American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst

by Jeffrey Toobin

  * About 10 percent of the population cannot detect the smell of cyanide.

  PART TWO

  5

  PRISONER OF WAR

  They weren’t sure how to find another car. Remiro knew how to hot-wire a car, but he was locked up. No one else had a clue how to do it. So how else did you steal a car? They’d have to carjack someone—just steal the car out from under him. After all, how hard could that be?

  The eight members of the SLA team got off to a late start leaving Daly City on February 4, and the sun had already set by the time they crossed the Bay Bridge. Wolfe and Mizmoon, leading off in the blue Volkswagen, went straight to their position across the street from 2603 Benvenue. Their initial assignment was to keep an eye on the building to see if Hearst and Weed went out. If they did, of course, the kidnapping would have to be postponed. The other six piled into the green-and-white 1964 Chevrolet station wagon, and they headed for Shattuck Avenue, the main shopping street in Hearst’s part of Berkeley. That’s where they were going to steal a car.

  But by the time the SLA station wagon arrived, most of the stores, in that pre-gentrification era, had already closed. They pulled to a stop near a wreck of a 1964 Chevy convertible, but they agreed that they could do better than this “junker.”

  What followed, though, was a comedy of errors. They could not find a car to steal. There was little traffic, and most drivers simply didn’t stop in the area. The SLA followed several pedestrians, hoping they would get into a car, but their targets kept walking. Bill Harris was steps away from one man when he turned and walked up the stairs to his house. The owners of the cars parked nearby simply didn’t show up. The whole point of their plan was to knock on Hearst’s door in the early evening, when they wouldn’t call a lot of attention to themselves. But evening was turning to night. Harris prowled the empty sidewalks, muttering to himself that he was right all along to disparage the plan. The six SLA soldiers on Shattuck, all wired for action, seethed in helpless frustration. Meanwhile, Wolfe and Mizmoon parked for hours on Benvenue. Bewildered by the delay, they started to draw quizzical stares from Hearst’s neighbors. They couldn’t sit in the Beetle all night.

  Finally, around 9:00 p.m., a local resident named Peter Benenson walked toward the junker, carrying two bags of groceries. After quick consultations, DeFreeze gave the word that this car would have to do. Angela Atwood approached Benenson as he arrived at the door to his car. “Give me the keys,” she said. “We want your car, not you.” When Benenson, stunned, hesitated, Angela and Emily and Bill Harris pounced on him, tied him up, shoved him on the floor of the backseat, and covered him with a blanket. They told him to keep quiet and left the trunk empty.

  At last, the SLA had assembled a complete complement of vehicles, and the station wagon and the convertible made the short drive to 2603 Benvenue. After confirming that all three cars were in place, DeFreeze, Harris, and Atwood approached the door to apartment 4.

  The kidnapping itself took four minutes. DeFreeze left a sinister calling card on the floor of the apartment—a box of cyanide-filled .38-caliber bullets, just so there would be no doubt that the SLA conducted the attack. The kidnappers also remembered to take Patricia Hearst’s purse with them on the way out; her credit cards and other forms of identification would prove useful in demonstrating that the SLA actually held the heiress. That night the SLA was lucky in certain ways. They were fortunate that the wild gunfire from DeFreeze and Nancy Ling hit no one, and it was providential for all concerned that the police officer who stopped Willy Wolfe’s Volkswagen only wanted him to turn on his lights. In addition, Steve Suenaga, the neighbor who blundered into the kidnapping, had been subdued without suffering permanent injuries. No one, fortunately, had been killed.

  The three SLA cars stopped half a mile from the apartment, and Patricia was quickly transferred from the trunk of the convertible to the back of the station wagon. They left the convertible behind, with Benenson still trussed on the floor of the backseat. Nancy Ling told him he’d be killed if he went to the police. Benenson freed himself almost as soon as his captors departed, but he was too traumatized to report the attack until the following morning.

