Patty Hearst

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

Patricia Campbell 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.

The granddaughter of publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst and great-granddaughter of millionaire George Hearst, she gained notoriety in 1974 when, following her kidnapping by the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), she ultimately joined her captors in furthering their cause. Apprehended after having taken part in a bank robbery with other SLA members, Hearst was imprisoned for almost two years before her sentence was commuted by President Jimmy Carter. She was later granted a presidential pardon by President Bill Clinton in his last official act before leaving office.

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 the wealthy San Francisco Bay Area suburb of 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

On February 4, 1974, the 19-year-old Hearst was kidnapped from the Berkeley, California apartment she shared with her fiancé Steven Weed by a left-wing urban guerrilla group called the Symbionese Liberation Army. 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" (inspired by the nom de guerre of Haydée Tamara Bunke Bider, Che Guevara's comrade). For this reason, she is a well-known and often referenced example of a victim of Stockholm Syndrome.

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. Later communications from her were issued under the pseudonym Tania and asserted that she was committed to the goals of the SLA. A warrant was issued for her arrest and in September 1975, she was arrested in a San Francisco apartment with other SLA members.

Trial and imprisonment

Arrest photo

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." However, according to Hearst interviewer Margaret Singer, a noted authority on prisoner of war and other victims including Maryknoll priests released from the People's Republic of China in the 1950s, this is not unusual in such cases. Singer strongly pleaded for understanding in 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, that it would have even broken many experienced soldiers.

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 brain 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." 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. 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."

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 sentence was later commuted to seven years. Her prison term was also eventually commuted by President Jimmy Carter, 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.

Personal life

After her release from prison, she married her former bodyguard, Bernard Shaw. She and Shaw have two children, Gillian and Lydia Hearst-Shaw, and reside in Garrison, New York.

Documentaries about Hearst

• 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, 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.)

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.)
• Hearst co-authored a novel with Cordelia Frances Biddle titled Murder at San Simeon (Scribner, 1996), based upon the death of Thomas Ince on her grandfather's yacht.

Acting roles

Hearst has cultivated 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.
• She appeared in an episode of The Adventures of Pete & Pete as Mrs. Krechmar, 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, the granddaughter of the founder of Hearst College and college board member, who had faked her own kidnapping. Although Hearst College is fictional, it strongly echoes the real Stanford family history, with the founder being a railroad tycoon rather than a media baron.

Musical references

• Patti Smith's 1974 cover of the popular 1960s song, "Hey Joe", is recast as a comment on Hearst's ordeal at the hands of the SLA—portraying her as Joe "with a gun in her hand". This recording, which begins with a salacious monologue by Smith about Hearst's kidnapping and the SLA terror spree, was made when Hearst was still a captive and several members of the SLA were still at large.
• Juliette Lewis pays homage to Patty Hearst in the music video "Terra Incognita" (2010).
• Jamie Weeder plays Patty Hearst in Patty Hearst: The New Musical, written and directed by Barton Bund (2010).
• Warren Zevon's song "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner" makes a reference to Hearst in the lyric "Patty Hearst / heard the burst / of Roland's Thompson gun / and bought it".
• The Misfits song "She" is about Hearst. The lyrics reference Hearst's participation in the San Francisco bank robbery of 1974: "She walked out with empty arms, machine gun in her hand/She is good and she is bad, no one understands/She walked in in silence, never spoke a word/She's got a rich daddy, she's her daddy's girl".
• Ice Cube references Patty Hearst in his song Cave Bitch on his album Lethal Injection.
• Camper Van Beethoven honors Patty Hearst in both the song Tania and the album on which it appears, Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart.
• Black Box Recorder released a song in 2003 called "Kidnapping an Heiress" in their album "England Made Me" about the kidnapping of Patty Hearst.
• Frank Turner's song, "I am Disappeared," from England Keep My Bones references Hearst in the lyrics, "Dreams of pirate ships and Patty Hearst/Breaking through a life over rehearsed/She can't remember which came first/The house the home or the terrible thirst/She keeps having dreams."
• Smoke Or Fire's song, "The Patty Hearst Syndrome," a single from their 2007 album; This Sinking Ship, obviously references Hearst in the title, as well as the SLA in the song's lyrics. The song is about rebellion of rich youth.

The alternative rock band, Sonic Youth talks about Patty Hearst and her connection to the SLA on the delux edition of their 1990 album Goo. They also feature the famous photo of Patty Hearst standing posed with a gun in their recent music video Sacred Trickster.

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 9780226305226.
• Hearst, Patricia Campbell (1988). Patty Hearst: Her Own Story. New York: Avon. ISBN 0-380-70651-2. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help) First published in 1982 as Every Secret Thing.
• McLellan, Vin (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 book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Weed, Steven (1976). My Search for Patty Hearst. New York: Crown. ISBN 0-517-52579-8. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)

External links

• CNN Patty Hearst Interview Transcript
• Who2? Bio
• The story of Patty Hearst on Crime Library
• Patricia Hearst at IMDb
• Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst PBS web site
• Template:Worldcat id
• An excerpt from Patty’s Got a Gun: Patricia Hearst in 1970s America by William Graebner