Talk:Patty Hearst/Archives/2013

Brainwashed
Do you think that she was really brainwashed? If so, how do you think this was achieved?


 * I'm curious about the distinction this article makes between being "brainwashed" and Stockholm Syndrome. Stockholm Syndrome says that if you keep people prisoner by threatening their lives, they sometimes come to identify with you.  How is this different from "brainwashing," i.e., a coerced change of personality? Nareek 18:28, 16 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Stockholm Syndrome is not sought by the captors - it just happens. Brainwashing is a deliberate effort to force a change of view. -- Beardo (talk) 16:39, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Rather than impose my views on the actual article, I'll offer them here for appropriate peer review:

The term, "Stockholm Syndrome," comes from an incident -- a bank robbery -- in Stockholm, Sweden, during which the robbers took several female hostages and locked them and themselves into the bank vault after the robbery was frustrated by police. At least one of the women eventually came to identify so closely with one of the robbers that she eventually adopted his point of view and even attempted to marry him later. It is a state of identification with an aggressor brought about when the woman is reduced otherwise to helplessness.

"Brainwashing" has no fixed definition but originally referred to the program of "thought reform" used by Chinese communists against American POWs during the Korean War. In its original form, it was a method of isolation and intimidation used to extract confessions.

Hearst was subjected to "brainwashing" but in a more violent form. It was the abductors' policy to indoctrinate captives, using any means, including spreading lies and rumors, to convince the captive that the only side which could win a coming war was that of the abductors. [See the "Units" document (propaganda unit) in the House Internal Security Committee report, Terrorism, Part 3 (Washington, D.C.: Gov't.Print'Offc., 1974).]  They also had a general outline of the technique provided by Dr. Franz Fanon, a psychiatrist who described French use of the practice during the Algerian War. [see Franz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Press, 1963).]  The program designed against her was used, somewhat inexpertly, by her abductors after the abductors determined that the senior Hearsts' ransom attempts were inadequate to the kidnappers' demands. The kidnappers, who called themselves the Symbionese Liberation Army, by the admission of William and Emily Harris in a manuscript they wrote during the summer of 1974 [U.S. v. Hearst, #CR 74-364 WHO, trial exhibit], made inquiries into how to accomplish this "around the 1st of March, 1974." Actually, the program commenced on 26 February 1974, with the aid of two "captured" SLA "soldiers," Russell Jack Little and Joseph Remiro, who attempted to feed on Hearst's terror against the possibility of a police rescue by charging that Atty. Gen. William Saxbe and the FBI were plotting to murder her. [For a copy of this document, see William Brainard Pearsall's Symbionese Liberation Army (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1974).] These accusations were dismissed as hogwash by the Government, but recall during that time the Government was denying lots of things, mostly about Watergate, and had no credibility -- the SLA and their supporters easily manipulated these denials by calling down police raids on the innocent (including an Alameda County Sheriff's deputy) and by further baiting public officials into making outrageous, provocative remarks.

During this time, a psychiatrist retained by the senior Hearsts, Frederick Hacker, gave an interview to Newsweek magazine in which he mentioned the Stockholm Syndrome and the weird sexual relationships which female captives do develop with abductors under highly threatening situations. Hacker had good credentials because he had been the psychiatrist who had evaluated SLA leader Donald David DeFreeze before DeFreeze first went to prison. [See Frederick Hacker, M.D., Crusaders, Criminals, Crazies: Terror and Terrorism in Our Time (New York:  Norton, 1977).]  Newsweek published this interview during the first week of March 1974, and the Symbionese, who did not have a full understanding of the process they were experimenting with, apparently got ahold of this interview, because it was immediately afterward that, according to Hearst, she was coercively sexually assaulted, first by SLA member William Wolfe, then by SLA leader, Donald David DeFreeze. [See Patricia Hearst, Every Secret Thing (Garden City, N.J.: Doubleday, 1981).]  Until that moment, she had not been molested.