  —

  After the long ride from Berkeley to Daly City, the station wagon pulled in to the garage attached to 37 Northridge Drive. Scared as she was, Patricia managed to think clearly. She viewed it as a positive sign that the kidnappers were so concerned that she might see their faces and be able to identify them. That meant that she was likely to be released someday. After making sure her blindfold was in place, Harris guided her from the car into the house. A door opened, and Patricia inhaled an earthy smell that produced her first moment of true panic. Her mind flashed back to a recent story about a woman who had been kidnapped and buried alive. She thought the same thing was about to happen to her. She screamed and kicked to get away.

  “It’s a closet,” Bill Harris said. “Relax, it’s just a closet.”

  The enclosed space was six feet seven inches long, a little more than two feet wide, and eight feet high. A dirty foam mattress (the source of the smell) had been cut to fit the space. After Harris deposited her inside, she heard the door lock from the outside. Even behind her blindfold, she could tell it was pitch-black.

  It might have been “just a closet,” but Patricia faced an extraordinarily terrifying situation. She had been kidnapped in a country where high-profile kidnappings had all but disappeared; no one with a famous name had been kidnapped in the United States since Charles Lindbergh Jr. was seized and murdered in 1932. Despite Harris’s calming words, the threat of death hung over Patricia. Even though she was only a teenager, she faced her situation with courage and intelligence. She didn’t panic or collapse; she listened to her captors and quickly recognized that there were considerable differences, in personality and temperament, among them. Her judgments about their characters, and about her own predicament, were sound.

  The first person to open the door to the closet put a radio inside and told Patricia to be quiet. Then DeFreeze informed her that she was in the custody of the Symbionese Liberation Army. Even in that desperate moment, Patricia was able to think strategically. She knew that the SLA had claimed responsibility for the murder of Marcus Foster, but she figured it would be safer if she feigned ignorance about the group. That way, she wouldn’t be forced to take a position on their actions or to debate the man she knew as Cinque. In a sign of DeFreeze’s real priorities, he was offended by Patricia’s apparent unfamiliarity with his army—“how could you not know the SLA?” He boasted of the success of the Foster action, noting with pride that the deed had been accomplished with cyanide bullets.

  DeFreeze said she had been arrested, not kidnapped, by a “combat unit” of the SLA because her father was “a corporate enemy of the people.” He tried to interrogate Patricia about her father’s business activities, including his income and stock holdings. But Patricia had been well sheltered from the family’s finances (and shown little curiosity about them), so she replied with unfeigned ignorance. She knew a few random facts—the family had received a gift of rugs from the shah of Iran—but she didn’t know much more.

  “You are a prisoner of war of the Symbionese Liberation Army,” DeFreeze told her. “You will be held in protective custody and you will be treated according to the Geneva Convention governing prisoners of war.”

  In the midst of this monologue, Cinque injected a bizarre question.

  “Do you have any watches, jewels or religious medals on you?” he asked.

  Religious medals? Was this man insane? Because she was still wearing just the bathrobe and underwear, it was obvious that she did not.

  “Under the Geneva Convention, you are entitled to keep religious medals, but everything else will have to be in our custody.” Reflecting the strangely obsessive nature of SLA research, DeFreeze accurately characterized the rights of prisoners of war. The references to war and to the conventions also fit with the grandiosity of DeFreeze’s conception of his
undertaking. This was no mere kidnapping but an act of war, like the Tupamaros’ seizures of their enemies. And as in Uruguay, the point was to reeducate and reform prisoners of war, not to harm them. DeFreeze told Patricia she would probably be released soon, based on the outcome of negotiations with her family. In the meantime, she would be kept as comfortable as circumstances allowed. The only danger to her, DeFreeze said, in a theme that he would frequently repeat, was if the fascist police tried to rescue her.

  DeFreeze explained that Patricia’s “arrest” had been part of a series of actions by the SLA and its affiliates across the state of California. There had been five or six other “arrests,” and the SLA was in the process of coordinating combat, intelligence, medical, and support teams. (This was a fantasy, of course. There were no other actions, and the entire unincarcerated roster of the SLA was contained in that single grubby house.) In addition, Cin went on, the SLA was linked with revolutionary “people’s movements” around the globe.

