———. “Twenty Months with Patty/Tania.” New Times, March 5, 1976, 18–36.
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PHOTO CREDITS
Grateful acknowledgment is given to the following for permission to reprint the photos in this book:
pai1.1 Corbis
pai1.2 Corbis
pai1.3 Corbis
pai1.4 Associated Press
pai1.5 Corbis
pai1.6 Corbis
pai1.7 Polaris
pai1.8 Polaris
pai1.9 Getty
pai1.10 Peter Breinig/San Francisco Chronicle/Polaris
pai1.11 Los Angeles Times Photographic Archive, Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA
pai1.12 Associated Press
pai1.13 Corbis
pai1.14 Art Rogers/Los Angeles Times/Polaris
pai1.15 Associated Press
pai1.16 Getty
pai1.17 Associated Press
pai1.18 Corbis
pai1.19 Photo on the right: Corbis
pai1.20 Corbis
pai1.21 Getty
pai1.22 Getty
pai1.23 Associated Press
pai1.24 Associated Press
pai1.25 Associated Press
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jeffrey Toobin is the bestselling author of The Oath, The Nine, Too Close to Call, A Vast Conspiracy, and The Run of His Life, which was made into the critically acclaimed FX series American Crime Story: The People v. O. J. Simpson. He is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the senior legal analyst at CNN.
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In December 1973, Randolph Hearst summoned a photographer from his newspaper, the San Francisco Examiner, to his estate in Hillsborough to commemorate the engagement of his daughter Patricia to Steven Weed. Randolph and his wife, Catherine, had reservations about their daughter’s marriage plans. So, in short order, did Patricia.
The three kidnappers crept up to the stairs on the left of the house at 2603 Benvenue Avenue in Berkeley before knocking on the door to apartment 4. As they dragged Patricia to their car, her fuzzy slippers fell to the ground. Earlier, they had carjacked a convertible from Peter Benenson, who had been grocery shopping. They put him on the floor of the backseat, and Bill Harris, after a considerable struggle, put Patricia in the trunk, shown here.
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Shortly after the kidnapping, Steven Weed, who was beaten in the attack, appeared before reporters with Catherine Hearst in front of the family mansion in Hillsborough.
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On January 10, 1974, Joe Remiro (in white, on left) and Russ Little (in white, on right) were arrested and charged with the murder of Oakland school superintendent Marcus Foster. One motive for the kidnapping of Patricia Hearst, on February 4, was to free Remiro and Little.
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Six of the SLA kidnappers, top row, left to right: Camilla Hall, the poet and artist from Minnesota; Willy Wolfe, whom Patricia called “the gentlest, most beautiful man”; Donald DeFreeze, the prison escapee who appointed himself General Field Marshal Cinque. Bottom row, left to right: Angela Atwood, the New Jersey–born actress; Nancy Ling Perry, the tiny spitfire and propagandist; Patricia “Mizmoon” Soltysik, onetime lover of Camilla Hall and in-house researcher.
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Randolph and Catherine Hearst made frequent appearances before reporters in their driveway in Hillsborough. In one communiqué, Patricia said, “Mom should get out of her black dress, that doesn’t help at all.”
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In response to demands from Patricia’s kidnappers, the Hearsts agreed to fund a food giveaway program, called People in Need, in the Bay Area. Some of the food distributions turned into riots.
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This iconic photograph of Patricia, taken by Mizmoon Soltysik in front of the SLA symbol of a seven-headed cobra, became one of the most famous images of the 1970s. Patricia’s expression is inscrutable, as subject to as many interpretations as the larger tale of her captivity. She looks steely or terrified; her lips are pursed in determination or defeat; she could be battle ready or battered. Shortly after the photo was taken, DeFreeze ordered Mizmoon and Ling to cut Patricia’s hair. Thereafter, Patricia usually wore wigs out of doors.
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During the robbery of the Hibernia Bank on April 15, 1974, the SLA comrades positioned Patricia so that her photograph would be taken by the security cameras. “First person puts up his head,” Hearst yelled at the customers, “I’ll blow his motherfucking head off!”
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In the immediate aftermath of the Hibernia heist, federal law enforcement officials disagreed about whether Patricia should be arrested for bank robbery. They compromised and decided to seek to hold her as a material witness, as indicated in this early wanted poster. Note the FBI’s use of her engagement photograph, with Steven Weed cropped out.
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When the comrades fled their apartment on Golden Gate Avenue in San Francisco, they left taunting messages on the walls for their pursuers from the FBI. Patricia scrawled this slogan of th
e Cuban revolution and signed it with her nom de guerre, Tania.
Following the successful Hibernia Bank robbery, Mizmoon Soltysik took this triumphant group portrait of the SLA. Back row: Emily Harris (Yolanda), Willy Wolfe (Cujo), Donald DeFreeze (Cinque), Bill Harris (Teko), Camilla Hall (Gabi). Front row: Patricia Hearst (Tania), Angela Atwood (General Gelina), Nancy Ling Perry (Fahizah).
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On May 16, when a clerk at Mel’s Sporting Goods caught Bill Harris shoplifting, Patricia fired dozens of rounds of ammunition across this busy Los Angeles street to help Bill escape.
