Patty Hearst
Patty Hearst
Patricia Campbell Hearst, now known as Patricia Hearst-Shaw, is the granddaughter of American publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst; she became nationally known for events following her kidnapping. In 1974, while she was a 19-year-old student living in Berkeley, California, Hearst was abducted by a left-wing terrorist group known as the Symbionese Liberation Army. According to her account, after being isolated and threatened with death, she became supportive of their cause, making propaganda announcements for them and taking part in illegal...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionFamily Member
Date of Birth20 February 1954
CitySan Francisco, CA
CountryUnited States of America
And, quite frankly, I fully expected to be charged with murder, because they weren't charging anybody. I did it in terms of, I felt like I was throwing down the gauntlet saying look, this is what happened. There's a family out there that needed to know what happened.
It's hard to know what to say about somebody like that, except there are people who look for trouble. And trouble is very easy to find when you go looking for it.
And you probably remember all of those papers and documents that they had published in the newspapers. And, you know, when you look at that, it really was their own little jihad that they had going. It just wasn't taken very seriously then.
The son of the victim, you know, has been virtually forgotten until recently.
You know, sitting in the car when they got back in and - first of all, it was relief. I was not - there were two get away cars or switch cars they were called. And, you know, the group tended to include everyone.
They called themselves an army. They were planning on recruiting more armies. They were planning on splitting up and forming smaller cells and going into different areas, recruiting more members and just growing until they had started a full scale war in this country.
I had been, you know, held in the closet for two months and, you know, abused in all manner of ways. I was very good at doing what I was told.
Well, you know, one lawyer says I'm the only witness and I'm not credible. Another lawyer says this witness - there's tons of evidence that's been available for years.
I was not inside the bank. But I am still not the only witness.
I do remember that I was very relieved that I did not have to go into a bank with them. I had, as you recall, I had already been brought into a bank before and it was better to be sitting outside.
I mean, Emily Harris was his wife. And she seemed to resent his leadership, but on the other hand, she felt like a good soldier, that he had to be the leader.
But even before that, in 1980 I went so far as to write a book about what had happened. And I wrote all about the bank robbery, I went ahead and printed it even though I had no use immunity for it.
But this has to happen. You just can't let people go because they stayed hidden for 25 or 27 or 37, whatever years. It's ridiculous.
And then it suddenly, you know, slowly began to dawn that they just weren't there any more. I could actually think my own thoughts.