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

by Jeffrey Toobin

  Browning and Bates were friends, and they worked together on dozens of investigations, but they were in conflict over the Hearst case. Through his nightly pilgrimages in Hillsborough, Bates had become close to the Hearst family. (He even slept over on occasion.) Bates felt Randy and Catherine’s pain as they agonized over the fate of their daughter. During many long, boozy nights in the mansion, Bates came to see the case, and even the evidence in the bank robbery, through the eyes of the Hearsts. Their exclusive concern, understandably, was Patricia’s well-being, and it came to be Charlie Bates’s as well.

  Jim Browning, the prosecutor, never met the Hearsts, and he saw the facts of the case differently. The U.S. attorney also had his offices in 450 Golden Gate Avenue, and the two men developed a ritual for every time a new communiqué arrived from the SLA. Browning would take the elevator to Bates’s FBI suite, and the two men would huddle over a tape recorder and parse the words. Listening to Patricia’s first few statements, Browning shared the view that she was a terrified victim. But he sensed the transformation in her tone. Browning didn’t buy Bates’s argument that Patricia was forced to join the SLA.

  And then, finally, there was the bank robbery itself. Together, the two men studied the herky-jerky motion picture created by splicing the security camera photographs together. Patricia didn’t look coerced to Browning. Her weapon looked just like those wielded by Ling, Mizmoon, and DeFreeze. She yelled at the customers just as the others did. To every appearance, Patricia had her assignment inside the bank, and she completed it. Like the trial lawyer he was, Browning didn’t cotton to complicated explanations for evidence that was right in front of him. He thought it wasn’t his business, or a jury’s, to ask why a criminal chose to break the law; the system was designed to identify and convict those who committed crimes. Yes, Patricia had been kidnapped, but she had also robbed the bank. His job, Browning thought, was to prosecute bank robbers. Bates was unpersuaded.

  Then, nine days after the robbery, came the communiqué of April 24, 1974.

  —

  After Steven Weed moved out of the Hearst family mansion, he continued his quixotic, independent investigation of the kidnapping. In early April, Weed tried to make connections in the radical exile community, hoping to find a country that might grant asylum to the SLA, if they freed Patricia. One of his contacts suggested that Régis Debray, the originator of the foco theory (whose books had been found in the Concord house), might be willing to help. As a bonus, Debray had known the original Tania and could speak about her character and motivations. Weed’s acquaintance called the singer Joan Baez, a friend of Debray’s, who agreed to contact the Marxist theoretician, who was living in Mexico. Debray indicated some interest in trying to help. Weed then ran the idea by Randy Hearst.

  “We need a goddamn South American revolutionary mixed up in this thing like a hole in the head,” Randy replied.

  Randy’s skepticism notwithstanding, Weed took off for Mexico during the second week in April and secured an audience with Debray, who agreed to write a letter, which Steve brought back with him to California. “To Patricia Hearst,” the letter began, “I just received a visit from your friend, Steve. It is at his request…that I take the liberty to intervene in a situation in which the spirit, methods, and intentions are obviously foreign to me.”

  The letter went on in an arch, Marxist academic style, but the gist was that Debray asked to be informed whether her conversion to the SLA cause was genuine—for Patricia to “assure me that you have consciously and freely chosen to take the name and follow the example of Tania.” Debray said that the original Tania’s intellectual development had been the result of “years amongst the workers” and study of “the theory of scientific socialism and the reality of the actual world.” He explained, “You will understand that we must be cautious to protect the moral integrity and the international purity of her commitment.” When Weed returned to the United States, he released the letter and held a news conference where he said the video of the bank robbery suggested to him that Patricia had been coerced into participating.

  There was something almost poignant about Weed’s desperate journey to find an intellectual voice who might persuade the SLA, and his fiancée, to change course. But the idea was doomed from the start. From DeFreeze on down, the comrades parroted Marxist lingo more than they understood it; especially by the time they were on the run, they operated more by instinct than by thought. And Weed, an object of derision inside the SLA, was the worst possible intermediary at this point. So the Debray letter and Weed’s press conference prompted a scathing response, which came on April 24.