The pseudo-rapes -- in California at the time, actual rape required some resistance from the victim, which Hearst was unable to give -- did not convert Patricia but did traumatize her psychologically -- they should be thought of more accurately as a Nazi-style medical experiment than abductor lust. [Confirmation in part of this has been told by Janey Jimenez, in her book with Ted Berkman, My Prisoner (Kansas City: Sheed, Andrews & McMeel, 1977) -- as the deputy marshal charged with her custody, Jimenez was present when Hearst was gynecologically examined after her arrest.]  The Symbionese continued to play upon her fears of police rescue, and they also continued to threaten her life, at least to the extent she did not ape their views. The Symbionese had hoped to trade Miss Hearst for Little and Remiro -- the two were being held for the murder the previous November of Dr. Marcus Foster, superintendent of Oakland's schools -- but by this time, Governor Ronald Reagan had refused. [On the murder of Dr. Foster, see Marilyn Baker with Sally Brompton, ''Exclusive! The Inside Story of Patricia Hearst and the SLA'' (New York: Macmillan, 1976).]  Hearst was transferred to an apartment at 1827 Golden Gate Avenue in San Francisco, just up the street from the Federal Building and the offices of the FBI, and confined in a second closet full of roaches and vermin. Little and Remiro continued to add their own efforts (the SLA were able to contact them through one of the court-appointed lawyers), publishing a second letter full of death threats late in March. [This text also is in Pearsall.]

On 01 April 1974, the SLA dropped the first part of their building propaganda bombshell by leaving an announcement at San Francisco's Crete Florist's Shop that Hearst would be released. This, per Hearst's trial testimony, was intended as an All Fool's Day joke on the senior Hearsts and was part of the SLA's "war of nerves" against "the enemy," [again, see the "Units" document, supra], but went aglay when the florist's truck broke down on the way to the delivery. [John Bryan, This Soldier Still at War (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1975).]  In fact, Hearst was not to be released -- she had been given the choice to join the SLA as the alternative to being executed as a warning to the government against the further detention of Little and Remiro.

It was here that the actual "brainwashing" process began to close. Neither "brainwashing," hypnotism, nor any other form of "trancing" can get someone to do that which they genuinely do not want to do, but a person held under Hearst's circumstances has a strong motive to want to comply (even one who acts under threat of immediate death does make a willful choice). The Symbionese subjected Hearst to at least two weeks of interrogation and testing, with some supporting her being "allowed" to stay (and live) and others (including the Harrises) opposed. Hearst then was required to convince the opposed faction that her election to stay with the group was genuine and not a choice of convenience. [See Hearst, Every Secret Thing, supra. William Harris has admitted that he was one of the SLA members whose job it was to oppose Hearst's acceptance into the group. New Times, 05 March 1976.] Once the kidnappers had her extended in such a fashion, they were able to drop the other shoe, first by preparing for her, and having her read, a taped declaration that she had joined her kidnappers, then by requiring her to "prove her loyalty" via an associated criminal act (this process is thoroughly discussed in Fanon, supra). That act was the robbery of the Sunset Branch of the Hibernia Bank; according to William Wolfe, in a statement he made to occupants of the house at 1466 East 54th Street in Los Angeles shortly before he was killed by police, the SLA chose the Hibernia Bank because it was owned by the father of Hearst's best friend, Trish Tobin -- the SLA was trying to compromise Hearst in ways which would cut her off from her former life.

[N.B.:  That the so-called "Tania" tape of 03 April 1974 is a contrivance is supported by several evidentiary items, including Hearst's testimony, her book account, and a suppressed transcript, with carbons, of the taped screed typed by Emily Harris, Nancy Ling Perry, with obvious input from Donald DeFreeze -- DeFreeze's peculiar spelling errors may be found in the text, and the latents of Harris and Perry are all over the carbons. Psycholinguistic analysis of the message, performed by Dr. Margaret Singer but blocked from admission by Judge Carter, established that Hearst had not written the text (as she said she had at the beginning of it), and that the likely authoress was kidnapper Angela Atwood. Re the statement by Wolfe, this statement (an FBI "302") was suppressed by the Government from Hearst's trial and is revealed here publicly I think for the first time.]