  DeFreeze insisted that the people must understand the need for revolution, the power of the SLA, the reason for the “arrest” of Hearst, and he knew that he was the prophet to spread the word. His megalomania was the engine driving the SLA, which was, in many respects, his cult. This was an era of quasi-political cults, like those of Charles Manson and the Reverend Jim Jones. The leaders shared a hunger for public recognition of their unique genius. As DeFreeze continued his initial lecture to Patricia, what was clearest was his need for attention. They were speaking on the morning of February 5, and Cinque was seething because the newspapers had not yet reported that Patricia had been kidnapped. Where was the press coverage? This obsession with outside perceptions—with public relations—would remain a touchstone of the SLA.

  In time, during the course of his meandering monologue, Cinque explained the specific reason they kidnapped Patricia. “Our two comrades are being held in a pig’s prison, and that’s why we took you,” he said. “You’re going to be treated exactly as they are. Your condition here will duplicate their situation. If their condition changes for the worse, then your condition will change—in exactly the same way.” This was how she learned that her fate was tied to that of Little and Remiro—Osceola and Bo.

  Finally, Cinque wound down.

  “When will I go home?” Patricia asked.

  “What, do you want to go home for your birthday?” Cinque sneered. Patricia would turn twenty on February 20. This was, perhaps, the most unnerving thing that Cinque had said to her. He knew her birthday. It underlined that this was no random attack. They had been researching her life, which was chilling.

  —

  The first call to the police probably came from the students who were roused from their study session in the house next door to 2603 Benvenue. In light of the gunfire from DeFreeze and Ling, other calls soon followed. After bolting from his apartment with his head bloodied, Steven Weed ran through his yard, turned left in an alley, and rushed to Parker Street, where he screamed for someone in a darkened house to call the police. Hearing no response, he staggered back to Benvenue and struggled up the steps to his apartment, where a crowd was already starting to gather.

  “Where’s Patty?” he asked. “Where’s Patty?”

  “They took her,” he was told. “She’s gone.”

  Neighbors had just found Steve Suenaga, still tied up inside the apartment. Soon after, ambulances came for both of them.

  Reporters picked up the story, and the Berkeley police asked them to hold off reporting anything for the time being. A brief embargo was common for a breaking crime story, at least in those days, and the deadlines for Tuesday’s newspaper soon passed. Patricia’s sister Virginia lived with her husband a few blocks away from Benvenue, and police went to inform and warn her. She told them that their parents were at an event in Washington. The second-youngest daughter, Anne, who was at home in Hillsborough, roused her parents at the Mayflower Hotel with the bad news. Randy Hearst took the news calmly and called the Examiner. He learned that a team of reporters was already on the story, but the Examiner was honoring the embargo. “Be careful,” Randy said. “Don’t do anything that could get Patty hurt.” Then he made reservations for the first flight back to San Francisco on Tuesday morning.

  By the time Randy and Catherine returned to their home in Hillsborough on Tuesday afternoon, they had the answer to the first question that was torturing them. Who had done this? Police had found Cinque’s cyanide-tipped calling cards in the apartment. The bullets served their purpose of informing the authorities that the kidnappers were the SLA, the people who murdered Marcus Foster. At that point, the crime even made a perverse kind of sense. Little and Remiro had been arrested, and now the SLA was looking for something, or someone, to trade for their freedom. At least, that was the theory, but no one knew for sure, because the first twenty-four hours passed without a word from the kidnappers.

  —

  DeFreeze was still grousing about the lack of immediate press attention when he instructed Nancy Ling to draft a communiqué about the kidnapping. They sent it to KPFA on Tuesday, but it didn’t arrive until Thursday, February 7, forcing the Hearst family to endure almost three full days of silence from their daughter’s kidnappers. (It came in an envelope that also included Patricia’s Mobil Oil credit card, which, in an appropriate touch, was in her father’s name.) Even by the standards of the SLA, the communiqué was a strange document.