  “Greetings to the people. This is Tania,” Patricia began, her voice clear and steady. “On April 15, my comrades and I expropriated $10,660.02 from the Sunset branch of the Hibernia Bank.” (DeFreeze had told her to add the two cents to confuse the bank’s auditors.) “Casualties could have been avoided had the persons involved kept out of the way and cooperated with the people’s forces until after our departure. I was positioned so that I could hold down customers and bank personnel who were on the floor. My gun was loaded, and at no time did any of my comrades intentionally point their guns at me. Careful examination of the photographs which were published clearly show that this was true.

  “I am obviously alive and well. As for being brainwashed, the idea is ridiculous to the point of being beyond belief.” It was as if Patricia had eavesdropped on the debates between Bates and Browning over her state of mind (as well as Weed’s public comments) and then set about refuting every argument the FBI man made in her defense.

  To be sure, Patricia also mouthed some SLA political verbiage that still sounded contrived coming from her. “Consciousness is terrifying to the ruling class,” she said. “And they will do anything to discredit people who have realized that the only alternative to freedom is death; and that the only way we can free ourselves of this fascist dictatorship is by fighting, not with words but with guns.”

  But Patricia’s tone became venomous when the subject turned to Weed, whose name she could barely bring herself to utter. “As for my ex-fiancé, I am amazed that he thinks that the first thing I would want to do, once free, would be to rush and see him. I don’t care if I never see him again. During the past few months, Steven has shown himself to be a sexist, ageist pig. Not that this is a sudden change from the way he always was. It merely became more blatant during the period when I was still a hostage. Frankly, Steven is the one who sounds brainwashed.”

  This broadside certainly had the ring of authenticity. At the time of the kidnapping, Patricia was, as she later said, “mildly suicidal” at the thought of marrying Steve. Now, whether prompted by her relationship with Willy Wolfe, or by a broader political consciousness, or (as she later claimed) by the continuing threat of death for disobedience, Patricia was at her most convincing in her denunciations of the man with whom she had recently shared her life.

  She concluded with the words that would become her signature: “To those people who still believe that I am brainwashed or dead, I see no reason to further defend my position. I am a good soldier in the people’s army. Patria o muerte! Venceremos!”

  The April 24 tape ended with a brief, menacing postscript from DeFreeze. The field marshal wanted to make clear that the stakes in the SLA’s battle with the authorities were life and death. “Regarding the two people shot in the bank, we again warn the public any civilian attempting to aid or to involve or assist the enemy of the people in any manner will be shot without hesitation,” he said. “There is no middle ground in war. Either you are with the people or with the enemy.”

  The April 24 communiqué converted Bates to Browning’s point of view—almost. The two men compromised. The U.S. attorney would issue arrest warrants for all the SLA comrades, including Patricia. But while the others would be subject to arrest for the robbery, Patricia would be charged as a “material witness.” This meant that if the FBI or the police located Patricia, she could be held like any of the ot
hers. At that point, based on further investigation, the FBI and the U.S. attorney could then decide whether to charge her with the bank robbery or to release her as an unwilling participant in the crime.

  In light of this decision, Patricia Hearst made her debut on a wanted poster, with her image displayed alongside pictures of Donald DeFreeze, Nancy Ling Perry, Camilla Hall, and Patricia Michelle Soltysik, “aka Mizmoon.” (The authorities still lacked photographs of Bill and Emily Harris, Angela Atwood, and Willy Wolfe.) The text noted, “THESE SUBJECTS ARE TO BE CONSIDERED HEAVILY ARMED AND EXTREMELY DANGEROUS.” The poster did not reveal that the photograph of Patricia came from her engagement announcement, on her parents’ lawn in Hillsborough, less than six months earlier. In the picture, as in Patricia’s life, Steven Weed had been cropped out.