Surveillance films taken of the robbery -- one of the plates may be found in Vin McClellan & Paul Avery, The Voices of Guns (New York: G.P.Putnam's Sons, 1977) -- are generally inconclusive -- Hearst was, after all, trying to convince the SLA she really was with them -- but there are two known giveaways re the actual state of affairs:  Early in the robbery, SLA member Mizmoon Soltysik is controlling a customer and two employees near the front windows. It was her job ultimately to leap the counter and collect the money. To do this, she has to run between Nancy Ling Perry and Patricia Hearst, then run between Patricia Hearst and Donald DeFreeze. Prior to her run, Perry has a machine gun trained generally in the direction of Hearst; when Soltysik begins her run to the counter, Perry turns the machine gun to the side to safely let her by, then again trains the gun toward Hearst. It was at this time that employees heard the command, "Nine-one," then, "Nine-three." [The Trial of Patty Hearst (San Francisco: Great Fidelity Press, 1976).]  As Hearst related in Every Secret Thing, supra, these numbers referred to the several SLA members, according to their seniority in the group -- DeFreeze, the leader, was "one," Perry was "three," and Hearst was "nine." The command served to transfer responsibility for watching Hearst from Perry to DeFreeze and back again so that Mizmoon would not be caught in a crossfire if the scheme went wrong.

It is, of course, a fundamental of gun safety not to point a loaded, operable weapon at anyone you do not intend to shoot -- by turning the gun away, when Mizmoon passed between Perry and Hearst, then turning it back toward Hearst, Perry gave the scam away.

The other giveaway was proof, kept out of Miss Hearst's trial, that William Harris had made her rifle inoperable. This was accomplished by chambering a round into the receiver, then slowly releasing the slide so that the ejector would not grip the neck of the chambered round. This prevents the action from closing and thereby prevents the tang from aligning with the sleeve (a safety feature which disengages the firing pin from the hammer). See, e.g., Paul Wahl, Carbine Handbook (New York: Arco Pub. Co., 1964). Harris, a former Marine who knew the M1 carbine well, made his admission about this in an interview he gave to the now defunct New Times magazine, which published same in the issue of 05 March 1976, during Patricia's federal trial.

Hearst's status with law enforcement changed radically after the Hibernia robbery, further locking her into the grips of her captors. At the center of this change was an innocent account under stress by a bank customer named James Norton, who had gone to the bank with his mother to get traveler's checks for a trip to Hawaii. Norton was walking to the checking line when the robbery started, but he failed to notice that Hearst, in the company of SLA member Camilla Hall, already was in the bank and in front of him. He turned to see another customer, Zigurd Berzins, followed by Soltysik, Perry, and DeFreeze, storm into the bank. Perry jumped at Norton, jabbed her machine gun toward his gut, and screamed, "Get your motherfucking head down, or I'll blow it off, God damn it!" [Pardon my French, but this statement is important evidence -- see the commercially available trial transcript, The Trial of Patty Hearst, supra.] Norton heard the threat (including the expletive re his mother), focused on the gun, and heard behind him, "I'm Tania -- Patricia Hearst." Later, when he spoke to the FBI in Honolulu, he attributed both the "I'm Tania" remark and the cursing to Hearst. But, Hearst was not the one who actively threatened or cursed him (Perry was).

[N.B.:  That Hearst and Hall already were in the bank was established by a statement from Dorris Abouav, a teller-trainee on duty that day who saw the two come in, "arm in arm," and almost hit the alarm right then. This statement, known as a "302," was suppressed from the trial, and the woman never testified. The claim by U.S. Atty. James Browning, Jr., that Hearst stormed into the bank in the company of Perry, Soltysik, and DeFreeze, both is physically unlikely (if not impossible) and is contradicted by the details of initial testimony given by the bank's elderly guard, Eden Shea. Shea at first told the truth, then (on inducement from Browning) changed his account to a lie, implicating Browning in subornation of perjury to boot. [Trial of Patty Hearst, supra (testimony of Eden Shea).] Because the Government's position re who entered the bank when, and who threatened whom, is all but physically impossible, the falsehood of Shea's corrected testimony is readily demonstrable; however, the Department of Justice has declined to prosecute Browning for the offense.]

