- 1974: Patty Hearst is kidnapped by the SLA
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Patricia Campbell Hearst (born February 20, 1954) is the granddaughter of American publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst, who became internationally known for events following her 1974 kidnapping and physical violation by a domestic American terrorist group known as the Symbionese Liberation Army. Hearst was found nineteen months after being abducted, by which time she was a fugitive wanted for serious crimes. She was held in custody, despite speculation that her family's resources would prevent her from spending time in jail. At her trial, the prosecution suggested that she had joined the Symbionese Liberation Army of her own volition. Hearst said she had been raped and threatened with death. She was found guilty of bank robbery. Hearst's sentence was commuted by President Jimmy Carter and she was later pardoned by President Bill Clinton.
Kidnapping
On February 4, 1974, 19-year-old Hearst was kidnapped from her Berkeley, California, apartment. She was beaten and lost consciousness during the abduction. Shots were fired from a machine gun during the incident. An urban guerrilla group called the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) claimed responsibility for the abduction.
SLA
The SLA was formed through contacts made by a study group, coordinated by a University of California, Berkeley professor. Its purpose was the tutelage of black inmates, and over time the ethos became increasingly radicalized. Eventually, black convicts came to be viewed as heroic political prisoners, victimized by a racist American society.
On March 5, 1973, Donald DeFreeze escaped from prison. Radical penal activists and future SLA members Russell Little and William Wolfe took DeFreeze to Patricia Soltysik's house. The SLA was led by DeFreeze, who, after a prison acquaintance named Wheeler left, was the only African American in the group. By the time the group became active, most of the members of the tiny group were women, some of whom have, like Soltysik and her roommate Nancy Ling Perry, been described as in lesbian relationships. The members included William and Emily Harris and Angela Atwood.
DeFreeze was suspected by many of being a government provocateur, but his race and prison time gave him unquestioned authority in the SLA. He also had sexual dominion over women in the group. They acquired resources by robbing homes in the Bay Area. The first proposed operation, assassinating the head of the state penitentiaries, was cancelled because of possible repercussions for inmates; instead, Marcus Foster, a black educator regarded by the SLA as a fascist who had brought police onto school campuses, was targeted and killed.
DeFreeze's estimation of the military strength of the then dozen-strong SLA group was hyperbolic, and he gave himself a concomitantly grandiose title of 'field marshal'. Soltysik is believed to have created much of the SLA ideological material, which stated the organization was opposed to "racism, sexism, agism [sic], fascism, individualism, competitiveness, possessiveness and all other institutions that have made or sustained capitalism".
Motives
Hearst's kidnapping was partly opportunistic as she lived close to the SLA hideout. According to testimony, the main intention was to leverage the Hearst family's political influence to free two SLA members arrested for the killing of Oakland's first black superintendent, Marcus Foster. Faced with the failure to free the imprisoned men, the SLA demanded that the captive's family distribute $70 worth of food to every needy Californian – an operation that would cost an estimated $400 million. In response, Hearst's father took out a loan and arranged the immediate donation of $2 million worth of food to the poor of the Bay Area. The distribution descended into chaos and the SLA refused to release Hearst.
Hearst's account
According to Hearst's later testimony, she was in a closet blindfolded with her hands tied for a week, during which time DeFreeze repeatedly threatened her with death.[10] She was let out for meals and, blindfolded, began to join in the political discussions; she was given a flashlight and SLA political tracts to learn. Hearst was confined in the closet for weeks, after which she says, "DeFreeze told me that the war council had decided or was thinking about killing me or me staying with them, and that I better start thinking about that as a possibility." Hearst said "I accommodated my thoughts to coincide with theirs." Upon being asked for her decision, Hearst said she wanted to stay and fight with the SLA, and the blindfold was removed, allowing her to see her captors for the first time. After this she was given lessons on her duties, especially weapons drills, every day. Angela Atwood told Hearst that the others thought she should know what sexual freedom was like in the unit; she was then raped by William "Willie" Wolfe, and later by DeFreeze.
Announcement
On April 3, 1974, two months after she was abducted, Hearst announced on an audiotape that she had joined the SLA and assumed the name "Tania"(inspired by the nom de guerre of Haydée Tamara Bunke Bider, Che Guevara's comrade).
Criminal activity as avowed SLA member
Bank robbery
On April 15, 1974, she was recorded on surveillance video wielding an M1 carbine while robbing the Sunset District branch of the Hibernia Bank at 1450 Noriega Street in San Francisco. Hearst announced herself under her pseudonym of Tania. Two men who entered the bank while the robbery was occurring were shot and wounded. According to later testimony at her trial, a witness thought Hearst had been several paces behind the others when running to the getaway car.