  —

  The exhilaration over the bank robbery passed after a few days, replaced by DeFreeze’s paranoia as well as the claustrophobia created by nine bodies in a small apartment. This time, DeFreeze had a new idea about how he was going to advance the cause. He would begin recruiting new members by ringing doorbells and introducing himself to strangers as General Field Marshal Cinque of the SLA.

  Even by DeFreeze’s standards, this was a lunatic notion. He was perhaps the most wanted man in America, and his photograph had been all over the news. Still, it galled DeFreeze to fancy himself a leader of black people when all of his followers were white. Now, he thought, it was time to reach out to African Americans, and most of the neighbors in the Western Addition neighborhood happened to be black. He believed he could build on the outlaw sensibility he had cultivated with the food giveaway and the bank robbery. DeFreeze told Angela Atwood and Bill Harris to accompany him on his rounds and stand behind him as he made his pitch to whoever happened to open the door. (Harris, characteristically, thought DeFreeze’s idea was madness, though he did comply with the order to tag along.)

  The trio wandered the streets three times in late April, carrying the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ publication the Watchtower as a cover for their proselytizing. They would spot African American people who looked hip and “jam” them, as DeFreeze said. He would follow them to their homes and knock on their doors—“lightning meetings,” he called them. Once inside, Cinque would identify himself and seek recruits.

  The most incredible thing about DeFreeze’s door-to-door campaign was that it worked. None of the people who answered the door reported the encounters to the police, and one family, which happened to belong to the Nation of Islam, became a crucial ally.

  The young woman of the house called herself Jamellea, and DeFreeze persuaded her to come visit the safe house on Golden Gate, which was about a block from her apartment. When Jamellea did visit, she brought an entire delegation with her—three adults and three children. As soon as the group arrived, one of them, Brother Ali, asked to meet the famous Tania.

  “There she is,” DeFreeze said, pointing.

  “She doesn’t look like her,” Ali said.

  “Smile for the man, Tania,” DeFreeze said. “People don’t recognize you unless you smile, like in your pictures.” (For her part, Patricia was shell-shocked by the visitors because she had not been in an apartment with outsiders since the day she was kidnapped.)

  The visitor named Rasheem raised an embarrassing question. “Where are all the blacks?” he asked the man he knew as Cinque. “I don’t see any blacks here except you.”

  DeFreeze deployed his fantasy, which he had shared with Patricia after her kidnapping, that there was actually a bigger SLA out in the world. “Oh, this is the white unit,” DeFreeze told Rasheem. “I’m here just to help them get organized and trained ’cause these brothers and sisters are going to lead the other white units.” The black units, he said, were training elsewhere.

  For a few days, Jamellea and the others (including the children) were regular visitors to the Golden Gate apartment, and they treated DeFreeze with the kind of deference he enjoyed. At one point, the woman who called herself Retimah told him that her children referred to him by a code name—Jesus. This pleased him.

  DeFreeze decided that the heat from the bank robbery was growing too intense for the comrades to remain at Golden Gate, so he gave his new friends an assignment. Over the next couple of weeks, he supplied them with cash to buy three used vans, all for a total of about $2,000. Then, in late April, DeFreeze told the new recruits to find the comrades a new place to live, one farther from the FBI offices. They rented a two-bedroom place at 1808 Oakdale Avenue, in Hunters Point, another run-down part of town. Before the May rent was due on Golden Gate, DeFreeze announced that the comrades would be moving. Pack rats as always, they filled the station wagon for two round-trips to the new apartment. Even before they moved, the Golden Gate apartment was a stinking mess, overrun by cockroaches, and they left behind a mix of trash and food that prompted other tenants to complain within a couple of days of their departure.

  When they were finished emptying the place, the group wanted to leave a message for their pursuers that displayed their trademark theatrical flair. So they dumped a mass of documents and keys (including the keys to the cars used in the robbery) into the bathtub and then filled it with a toxic brew of chemicals. On the wall of the bathroom, they left the following message:

  WARNING!

