla group called the Symbionese Liberation Army.^[4] When the attempt to swap Hearst for jailed SLA members failed, 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 arranged the immediate donation of $6 million worth of food to the poor of the Bay Area. After the distribution of food, the SLA refused to release Hearst because they deemed the food to have been of poor quality. (In a subsequent tape recording released to the press, Hearst commented that her father could have done better.) On April 3, 1974, Hearst announced on an audiotape that she had joined the SLA and assumed the name "Tania"^[5] (inspired by the nom de guerre of Haydée Tamara Bunke Bider, Che Guevara's comrade).^[6] For this reason, she is often referred to as a victim of Stockholm Syndrome.^{[citation needed]}

On April 15, 1974, she was photographed wielding an M1 carbine while robbing the Sunset District branch of the Hibernia Bank at 1450 Noriega Street in San Francisco.^[7] Later communications from her were issued under the pseudonym Tania and asserted that she was committed to the goals of the SLA.^[8] A warrant was issued for her arrest and in September 1975, she was arrested by the FBI and SFPD in a San Francisco apartment with another SLA member, Wendy Yoshimura. FBI Agent Thomas Padden is credited with their actual arrests.^{[citation needed]}

Trial and imprisonment

While being booked into jail, she 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."^[9] However, according to Hearst interviewer Margaret Singer, a noted authority on prisoners of war and other victims, including Maryknoll priests^[10] released from the People's Republic of China in the 1950s, this is not unusual in such cases. Singer 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," about two weeks being needed for almost all persons undergoing that level of mind control to shuck off a good deal of the "gunk" that has filled the mind, as happened in his opinion with Hearst's case. "If (she) had reacted differently, that would have been suspect" and 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" were direct quotes from Hearst's autobiography attributed to the doctor. Dr. West firmly asserted that while Donald "Cinque" DeFreeze and other movement members had used a rather coarse version, they did employ the classic Maoist formula for thought control; Hearst was young and apolitical enough to be at extreme risk and, in his professional experience, it would have even broken many experienced soldiers.^[11]

In her trial, which commenced on January 15, 1976 (and in her dozens of previous interviews by FBI agents Charles Bates and Lawrence Lawler—any reference to which was not allowed by the presiding judge to be included in the trial), Hearst's attorney F. Lee Bailey claimed that Hearst had been blindfolded, imprisoned in a narrow closet and physically and sexually abused. Hearst's defense claimed that her actions were the result of a concerted brainwashing program.

The prosecution countered with two experts: Dr. Joel Fort, who, unsolicited, had previously offered favorable testimony in paid service to the defense team, which was refused; and Dr. Harry L. Kozol, noted expert on neurological disorders, sex offenders and high-profile mentally ill criminals. He formerly had been the long term doctor for Eugene O'Neill and evaluated the confessed Boston Strangler, Albert DeSalvo, a case defended in 1967 by Bailey. Kozol claimed Hearst was "a rebel in search of a cause" and that the robbery had been "an act of free will."^[12] During a pre-trial interview, Hearst accurately described the apartment where the SLA was captured, but neglected to mention the narrow closet where she was allegedly confined. In Kozol’s view, Hearst’s omission confirmed the prosecution’s thesis: returning the embrace of the SLA, she had ceased to be a victim. The rebel had come out of the closet.^[13] When Kozol testified, Hearst turned “the dead white color of a fish’s belly,” according to journalist Shana Alexander. "Harry never lost the spirit of the law," Dr. Harold W. Williams, then a psychiatrist at McLean Hospital in Belmont, told The New York Times in 1976, when prosecutors asked Dr. Kozol to examine Hearst. "Harry is very much in personality a lawyer."^[14]

Bailey argued that she had been coerced or intimidated into taking part in the bank robbery. However, she refused to give evidence against the other captured SLA members. This was seen as complicity by the prosecution team.