Norton's account was sent back to San Francisco via FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C.; the supervisory agent in charge of the case at the time was Michael A. Morrow. Morrow was under obligation to give a copy of this report to the Attorney General -- a holdover policy from the days of J.Edgar Hoover and Bobby Kennedy. Atty. Gen. William Saxbe promptly leaked the results of the report, calling Hearst a "common criminal" who was "in it with the rest" of the SLA. In San Francisco, the mayor, Joseph Alioto, called for the police to "wipe out" the SLA, and in Sacramento, California Attorney General Evelle Younger independently declared that Hearst was expendable. [Re Younger, see Marilyn Baker with Sally Brompton, ''Exclusive! The Inside Story of Patricia Hearst and the SLA, supra,; see also San Francisco Chronicle'', 16 April 1974, re Alioto.]

Thus, the Government, at the height of the Watergate scandal, had the added burden of having to cover for the Attorney General, who by his widely reported remark was in the position of possibly entrapping Hearst into future offenses were his conclusion wrong. [See Browning v. State, 37 Ala.App. 137, 13 So.2d 54 (1943); see also United States v. Archer, 486 F.2d 670, 676-677 (CA2, 1973).] This potentially made Saxbe criminally responsible for these future crimes. [See 18 U.S.C. Sec. 2; Reigan v. People, 120 Colo. 472, 210 P.2d 991 (1949).]

Others, including Hearst's parents and then betrothed, Steven Weed, challenged the voluntarism of Hearst's participation in the robbery. Weed even went to the trouble of obtaining from Regis Debray in Mexico a letter from the aging revolutionary (and SLA hero) challenging the conversion's legitimacy. [This letter was publiushed in the San Francisco Examiner, after Hearst's announced conversion, but I don't have the exact date at hand.] The SLA answered by having Patricia make another tape -- the FBI's radio-engineering analysis captured the conditions of the tape's making -- in which she admitted her role in the robbery and denounced her family. [See Pearsall, The Symbionese Liberation Army, supra, for text.] Also during this time, Hearst was made to participate in incessant drills organized by William Harris, in which she was expected to shoot at imaginary police officers who were said to be coming for her. [Hearst, Every Secret Thing, supra.]

The situation was becoming paranoiacally dangerous.

In the bank-robbery admission tape (24 April 1974), Hearst had mouthed that additional, future SLA actions to prove her loyalty to the group would follow. [Pearsall, The Symbionese Liberation Army, supra.] What the Symbionese were planning was an adventure to Los Angeles -- where DeFreeze had lived and from where he had been sent to prison -- during which Hearst and the others would assassinate police officers. [Hearst, Every Secret Thing, supra, and trial testimony; see further George Jackson, Blood in My Eye (New York: Random House, 1972), in which the practice, as a recruiting tool, is mentioned with approval by Jackson's brother, Jonathan.]  This plot went awry when Hearst accompanied William and Emily Harris on a shopping trip, when Harris shoplifted some merchandise, and when an armed store clerk confronted him as he exited the store. Through the tracing of a traffic ticket seized from the SLA's vehicle, this led to discovery of the other SLA members and their deaths in a fiery shootout with the Los Angeles Police Department the following day. Hearst, with the Harrises, watched the carnage on television at a nearby motel; she became thoroughly convinced that the police, indeed, were plotting to kill her. [Hearst trial testimony.]

The final element in the conversion was contributed by the Los Angeles District Attorney, Joseph Busch, who organized a conspiracy to cover up the possible future death of Hearst. Busch and the L.A.P.D. had been subjected to massive criticism for their handling of the shootout, tempered only by the determination that Patricia was not among the dead. Busch determined that he needed to give himself and his officers some cover were there to be another shootout, since most certainly this time Patricia would die. Busch therefore decided to throw every charge he could at Hearst, to make her look extremely dangerous, thus justifying her death should she resist (which most certainly she would have done). [Existence of this conspiracy later was admitted to the FBI, by Asst. D.A. Stephen Trott, during the commutation investigation -- Trott was removed from the case for refusing to go along with it, and responsibility for prosecution of the L.A. charges was passed eventually to Sam Meyerson.]

