The
kidnapping of newspaper heiress Patricia “Patty” Hearst was one of the most
notorious – and most reported – crimes of the 1970s.
From her
kidnapping at her San Francisco home at the hands of the Symbionese Liberation
Army (SLA), to her transformation as “Tania” (and her machine-gun toting photo
that is one of the most iconic images of that decade), to the Hibernia Bank
robbery, to eventual capture in September of 1975 and subsequent sentence
commutation and pardon, Patty Hearst and her abduction has come to symbolize
the upheaval that dominated America during the early and mid-70s, as well
making her the unofficial poster child for “Stockholm Syndrome” (when a
kidnapping victim develops a sense of affection and sympathy for their
kidnappers).
But
throughout her 18-month ordeal at the hands of the SLA, the main question that
is brought up regarding the Patty Hearst kidnapping is this: was Hearst a
willing convert and participant in the SLA’s violent string of crimes, or was
she forced and coerced to commit these crimes under the fear that her life was
in constant danger? Jeffrey Toobin, the CNN legal analyst whose book The Run of His life is regarded s the
definitive account of the O.J. Simpson murder trial, answers this question to
good effect with his latest book American
Heiress.
Basically,
Toobin effectively argues that it was a bit of both circumstances that ruled
Patty Hearst while she was in captivity. First, he believes that Hearst quickly
became indoctrinated and influenced to what the SLA stood for – in creating a
violent revolution against the establishment in California – as a means of
rebellion against her life of privilege as the granddaughter of famed newspaper
magnate William Randolph Hearst; basically, she felt her life with her parents
(especially with her overbearing mother Catherine), and her upcoming engagement
to university teacher Steven Weed was a sham and would have led to a life of
drudgery and servitude to Weed (and admitted that she even contemplated suicide
before the kidnapping took place). Second, that the Hearsts would agree to the
demands of the SLA for her eventual release (which was in the form of a food
giveaway to the underprivileged of San Francisco), because Patty was constantly
living under the threat of death, which was always expressed by the SLA’s
self-appointed leader Donald De Freeze (aka “General Field Marshal Cinque”).
Toobin uses
his journalistic skills and legal knowledge to craft a complete, well-rounded
examination of the Patty Hearst kidnapping case and its violent circumstances,
thanks to countless interviews and access to court documents and letters that
Hearst wrote during her 18 months in captivity. We get an inside look at the
SLA, which was created in a San Francisco that was reeling from a very
turbulent, violent period as it was in the midst of the fear that was brought
about by the Zodiac and Zebra serial killings that gripped the city, and its
rag tag members were made up of young adults from mainly middle class
upbringings who were disillusioned by their relatively safe backgrounds, and
were committed to a violent revolution (they were influenced by California
prison inmate George Jackson and his two bestselling memoirs Soledad Brother and Blood in My Eye); we find out how dysfunctional the Hearst family
really was at the time of the kidnapping (and that William Randolph Hearst
distrusted his sons so much, he willed that his newspaper and media empires
were not to be run by them); and we find out what really went on during the
period between the fiery, violent deaths of six SLA members in May of 1974 and
Hearst’s arrest in September of 1975 (which involved travelling from one end of
the U.S. to the other, and hiding in Pennsylvania and California, as Hearst was
gearing her way of thinking from revolutionary to feminist); and how the ego of
her lawyer F. Lee Bailey practically derailed her case when it went to trial in
1976 and ended up in a guilty conviction and a prison term.
American
Heiress is a compelling, well-researched book that serves as a prime example of
how the ideal true crime book should be written. It shows what motivates a small group of people to take up
arms against the establishment (unrealistic as it may be) and kidnap a young,
susceptible individual, who can be easily indoctrinated to their cause and help
promote that cause to the outside world. Although the story is well told in
this book, it still raises many questions to what happened during the Patty
Hearst kidnapping case and why it happened, and how the outcome happened the
way it did. As Toobin concludes in the book:
“Patricia
Hearst was a woman who, through no fault of her own, fell in with bad people
but then did bad things; she committed crimes, lots of them … But when she and
her comrades were caught, Patricia was rational once more … A clear thinker, if
not a deep one, Patricia understood that for her rich was better than poor and
freedom was better confinement. She chose accordingly … The story of Patricia
Hearst, as extraordinary as it once was, had a familiar, even predictable
ending. She did not turn into a revolutionary. She turned into her mother.”
(This article originally appeared in the Sept. 10, 2016 edition of the Montreal Times)
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