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On the afternoon of May 17, the Los Angeles Police Department surrounded the small house at 1466 East Fifty-Fourth Street and demanded that the six SLA comrades inside surrender. After neighbors were evacuated, a ferocious gun battle ensued, with thousands of rounds of ammunition exchanged, and then the house was destroyed by fire. In the end, Donald DeFreeze, Willy Wolfe, Camilla Hall, Nancy Ling Perry, Angela Atwood, and Mizmoon Soltysik were all killed in the inferno. The house itself was destroyed, as is evident from this aerial photograph.
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Kathy Soliah (who would later take the name Sara Jane Olson) is shown here speaking at a memorial rally for the slain SLA comrades on June 2 in Berkeley. The poster announced the event. Soliah’s sympathetic public remarks prompted Bill and Emily Harris, along with Patricia, to seek her out and ask for her help in escaping the police.
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Jack Scott, shown jogging with his wife, Micki, was a pioneer in protecting the rights of athletes. He also had an eye for adventure and profit, which led to his decision to shield the SLA comrades after the shoot-out in Los Angeles.
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Jack and Micki Scott rented this farmhouse in the countryside near Scranton, Pennsylvania. During the summer of 1974, the Scotts allowed Patricia, Bill and Emily Harris, and Wendy Yoshimura to stay there, in the hopes that they might produce a memoir about their life in the SLA.
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After Jack Scott’s brother, Walter, told the FBI that Jack had hidden Patricia and her comrades on the farm, the bureau set out to interview Jack, Micki, and their friend Bill Walton, the basketball star. In a press conference in San Francisco, the trio insisted that they would never cooperate with the FBI.
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On September 18, 1975, the FBI finally arrested Patricia at her home in this modest house at 625 Morse Street in a run-down section of San Francisco. As she was taken in for booking, Patricia lifted her fist in the revolutionary salute. At the time of her arrest she was living with her lover, Steve Soliah. From jail she wrote to him, “I miss you on me & around me & inside me, and all the pigs in the world can’t take the way I feel away from me.”
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When she was booked following her arrest, Patricia was asked her occupation. “Urban guerrilla,” she replied. Also arrested on the same day were Bill and Emily Harris, who had been on the run with Patricia, in a stormy partnership, for more than a year.
The prosecution team: In the center is James L. Browning Jr., the U.S. attorney and lead prosecutor. Right to left: David Bancroft, who handled the psychiatric testimony for the government; Parks Stearns, the FBI case agent; Ed Davis, an assistant U.S. attorney; Steele Langford, second-in-command to Browning; and Carole Westrick, the paralegal who recognized the significance of the Olmec monkeys.
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Randolph and Catherine Hearst walking beside lead defense counsel F. Lee Bailey, whose courtroom performance disappointed the family.
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By the time of her trial, Patricia’s appearance had been transformed. She no longer resembled a scruffy outlaw but instead looked like a well-groomed heiress.
The turning point in Patricia’s trial came when the government introduced the small Mexican charms known as Olmec monkeys. Willy Wolfe died in the Los Angeles inferno wearing this monkey around his neck; the rope was charred in the fire. When Patricia was arrested, more than a year later, she was carrying her Olmec monkey in her purse (shown here, side by side with Willy’s). Carole Westrick, the prosecution paralegal, wrote a note to the lead prosecutor that said, “No woman would carry around a memento from a man who raped her and couldn’t stand for over a year!”
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Following an extensive lobbying campaign by the Hearst family and its allies, President Jimmy Carter commuted Patricia’s prison sentence on January 29, 1979. She had served twenty-two months of her seven-year sentence. To her left is Bernard Shaw, who had been hired to be her bodyguard and became her husband.
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Patricia’s love of dogs remained a constant in her life. Here she is, at the age of sixty, at the 2015 Westminster Dog Show at New York’s Madison Square Garden. Her shih tzu named Rocket, also pictured here, won the top prize in the toy category.
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Table of Contents
Other Titles
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Prologue
Part One
1. Nervous Breakdown Nation
2. From Inside the Trunk
3. The SLA
4. The Point of No Return
Part Two
5. Prisoner of War
6. Not Just a Bunch of Nuts
7. Three Hundred Bald Men
8. “I’m a Strong Woman”
9. The Birth of Tania
10. Stay and Fight
Part Three
11. Common Criminals
12. Showdown at Mel’s
13. Live on Television
14. Apocalypse on Fifty-Fourth Street
Part Four
15. “The Gentlest, Most Beautiful Man”
16. Jack Scott Makes an Offer
17. Road Trip
18. The Streets of Sacramento
19. Death of a “Bourgeois Pig”
20. Feminist Bomb-Making
21. Freeze!
Part Five
22. “There Will Be a Revolution in Amerikkka and We’ll Be Helping to Make It”
23. “Your Ever-Loving Momma and Poppa Care About the Truth”
24. More Excited Than Scared
25. The Search for Old McMonkey
26. The Verdict
27. “Favoring the Rich over the Poor”
Aftermath
Author’s Note
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Photo Credits
About the Author
Illustrations
American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst Page 43