Busch founded his charges upon the shoplifting incident. The store clerk who had accosted William Harris for shoplifting, a young man named Anthony Shepard, had not actually seen the crime but was suspicious, had armed himself with a pistol and followed Harris outside, had told him he would have to come back inside to be inspected, but never actually had placed Harris under arrest (required by California law). [See Trial of Patty Hearst, supra; also Robert B. Crim, Journal of Proceedings, People v. Harris & Harris (Los Angeles: Unpublished, 1976).]  Instead, he jumped Harris as the latter turned away and, while armed with a gun, began fistfighting him in the street. Harris also had a gun, as did his wife, Emily, so the confrontation did involve potential use of deadly force (any fight involving a concealed weapon ultimately becomes a fight for the weapon, as O.J. Simpson could tell you -- why carrying concealed weapons is illegal). Hearst saw the fight from across the street, grabbed a carbine (which happened to be an automatic weapon), and fired it away from the combattants and over their heads. [Evidenced by the bullet pattern left in the storefront, as well as portions of Shepard's own account.] This broke up the fight and allowed the Harrises to escape.

The store clerk then fired his gun at the fleeing van and missed, hitting instead the sides of buildings in a strip mall across the street.

Thus, both Hearst and Shepard had fired guns into storefronts in the course of the altercation -- Hearst intending to miss; Shepard intending not to. But, since Shepard had failed to place Harris under arrest, the legal balance of power (at least the "law in the law books") lay with Hearst (she was acting in defense of others while Shepard was committing a felonious assault). That, of course, is not what Busch wanted to hear, so the charges were filed in reverse: Hearst was charged with 18 felonies (including 5 counts of attempted murder); Shepard did not even have his gun seized and, instead, was lionized as a hero.

A totally invented 19th charge -- also for attempted murder -- was added against Hearst the next day, this for the Anita Alcala incident, in which someone, identified by Alcala as Hearst but not actually her, tried to knife the woman. [See Los Angeles Times, 22 May 1974, I think.] A supporting claim, totally untrue, that Hearst's presence in Alcala's apartment complex was confirmed by an FBI dog, was leaked to Marilyn Baker, who reported this in her book. [Baker with Brompton, ''Exclusive! The Inside Story of Patricia Hearst and the SLA, supra''.]

To be fair about this, Hearst at the time hardly was in all that innocent a frame of mind -- in a conversation she had with Tom Matthews later that evening [Every Secret Thing; trial testimony], she insisted that the police were plotting to kill her, and that the FBI was walking around with $50,000 (or $250,000) in a suitcase in an effort to find out where she was. [See Steven Weed with Scott Swanton, My Search for Patty Hearst (New York, Crown, 1976) -- Matthews related this information both to Weed and to FBI Spec. Agent Gerald Thiel when he first spoke to Thiel after the incident.] D.A. Busch considered such talk totally inconsistent with his need to protect the L.A.P.D. should they become involved in another shootout, and so he removed the remark from Matthews' official statement and left in only such parts as how Hearst hated her parents. Two years after the conversation, Hearst had forgotten these remarks, and the Government's records of Matthews' account were suppressed from all of the trials (though these statements hardly were secret since they were in Weed's book). The Matthews' statement was not discovered till long afterward, when I found it in a copy of the original teletype which Thiel sent to Morrow before Busch got his act together.

There is much more to the "brainwashing" story than I have related here, including a sequence of reinforcing events which ultimately led to the Crocker Carmichael bank robbery and the murder of Myrna Lee Opsahl [indications are that Emily Harris shot her deliberately, under cover of accident, to finally implicate Hearst in a murder (as recommended by Jackson and Fanon), but so far there is insufficient evidence to prove this in court]. However, the general outline should be clear enough, involving as it did a sustained effort to convince Hearst that her rescuers really were her enemies. The psychologics of the process probably should not be discussed in public in detail, but one thing can be said: The Hearst situation really is quite unique -- how likely is it that it could happen today, with Obama rather than Nixon in the White House and no national scandal accompanying him to challenge the Government's credibility? Also, the FBI has ended its practice of sharing "302" investigative reports with the Attorney General (sacrificing one kidnapping victim to the political exigencies of the day no doubt was embarrassment enough). Thus, a lot of the reinforcing external "proofs" -- support for the SLA's claim that the police were plotting to murder her -- simply would not happen were someone else to be forced into Patricia's situation. One may say she was "brainwashed," but the correct conclusion is the one made by a friend of the Harrises and inserted into a classified advertisement in the Los Angeles Free Press (10 May 1974). The Harrises, with Angela Atwood, had contacted this individual sometime before the SLA had pulled stakes and headed for L.A. (in the last taped recording from the group, delivered 07 June 1974, Harris claimed he had been part of an advance team in L.A. on 01 May 1974, and closing day for the ad was the 2d); they had admitted what was being done, and the associate refused to help them, saying their deliberate effort to destroy Hearst's personality, by turning her into a paranoid, psychoneurotic killer, was outrageous beyond belief.