  TO THE FBI, CIA, DIA, NSA, NSC AND CBS:

  There are a few clues in this bathroom. However, you will have to wait until they are dry. An additional word of caution: ½ (one-half) lb. (pound) of cyanide (potassium cyanide) crystals has been added to this “home brew.” So, pig, drink at your own risk.

  There are also many additional juicy SLA clues throughout this safe house. However, remember that you are not bullet-proof either.

  Happy hunting, Charles!

  The taunt was directed at Charles Bates of the FBI.

  The comrades also covered the walls of the apartment with graffiti. One scrawl was in the unmistakable, private girls’ school handwriting of Patricia Hearst:

  Freedom is the will of life.

  Patria o muerte, Venceremos.

  Tania–

  Alerted by neighbors who noticed the cockroaches coming from the third-floor apartment, the police broke down the door on May 2. But by then the comrades had been gone for days.

  —

  By the time the comrades were settled in the apartment in Hunters Point, the jubilation of the bank robbery had passed. The Nation of Islam recruits brought food, and the comrades continued their daily rounds of calisthenics and battle drills in the slightly less cramped conditions of the new apartment. But DeFreeze never liked the apartment on Oakdale Avenue. He recognized the folly of placing eight white comrades in a virtually all-black neighborhood. They would call attention to themselves when they ventured outdoors.

  Between slugs of plum wine, DeFreeze waxed fatalistic. He told Patricia that he was the only one of the comrades who had a criminal record, but now they were all wanted for bank robbery. Before the Hibernia action, the others had the option of going back to their bourgeois lives, but now they had passed the point of no return. They were fugitives—forever.

  Then, suddenly, DeFreeze had an announcement. They were leaving for Los Angeles.

  12

  SHOWDOWN AT MEL’S

  By the time the authorities discovered the Golden Gate safe house, with the taunting graffiti on the walls, DeFreeze and the comrades had already concluded that it was only a matter of time until they were caught in San Francisco. DeFreeze decided to flee to the place he knew best—Los Angeles, his former home. Of course, it wasn’t clear what the SLA would do once they were there, but Cinque figured he could maneuver more easily in a place where he knew the terrain. He wanted a measure of control over his surroundings. What he found in Los Angeles was something very different.

  The cash from the bank robbery dwindled faster than the comrades expected. After paying for the vans, rent on two apartments, food and supplies for nine people, DeFreeze had to start cutting into the $1,000 gra
nts he had made to each of the comrades. Worse still, the stress of fugitive life was getting to everyone, especially with the repeated, furtive, nighttime moves. DeFreeze’s mood turned consistently apocalyptic. The revolution, he promised, was just around the corner, though he conceded that the comrades might not survive to see the victory. Ling and Mizmoon, the truest believers, responded to his discourses with ever more reverent behavior toward the field marshal. Angela Atwood, theatrical as ever, also welcomed the approach of Armageddon. Talk of death—their own as well as their enemies’—was constant. Camilla Hall, weary and still overweight, struggled to keep pace, physically and emotionally. The Harrises quarreled, as always, and Bill kept talking about leaving the sinking ship without ever making a move to do so. Patricia and Willy kept to themselves, their worry sheltered by their now-recognized union. As a group, the comrades were not so much retreating to Los Angeles as spinning out of control.

  Thanks to the purchases by the Nation of Islam recruits, the comrades had three vans at their disposal. DeFreeze decreed that they would travel in separate vehicles and rendezvous at a spot he designated in South Central Los Angeles, his old neighborhood. But first he had to decide how to divide up the comrades for the long journeys south. He said he wanted three teams of three, with each team equally strong in case they had to take action independently. He said he wanted to separate the lovebirds—Patricia and Willy Wolfe—so they would maintain their focus on the tasks at hand. In the end, DeFreeze assigned Angela Atwood and Camilla Hall (who was clearly the weakest link) to his car; Willy would go with Mizmoon and Nancy Ling; and Patricia would travel with Bill and Emily Harris. These assignments would turn out to be the most consequential decisions DeFreeze ever made.