[Concluded from PART ONE. Click here to view.]
Was she going to be killed? asked the nineteen-year-old Patty Hearst.
Yes, it might be necessary for her to die. But even if the SLA did not kill her, the authorities surely would. The FBI was conducting house-to-house searches. Once they found the hideout, they would kill all the inhabitants and blame Patty's death on the revolutionaries.
Over and over. The programming took hold.
In one of the communiques sent to her parents, Patty is heard to say:
I no longer fear the SLA because they are not the ones who want me to die. The SLA wants to feed the people and assure safety and justice for the two men in San Quentin. I realize now that it's the FBI who wants to murder me.
Ms. Hearst later argued that she was forced to repeat the message and did not truly believe in the content.
It was shortly after the release of this message that Cinque offered to allow Patty to join his organization. With the earlier communiques, the SLA had laid the groundwork for convincing the public their hostage was on the road to conversion. Now Cinque told the heiress she could stay and join, or she could simply go home. Hearst later stated that she believed that if she had chosen to go home, she would have been murdered. And so she told the Field Marshall she wanted to join. In turn, he gave her the name Tania.
On April 15, 1974, something occurred which would become a key determinant in the way the public viewed the criminal justice system. It was on that day that the SLA robbed the Hibernia Bank in the Sunset District of San Francisco at Noriega and 22nd Avenue. The robbery was planned to provide funds to support the SLA's revolution. The robbery was also intended to let the media see Tania in the role of a committed urban guerrilla. While the bandits made off with $10,660, Patty Hearst was caught on tape holding a carbine on bank employees and customers.
Evelle Younger had become California's Attorney General based on his office's successful prosecution of the Manson Family back when he had been the Los Angeles District Attorney. His opinion was ominous: "The moment of truth has long since passed for Patricia Hearst."
The public perception began to be formed.
In May 1974, Patty Hearst was waiting in a van outside Mel's Sporting Goods while Bill and Emily Harris went inside to shop. Bill chose to shoplift and was just leaving the store when an employee wrestled him to the ground. In response, Hearst aimed a submachine gun out the van's window and fired thirty rounds into the air. Emptying that weapon, she then fired three more shots from her own carbine. Asked by authorities to explain why she did this, she thoughtfully replied:
I acted instinctively, because I had been trained and drilled to do just that, to react to a situation without thinking, just as soldiers are trained and rilled to obey an order under fire instinctively, without questioning it. The penalty for failure in combat was death.
In the process of making their escape, the trio stole two cars and kidnapped two people who were released within a few days.
Patty and the Harrises were holed up in an Anaheim hotel when the TV news telecast the first reports: The police found the SLA safe house, fired over 3,500 shots into the building, lobbed in tear gas, and the hideout caught fire. Except for the three frightened folks watching TV in Anaheim, the entire SLA was dead.
Sportswriter Jack Scott contacted the survivors. He told them he wanted to write a sympathetic account of the SLA. Scott, his parents and his wife transported the group east where the fugitives would be somewhat less recognizable. Along with Revolutionary Army member Wendy Yoshimura, they lived in various farm houses in New York and Pennsylvania.
The group made it back to California by February 1975, settling in Sacramento with new friends Mike Bortin, Jim Kilgore, Steven Soliah and Steven's sister Kathy. Their first target was the Guild S&L Association, where they netted $3,700. Next they assaulted the Crocker National Bank in Carmichael. It was there that Emily Harris shot and killed a customer named Myrna Lee Opshal. Becoming more confident, the group turned to setting off car bombs beneath police cars. In September, the group separated. Patty and Wendy move in together in the Outer Mission District and that was exactly where the FBI arrested them, an hour after nabbing the Harrises.
F. Lee Bailey and Al Johnson defended Hearst against charges of armed robbery and aggravated assault. Better than half the people surveyed in California at the time of Patty's arrest believed she had staged her own kidnapping. As Hearst herself would later ask, "How would it appear to the voters if the Ford administration, which had pardoned Richard Nixon, had chosen not to prosecute me?" Bailey and Johnson tried to persuade the jury that their client had been acting under duress, which, they explained, is the wrongful compulsion that induces a person to act against his own will. The jury was not persuaded and found her guilty of the Hibernia robbery. Originally sentenced to twenty-five years in prison, the punishment was later reduced to seven years. She subsequently was given five years probation for pleading "no contest" on the charges stemming from the Mel's Sporting Goods shoot-out. Two appeals on the Hibernia sentence were denied. On May 15, 1978, she began serving time in Pleasanton. Her sentence was commuted by President Carter and she left prison on February 1, 1979.
The key question avoided by the media was one of personal responsibility under efforts of conditioning. Whether or not Hearst was the ultimate variable in a Stanley Milgram experiment, it is interesting to ponder how the public had been prepared for her reemergence. Some argued from the outset that she would go free because of her wealth. Others said her fame and fortune worked against her. After all, would the FBI have devoted eighteen months pursuing a less significant person for committing similar crimes?
Perhaps the ironic aspect of the Hearst saga is that today few people read, write or concern themselves with her plight. And yet the big question remains: When a microcosmic society conspires to alter a person's thinking, what is the responsibility of that individual for their own behavior?
Was she going to be killed? asked the nineteen-year-old Patty Hearst.
Yes, it might be necessary for her to die. But even if the SLA did not kill her, the authorities surely would. The FBI was conducting house-to-house searches. Once they found the hideout, they would kill all the inhabitants and blame Patty's death on the revolutionaries.
Over and over. The programming took hold.
In one of the communiques sent to her parents, Patty is heard to say:
I no longer fear the SLA because they are not the ones who want me to die. The SLA wants to feed the people and assure safety and justice for the two men in San Quentin. I realize now that it's the FBI who wants to murder me.
Ms. Hearst later argued that she was forced to repeat the message and did not truly believe in the content.
It was shortly after the release of this message that Cinque offered to allow Patty to join his organization. With the earlier communiques, the SLA had laid the groundwork for convincing the public their hostage was on the road to conversion. Now Cinque told the heiress she could stay and join, or she could simply go home. Hearst later stated that she believed that if she had chosen to go home, she would have been murdered. And so she told the Field Marshall she wanted to join. In turn, he gave her the name Tania.
The public perception began to be formed.
In May 1974, Patty Hearst was waiting in a van outside Mel's Sporting Goods while Bill and Emily Harris went inside to shop. Bill chose to shoplift and was just leaving the store when an employee wrestled him to the ground. In response, Hearst aimed a submachine gun out the van's window and fired thirty rounds into the air. Emptying that weapon, she then fired three more shots from her own carbine. Asked by authorities to explain why she did this, she thoughtfully replied:
I acted instinctively, because I had been trained and drilled to do just that, to react to a situation without thinking, just as soldiers are trained and rilled to obey an order under fire instinctively, without questioning it. The penalty for failure in combat was death.
In the process of making their escape, the trio stole two cars and kidnapped two people who were released within a few days.
Patty and the Harrises were holed up in an Anaheim hotel when the TV news telecast the first reports: The police found the SLA safe house, fired over 3,500 shots into the building, lobbed in tear gas, and the hideout caught fire. Except for the three frightened folks watching TV in Anaheim, the entire SLA was dead.
The group made it back to California by February 1975, settling in Sacramento with new friends Mike Bortin, Jim Kilgore, Steven Soliah and Steven's sister Kathy. Their first target was the Guild S&L Association, where they netted $3,700. Next they assaulted the Crocker National Bank in Carmichael. It was there that Emily Harris shot and killed a customer named Myrna Lee Opshal. Becoming more confident, the group turned to setting off car bombs beneath police cars. In September, the group separated. Patty and Wendy move in together in the Outer Mission District and that was exactly where the FBI arrested them, an hour after nabbing the Harrises.
Wendy Yoshimura
The key question avoided by the media was one of personal responsibility under efforts of conditioning. Whether or not Hearst was the ultimate variable in a Stanley Milgram experiment, it is interesting to ponder how the public had been prepared for her reemergence. Some argued from the outset that she would go free because of her wealth. Others said her fame and fortune worked against her. After all, would the FBI have devoted eighteen months pursuing a less significant person for committing similar crimes?
Perhaps the ironic aspect of the Hearst saga is that today few people read, write or concern themselves with her plight. And yet the big question remains: When a microcosmic society conspires to alter a person's thinking, what is the responsibility of that individual for their own behavior?
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