Most people would agree with that.

Robert Brian Crim (talk) 04:44, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

I would generally agree with the last statement of judgement, and add that the Los Angles shoot out in May 17, 1974 further cemented Ms. Hearst's idea that she, too, would be killed in any involvement with the police. This is abundantly clear in her book "Every Secret Thing", if her words were an honest and clear indication of how she felt. It is a practical certainity that she, too, would have died in that shootout and subsequent fire. If she left, as some members tried and were shot dead, she would have been sho. If she stayed, the smoke or heat would have done the job. Of course, she did not know all or most of the particulars, but it is fair to say that it would have been portrayed and presented by the surviving SLA members in the worst possible way to deepen her alienation. Most of the active SLA was killed that day, including the leader, and there were no survivors. The idea in any POW camp is to survive, to hang on. To give up the survival instinct is to be the first to die. To be proud and stubborn is usually better, but not by much. All books on Gulag or POWs at the more severe camps mention this, for example John H. Noble or the prisoners working on the Burma Railway.

Pardons
Yes, Presidents can commute a sentence using their pardon power, that means they serve a lesser sentence but they are still considered 'guilty'. A full pardon means that the person is considered to have never committed the crime. --Gorgonzilla 22:38, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, Quiz question - how many convicted felons in US History have had a conviction for a very serious offence such as bank robbery commuted by one President and then pardoned by another. Is Justice blind?! Ms Hearst got this treatment because of who she was. Anyone else would have got 15-20 in the pen with no commutation or pardon.

Holden 27

Quiz question #2 - the sentence at the original trial with Judge _____ Federal Court _____?

How can a Judge 'sentence' to a Presidential pardon?

You can't be commuted until some verdict is rendered.

Feb. 4, 1974   SLA kidnaps newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst from her Berkeley apartment. The group demanded that her parents, newspaper executive Randolph Hearst and Catherine Hearst, give $70 in food to every poor person in California. April 1974   Hearst sends an audiotape to her parents saying she has decided to join the SLA and adopted the name "Tania." During a San Francisco bank robbery, captured on surveillance tape, Hearst wields a carbine. Sept. 18, 1975   Police searching for Soliah in two separate San Francisco apartments find Patricia Hearst instead. Police raid one apartment expecting to find Soliah but found Hearst, Soliah's brother Steven, and three other SLA members. Hearst is arrested for her involvement in an SLA bank robbery and is eventually convicted and sentenced to a seven-year prison term. 1979   Then-President Jimmy Carter commutes Hearst's sentence. January 2001   Then-President Bill Clinton pardons Hearst just before his term of office is about to expire. http://www.courttv.com/trials/soliah/chronology.html

Anyway you slice it - Randolph Hearst spent a truckload of money to clear his daughter.

BTW - U.S. District Court Judge Oliver J. Carter Opposing Bailey was U.S. Attorney James L. Browning Jr.


 * "At Bailey's urging, Patty took the Fifth Amendment 42 times when asked about her activities in the year before her capture. That badly damaged her credibility."


 * "The most important piece of circumstantial evidence against Patty, Browning claimed, was her reaction when William and Emily Harris got into trouble at the sporting-goods store. Patty was waiting alone in a van outside. The defendant testified that she lived in terror of the Harrises, yet she fired off a fusillade of shots to cover their flight."

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,918151-1,00.html

What did happen to those State charges?

ArmedCitizen 04:30, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Most of the questions raised here were covered by my explanation, supra. To address a few remaining matters:

Hearst's trial for the bank robbery began on 04 February 1976, exactly two years to the day after she was abducted. It was held before Oliver J. Carter, J., and ended on 20 March 1976 with a conviction. Carter ordered Hearst committed for a psychiatric evaluation pending final sentencing but died of a heart attack before the study was completed. Final sentencing was undertaken by William Orrick, J., who sentenced Hearst in November to seven years. During the summer of 1976, Hearst arranged to plead no contest to a revamped laundry list of state charges arising from the incident at the sporting-goods store -- Busch's claims of attempted murder were rejected by a grand jury, leaving only the ADW counts, some subsequent car-hijacking claims, and a (probably good) kidnapping charge brought for abducting one of the drivers. On recommendation of the assistant district attorney then in charge of the case, Sam Meyerson, she was given probation. I know; I was there (for Rolling Stone).

Robert Brian Crim (talk) 04:44, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Photo of the bank robbery would be good here
I added to Requested pictures a request for the surveillance camera photo of Patty Hearst robbing the bank. Hopefully it's available for us to use, and should be in this article and also be put over at Stockholm syndrome. Tempshill 23:05, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

This can be scanned from McClellan & Avery, Voices of Guns, supra -- the text of the book is copyrighted, but the photo was an exhibit at a public trial and is in the public domain.

Robert Brian Crim (talk) 04:44, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Roland
I can think of two alternate interpretations for the Warren Zevon lyric, both hinging on alternate meanings of 'bought it' and can't find any reference to what exactly was meant by Zevon, so perhaps these are worth considering.
 * 1. "heard the burst" as meaning heard a message, perhaps the effectiveness of violence, and "bought it" as believed.  Given the brainwashing/stockholm (an argument I don't wish to enter into) this seems plausible and somewhat relevant.


 * 2. A description of Roland shooting her, ie heard the burst as he fires, and bought it meaning died.  Not as plausible, and I can't really think of a reason Zevon would have a description of a fictional shooting of her in the song either, but it's *just* possible. (As opposed to 1, that I would call quite plausible.)

I don't know much about Hearst or Zevon, but it just struck me that perhaps the very literal interpretation might not be the right one for a song written by someone like him. Hatchetfish 07:09, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

This is blabber to me, since I am unfamiliar with Zevon's work.

Robert Brian Crim (talk) 04:44, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

VANDALISM
Reverted some vandalism. What drives people to do this? Ba ss B o n e ( my talk  ·  my contributions ) 20:23, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Um. Stockholm Syndrome? --Michael K. Smith 23:25, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

See explanation above.

Robert Brian Crim (talk) 04:44, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Heiress
Is she a millionaire? any details would improve the article. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 67.105.209.231 (talk) 04:05, 8 January 2007 (UTC).

Yes and no: William Randolph Hearst's money is tied up in the Hearst Corporation and the Hearst Foundation, to escape confiscatory income and estate taxation. Thus, technically, Patricia is not a millionairess. Like most direct heirs of WRH, she does have certain special privileges, and if she lives long enough, she'll actually get the money.

Robert Brian Crim (talk) 04:44, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

pop culture section
Maybe it'd be worth creating a separate article for that, since there's so many of them. Like List of popular culture references about Patty Hearst, or something like that. Just a suggestion... -Ebyabe 16:34, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I would be in favor of that, rather than just dumping info because someone thinks it clutters the article. Patty Hearst was no ordinary kidnap victim. She generated an incredible amount of interest and imitation. People who weren't around in the 1970s don't quite understand that. Wahkeenah 16:58, 15 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I'm in favor of moving the material elsewhere, too. The problem with that section is that it has taken on a life of it's own; it's pretty much infinitely expandable.  By definition, the material listed there is trivial: there's no reason why it needs to take up such a large proportion of the entry.--Galliaz 21:57, 15 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Whatever you guys decide please don't keep reverting each other. Discuss and come to an agreement. - ·:· Will Beback ·:·  22:43, 15 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I will set up a separate article, and then the original editor can have his way. Then I'll wait for some other yahoo to suggest merging them. Wahkeenah 22:48, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I started it and will get back to it. The user obsessed with deleting this section seems to have generated a lot of ill will in general. Whatever. Wahkeenah 23:07, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree that "Hearst Today," if detailed, warrants a separate article. FYI: The Hearst Kidnapping was voted the number-one news story in the country for 1974-1976; it was the most widely covered trial prior to O.J. Simpson.