Within days, United States Attorney General William B. Saxbe said Hearst was a "common criminal" and "not a reluctant participant" in the bank robbery. James L. Browning Jr. said that all participation in the robbery may have been voluntary, contradicting an earlier comment of his in which he said that Hearst may have been coerced into taking part. The FBI agent heading the investigation had said SLA members were photographed pointing guns at Hearst during the robbery. A grand jury indicted her for the robbery in June 1974.
Rescue of Harris
On May 16, 1974, a store manager at Mel's Sporting Goods in Inglewood, California, observed a minor spur-of-the-moment theft by William Harris who had been shopping with Emily Harris, while Hearst waited across the road in a van. Accompanied by a female employee, the manager followed Harris out and confronted him. During the ensuing scuffle one of Harris' wrists was restrained, and his pistol fell out of his waistband. Hearst, who had been taught to use guns by her father, discharged the entire magazine of an automatic carbine into the overhead storefront, causing the manager to dive behind a lightpost. When he tried to shoot back with the pistol, Hearst, now firing single shots with another weapon, brought her fire closer, blasting fragments around him.
Fugitive
Escaping from the area, Hearst and the Harrises hijacked two cars, abducting the owners. One, a young man, found Hearst so personable that he was reluctant to report the incident. At the trial he testified to her having discussed the effectiveness of cyanide-tipped bullets, and repeatedly asking if he was okay. Police had surrounded their main base by the time they made their way back and on May 17, 1974, the six SLA members inside died in a gunfight. It was at first thought that Hearst had also perished. Subsequently her father publicly worried that she might be killed in revenge; to allay his fears, the abduction victim gave police a more complete account and a warrant was issued for Hearst's arrest for several felonies, including two counts of kidnapping.
According to one account, Hearst and the Harrises (now the only survivors of the SLA unit that abducted her) bought a car blocks away while the siege was going on, but it broke down when they stopped in an African-American area, leaving them with a total of $50. They walked a few hundred yards from the car and hid in a crawlspace under a residential building. When a late night party started in the room above, Hearst readied her weapon saying "the pigs" were closing in on them; in whispers, the Harrises begged her to calm down. They spent the next two weeks in San Francisco flophouses disguised as derelicts.
With a few dollars left, Emily Harris was sent to a Berkeley rally called to commemorate the deaths of Angela Atwood and other founding members of the SLA who'd perished during the police siege. Harris recognised Atwood's acquaintance Kathy Soliah among the radicals, whom she'd known from civil rights pressure groups as well as a time they'd quit a waitressing job in protest of uniforms they considered demeaning. Soliah introduced the three fugitives to Jack Scott, a radical athletics coach who had been asking for an interview with the SLA. Scott agreed to provide help and money. During a car ride to a rural hideout, Scott claimed Hearst was incredulous when an offer to take her "anywhere" was made. According to Scott's account, which Hearst later disputed, she had said "I want to go where my friends are going". Scott was never charged for facilitating a revival of the SLA that eventually resulted in murder.
Involvement in later SLA crimes
Hearst helped make improvised explosive devices, one of which failed to detonate, in two unsuccessful attempts to kill policemen during August 1975. Marked money found in the apartment when she was arrested linked Hearst to the SLA armed robbery of Crocker National Bank in Carmichael, California. She was the getaway car driver for the robbery in which Myrna Opsahl, who was at the bank making a deposit, was shot dead by a masked Emily Harris, thereby creating a potential for felony murder charges against Hearst, and making her a possible witness against Harris for a capital offense.
Legal consequences
On September 18, 1975, Hearst was arrested in a San Francisco apartment with Wendy Yoshimura, another SLA member, by San Francisco Police Inspector Timothy F. Casey and FBI Special Agent Thomas J. Padden. While being booked into jail, she listed her occupation as "Urban Guerilla" and asked her attorney to relay the following message: "Tell everybody that I'm smiling, that I feel free and strong and I send my greetings and love to all the sisters and brothers out there."
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patty_Hearst)
Capture and conviction
Patricia Hearst, after a long and highly publicized search, was captured on September 18, 1975, along with the Harrises, Steven Soliah, and Yoshimura, all rounded up in San Francisco safe houses. In Hearst's arrest affidavit she claimed that SLA members had used LSD to drug her and had forced her to take part in the bank raid. She was convicted of the Hibernia Bank robbery and sentenced to seven years in prison. US President Jimmy Carter commuted the sentence to time served after she had been in prison for 21 months. She was pardoned by President Bill Clinton. The Harrises were convicted for their part in the Hearst kidnapping and spent eight years in prison.