  SYMBIONESE LIBERATION ARMY WESTERN REGIONAL ADULT UNIT

  Communique #3

  Subject: Prisoners of War

  Target: Patricia Campbell Hearst Daughter of Randolph A. Hearst, corporate enemy of the people

  Warrant Issued By:

  The Court of the People

  February 4, 1974

  Warrant Order:

  Arrest and protective custody, and if resistance execution

  On the afore stated date, combat elements of the United Federated Forces of The Symbionese Liberation Army armed with cyanide loaded weapons served an arrest warrant upon Patricia Campbell Hearst.

  It is the order of this court that the subject be arrested by combat units and moved to a protective area of safety….

  It is the directive of this court that during this action ONLY, no civilian elements will be harmed if possible, and that warning shots be given. However, if any citizens attempt to aid the authorities or interfere with the implementation of this order, they shall be executed immediately.

  This court hereby notifies the public and directs all combat units in the future to shoot to kill any civilian who attempts to witness or interfere with any operation conducted by the people’s forces against the fascist state.

  Should any attempt be made by authorities to rescue the prisoner, or to arrest or harm any S.L.A. elements, the prisoner is to be executed.

  The prisoner is to be maintained in adequate physical and mental condition, and unharmed as long as these conditions are adhered to….

  All communications from this court MUST be published in full, in all newspapers, and all other forms of the media. Failure to do so will endanger the safety of the prisoner.

  Further communications will follow.

  S.L.A.

  DEATH TO THE FASCIST INSECT THAT PREYS UPON THE LIFE OF THE PEOPLE.

  The most peculiar thing about the communiqué was that it was a ransom demand without a demand for ransom. There was no reference to money, no mention of freedom for Little and Remiro, no condition stated for Patricia’s release. The message threatened her with harm, but only if efforts were made to free her. Otherwise, it more or less guaranteed her safety. The most important part of the communiqué was not obvious at first glance. This was the demand that the communiqué “MUST be published in full” and “in all newspapers, and all other forms of the media.” The document was a macabre press release, aimed more at garnering attention than at starting negotiations. The real question was whether Hearst and his newspaper would comply.

  —

  Charles Bates, the
special agent in charge of the FBI office in San Francisco, also happened to be in Washington when Patricia was kidnapped. Like Randy and Catherine, he took an early flight west the following morning. He went to the Hearsts’ Hillsborough mansion. Ordinary crime victims went to the FBI; the FBI went to the Hearsts.

  It was a peculiar moment in the history of the bureau as well as in Bates’s life. J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI’s longtime director, had died in 1972. President Nixon then installed as acting director one of his loyalists, L. Patrick Gray, but he was caught up in Watergate and forced out in 1973. Gray was replaced by Clarence Kelley, the chief of police in Kansas City, but the bureau in 1974 remained an institution in crisis. It had become clear that Hoover used his position to nurse his personal and political grievances, especially against Communists, both real and imagined, with the result that he neglected vast swaths of criminality in America. The bureau operated without regard for civil liberties, and its declining fortunes reflected the fall of many once-great American institutions in the Watergate era.

  But Charlie Bates thrived in Hoover’s FBI and dodged the fallout from the director’s departure. As chief of the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division, Bates had actually been placed in charge of the Watergate investigation in its first days. When assigned the case, he wrote a memo that said “that the FBI’s reputation was at stake, and that the investigation should be completely impartial, thorough and complete.” But Gray had betrayed Bates, destroying documents and allowing the Nixon White House to subvert the inquiry. Bates was not implicated in Gray’s misdeeds, but he felt compelled to seek a change of scenery. When the job of special agent in charge of the San Francisco office opened up, Bates grabbed it. He was still new to the post when he reported to Hillsborough. He brought with him his deputy, a veteran agent named Monte Hall, who would be in charge of the day-to-day investigation.