Robert Brian Crim (talk) 04:44, 19 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Here we are 3 years later seemingly with the same problem. A veritable cruft-bucket of lyrics and trivial references. I request that any entries to be retained show multiple third-party references to establish notability for this article. Failing that they should be removed. --John (talk) 06:00, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
 * You need to read WP:NNC carefully. Only WP:V is needed, WP:N is for any particular factoid to have its own article.  WP:IPC would be another good read. Cheers, Jclemens (talk) 06:04, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I am already pretty familiar with those thanks. Satisfy WP:V and we can consider this matter closed. --John (talk) 06:54, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Five days from now I will remove anything on this section not accompanied by a reference to a reliable third-party source. If that leaves the section non-existent, I can live with that. --John (talk) 23:48, 9 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Done. Sorry I was a couple of days late. --John (talk) 21:07, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Infobox: Occupation
"Heiress" isn't an occupation. Also "occasional actress"? Most actors are occasional - POV term.Piperdown 15:14, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Patricia is a housewife; her husband, Bernard, is director of security for the Hearst Corporation. Patricia has been both an actress and an author. Perhaps "supporting actress" or even "bit-part actress" would be accurate?

Robert Brian Crim (talk) 04:44, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

What's in a Name?
Searching the web, I have found her name to be spelled both Hearst and Hurst. I don't really know which one is the right one, but it seems to me someone needs to get it straight.

Hearst is 100% correct. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.7.54.66 (talk) 23:38, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Patricia Campbell Hearst, b. 20 February 1954 at San Francisco, California. Her married name is Patricia Hearst Shaw. She never liked being called "Patty."

Robert Brian Crim (talk) 04:44, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Patti Smith song
This entry in the popular culture section was entirely too long, had original research, and POV wording. I think it's ok to have the song mentioned in the section, but this is a biography of Patty Hearst, not a piece on Patti Smith's song, and as such it's not appropriate to have a detailed discussion of the song here. The whole section is questionable, but I think it's ok if sourced and specific to Hearst, and streamlined. Tvoz / talk 05:47, 9 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I think today's edits to this are reasonable. Tvoz / talk 19:19, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Where is her view?
Significantly missing from the article is Patty's own view of the proceedings, after she had time to get over the incidents. She wrote an autobiography; what does it say about the kidnapping? Does she think she was brainwashed? What are her political views now? What does she think of the SLA?Mzk1 (talk) 09:46, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Removed Musical reference section
...because it is trivia (which is a guideline; not policy as stated in my edit summary). Frankly, it looked like a list of cruft which invariably makes articles look like crap. I see no reason for their inclusion. I also removed an external link with an objectionable amount of advertising per WP:ELNO. ⋙–Berean–Hunter—► 16:26, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

It is irresponsible and arbitrary to remove the musical references section. It is a valuable list of pop culture information which demonstrates the vast public interest in this case. Please restore this section.63.97.210.234 (talk) 20:41, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Pop culture sections usually belong in articles on pop culture subjects; in other places, those sections are trivia and detract from the quality of articles. If you wouldn't include musical references on a term paper about a subject then that is a good hint that you shouldn't do it here either. In this article's case, the list grew large and unwieldy taking up far too much weight in relation to the article size. ⋙–Berean–Hunter—►  21:01, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Unlike a term paper, an encyclopedia should be comprehensive and all-inclusive. The many artistic works sited in the musical reference section, the very "weight" you mention, as well as the growing bibliography illustrate the huge impact the Hearst case has had on American society, and is therefore relevant, not trivial. The fact that a compendium of related songs compiled over a long period can be deleted on the whim of one apparently undiscerning individual makes Wikipedia a joke. 63.97.210.234 (talk) 19:37, 27 January 2012 (UTC)