On February 26, 1976, a Los Angeles county grand jury indicted Kathleen Ann Soliah on explosives and conspiracy charges, accusing her of planting pipe bombs under two LAPD squad cars in August 1975, with the intent to kill police officers in retribution for the SLA member deaths in the May 17th shootout. The devices did not detonate.
Soliah went on the run, moving to Minnesota, and living a quiet upper middle class life under the alias Sara Jane Olson; she married a doctor and had three daughters, while managing to remain a fugitive for over 23 years.
The FBI caught up with and arrested Soliah/Olson, in 1999 after a tip was received by the television show America's Most Wanted, which had twice aired her profile. In 2001, she pleaded guilty to possession of explosives with the intent to murder and was sentenced to two consecutive terms of ten years to life, although she had been told as part of a plea bargain that she would serve no more than eight years. She attempted to change her plea, claiming to the judge that she pleaded guilty only because she believed she could not receive a fair trial for bombing charges considering public sentiment after the 9-11 terrorist attacks. She maintained her innocence, insisting that she personally had had nothing to do with making, possessing or placement of the pipe bombs. The judge refused her request.
The Opsahl murder/Crocker bank robbery cold case was finally pursued due to new evidence brought forth through the efforts of the Los Angeles deputy district attorneys, who had prosecuted Olson. On January 16, 2002, first-degree murder charges for the killing of Myrna Opsahl were filed against Sara Jane Olson, Emily Harris, William Harris, Michael Bortin, and James Kilgore. All were living "above ground" and were immediately arrested except for Kilgore, who remained at large for nearly another year, in South Africa.
On November 7, 2002, Olson, the Harrises, and Bortin pleaded guilty to reduced second-degree murder charges. Emily Harris, now known as Emily Montague, admitted to being the one holding the murder weapon but said that the shotgun had gone off accidentally. Hearst had claimed that Montague had dismissed the murder at the time saying, "She was a bourgeois pig anyway. Her husband is a doctor." In court, Montague denied having said this and added, "I do not want [the Opsahl family] to believe that we ever considered her life insignificant."
Sentences were handed down on February 14, 2003, in Sacramento, California, for all four defendants in the Opsahl murder case. Montague was sentenced to eight years for the murder (2nd degree). Her former husband, William Harris, was sentenced to seven years, and Bortin to six years. Olson was sentenced to six years, adding two consecutively to the 14-year sentence she had already received. All sentences were the maximum allowed under their plea bargains.
On November 8, 2002, James Kilgore, who had been a fugitive since 1975, was arrested in South Africa and extradited to the United States to face federal explosives and passport fraud charges. Prosecutors alleged that a pipe bomb had been found in Kilgore's apartment in 1975 and that he had obtained a passport under a false name. He pleaded guilty to the charges in 2003.
Sara Jane Olson was expecting to receive a five-year, four-month sentence, but "in stiffening Olson's sentence ..., the prison board turned to a seldom-used section of state law, allowing it to recalculate sentences for old crimes in light of new, tougher sentencing guidelines." Olson was sentenced to 14 years— later reduced to 13 years—plus six years for her role in the Opsahl killing. Hearst had immunity because she was a state's witness, but as there was no trial, she never testified.
On April 26, 2004, Kilgore was sentenced to 54 months in prison for the explosives and passport fraud charges. He was the last remaining SLA member to face federal prosecution.
After serving six years of the prison sentence, Sarah Jane Olson was released on parole and reunited with her family in California on March 17, 2008. But after a discovery that her release was premature because of a clerical error, an arrest warrant was issued. She was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport and notified that her right to travel out of state had been rescinded. She was returned to prison.
On March 17, 2009, Sarah Olsen was released, this time correctly, after serving seven years of her 14-year sentence. She was to check in with her parole officer in Los Angeles where it would be determined if she would be allowed to serve her parole in St. Paul, Minnesota, with her husband and three daughters. Several officials, including the Governor of Minnesota, urged that she serve her parole in California, but she was finally allowed to serve her parole in Minnesota.
On May 10, 2009, James Kilgore was released from prison in California.
Founding member Joseph Remiro remains incarcerated as of 2016 serving a life sentence for the murder of Marcus Foster. He is the only SLA member still in prison. He is up for parole in 2019.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbionese_Liberation_Army#Capture_and_conviction)
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Edited by Learyfan (02/04/20 06:26 AM)
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