Hearst was convicted of bank robbery on March 20, 1976. She was sentenced to 35 years' imprisonment, but her prison sentence was later commuted to two years by President Jimmy Carter,^[2] and Hearst was released from prison on February 1, 1979, having served 22 months. She was granted a full pardon by President Bill Clinton on January 20, 2001.^[2][3]

Personal life

After her release from prison, she married her former bodyguard, Bernard Shaw and had two children: Gillian and Lydia Hearst-Shaw. They resided in Garrison, New York. Hearst has occasionally granted interviews to national media regarding the SLA incidents and taken minor acting parts. Bernard Shaw died of cancer on December 18, 2013, at the age of 68.^[15]

Documentaries about Hearst

• The Ordeal of Patty Hearst, a 1979 TV movie starring Dennis Weaver and Lisa Eilbacher
• Hearst's 1982 autobiography, Every Secret Thing, was made into the biopic Patty Hearst by Paul Schrader in 1988, with Natasha Richardson portraying Hearst.
• Robert Stone in 2004 directed Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst,^[16] which focuses on the media frenzy surrounding the Symbionese Liberation Army, and includes new footage and interviews. (The film was released in some countries under the title Neverland: The Rise and Fall of the Symbionese Liberation Army.)
• Hearst was depicted in the fifth episode of the Comedy Central show Drunk History, played by Kristen Wiig.

Material produced by Hearst

• Dissatisfied with other documentaries made on the subject, Hearst produced a special for the Travel Channel entitled 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. (A video and DVD were later released of the special.)^{[citation needed]}
• Hearst and Cordelia Frances Biddle collaborated on the writing of a novel titled Murder at San Simeon (Scribner, 1996), based upon the death of Thomas H. Ince on her grandfather's yacht.

Acting roles

Hearst has dabbled in a career as an actress.

• Her notoriety intersected with the criminal obsessions and camp sensibilities of filmmaker John Waters, who has used Hearst in numerous small roles in films including Cry-Baby, Serial Mom, Pecker, Cecil B. DeMented, and A Dirty Shame.
• Hearst appeared in the films Bio-Dome and Second Best.
• Hearst supplied the voice for the character Haffa Dozen, an ex-stripper appearing on the October 19, 2005, episode of the Sci-Fi Channel's animated TV series Tripping the Rift.^[17]
• She appeared in an episode of The Adventures of Pete & Pete as Mrs. Kretchmar, the nicest housewife in the world.
• Notably playing against type, Hearst played a crack-addicted prostitute on an episode of the comedic Son of the Beach.
• Hearst's voice was used as a caller in the Frasier episode, Frasier Crane's Day Off in 1994.
• She appeared as Anthony Clark's mother on the sitcom Boston Common.
• She appeared in a season 3 episode of Veronica Mars portraying Selma Hearst Rose, the granddaughter of the founder of Hearst College and college board member, who had faked her own kidnapping.

Bibliography

• Boulton, David (1975). The Making of Tania Hearst. London: New English Library. ISBN 0-450-02351-6. 
• Graebner, William (2008). Patty's Got a Gun: Patricia Hearst in 1970s America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-30522-6. 
• Hearst, Patricia Campbell; with Alvin Moscow (1988). Patty Hearst: Her Own Story. New York: Avon. ISBN 0-380-70651-2.  Cite uses deprecated parameters (help) First published in 1982 as Every Secret Thing.
• McLellan, Vin; and Paul Avery (1977). The Voices of Guns: The Definitive and Dramatic Story of the Twenty-two-month Career of the Symbionese Liberation Army, One of the Most Bizarre Chapters in the History of the American Left. New York: Putnam. ISBN 0-399-11738-5.  Cite uses deprecated parameters (help)
• Weed, Steven; with Scott Swanton (1976). My Search for Patty Hearst. New York: Crown. ISBN 0-517-52579-8.  Cite uses deprecated parameters (help)

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Patty Hearst.

• CNN Patty Hearst Interview Transcript
• The story of Patty Hearst on Crime Library
• Patricia Hearst at the Internet Movie Database
• Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst PBS web site
• Works by or about Patty Hearst in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• An excerpt from Patty’s Got a Gun: Patricia Hearst in 1970s America by William Graebner

v t e Symbionese Liberation Army Founding members Donald DeFreeze Angela Atwood Patricia Soltysik Camilla Hall Nancy Ling Perry Emily Harris Later members Patty Hearst Wendy Yoshimura Kathleen Soliah Victims Marcus Foster Myrna Opsahl