This week (November 16-22) in crime history – Serial killer
Ed Gein murdered his final victim (November 16, 1957); Washington DC sniper
John Muhammad was convicted (November 17, 2004); Socialite Barbara Baekeland
was murdered by her son (November 17, 1972); Murder and mass suicide at
Jonestown (November 18, 1978); Patty Hearst was released on bail following
conviction on bank robbery charges (November 19, 1976); Nazi war crimes trial
began in Nuremburg (November 20, 1945); Oliver North shredded documents related
to the Iran Contra scandal (November 21, 1986); President John F. Kennedy was
assassinated (November 22, 1963)
Highlighted Crime
Story of the Week -
On November 19, 1976, Patty Hearst, granddaughter of the
legendary publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst, was released on bail
pending the appeal of her conviction for participating in a 1974 San Francisco
bank robbery that was caught on camera.
Hearst’s ordeal began on the night of February 4, 1974,
when, as a 19-year-old college student, she was kidnapped from her Berkeley,
California, apartment by armed gunmen. The kidnappers, members of a political
terrorist group called the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), beat Hearst’s
fiancé and drove off with the heiress in the trunk of their car to a hideout
near San Francisco.
The kidnappers demanded the release of two SLA members in
prison for murder, a request that was denied, and called for Hearst’s family to
donate millions of dollars to feed the poor. The Hearst’s eventually
established a program called People in Need to distribute $2 million worth of
food, but negotiations with the SLA deteriorated after the group demanded
additional millions for PIN.
After being abducted, Patricia Hearst was locked in a
closet by her captors for two months and subjected to mental and physical
abuse. As a result, she later claimed, she was brainwashed into becoming an SLA
member, adopting the name Tania and renouncing her family.
In April 1974, the SLA robbed the Hibernia Bank in San
Francisco and surveillance videotape captured Hearst holding a gun. In May of
that same year, six SLA members, including the group’s leader Donald DeFreeze
(who called himself Field Marshall Cinque), were killed when their house went
up in flames during a shootout with police in Los Angeles that was broadcast on
live television. Hearst, along with several other SLA members not in the house
at the time, remained on the run for another year.
Law enforcement finally caught up with Hearst in
September 1975 in San Francisco, where she was arrested and charged with armed
robbery and use of a firearm during a felony, in connection with the Hibernia
Bank heist. When authorities asked her occupation, Hearst famously replied
“urban guerilla.” During her widely publicized trial, Hearst’s famous defense
attorney, F. Lee Bailey, claimed she’d been brainwashed and made to believe
she’d be killed if she didn’t comply with her captors and go along with their
criminal activities. However, in March 1976, a jury found her guilty of armed
robbery and she was sentenced to seven years in prison. In November of that
year she was released on bail while lawyers tried to appeal her conviction, but
the appeal was later denied and Hearst went back to prison.
Hearst spent almost two years behind bars before her
sentence was commuted by President Jimmy Carter in 1979. Shortly thereafter,
she married Bernard Shaw, her former bodyguard, and went on to raise a family
in Connecticut. She later became a writer and actress. In 2001, President Bill
Clinton granted Hearst a presidential pardon.
Check back every
Monday for new installment of “This Week in Crime History.”
Michael Thomas Barry is a columnist for www.crimemagazine.com and is the author
of seven nonfiction books that includes the soon to be released In the Company of Evil Thirty Years of California
Crime, 1950-1980 and the award winning Murder
and Mayhem 52 Crimes that Shocked early California, 1849-1949. Visit
Michael’s website www.michaelthomasbarry.com
for more information. His books can be purchased from Amazon through the following
links:
