Patty Hearst kidnapped 1974
On February 4, 1974, Patty Hearst, the 19-year-old daughter of
newspaper publisher Randolph Hearst, is kidnapped from her apartment in
Berkeley, California, by two black men and a white woman, all three of
whom are armed. Her fiance, Stephen Weed, was beaten and tied up along
with a neighbor who tried to help. Witnesses reported seeing a
struggling Hearst being carried away blindfolded, and she was put in the
trunk of a car. Neighbors who came out into the street were forced to
take cover after the kidnappers fired their guns to cover their escape.
Three days later, the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), a small U.S.
leftist group, announced in a letter to a Berkeley radio station that it
was holding Hearst as a “prisoner of war.” Four days later, the SLA
demanded that the Hearst family give $70 in foodstuffs to every needy
person from Santa Rosa to Los Angeles. This done, said the SLA,
negotiation would begin for the return of Patricia Hearst. Randolph
Hearst hesitantly gave away some $2 million worth of food. The SLA then
called this inadequate and asked for $6 million more. The Hearst
Corporation said it would donate the additional sum if the girl was
released unharmed.
In April, however, the situation changed dramatically when a
surveillance camera took a photo of Hearst participating in an armed
robbery of a San Francisco bank, and she was also spotted during a
robbery of a Los Angeles store. She later declared, in a tape sent to
the authorities, that she had joined the SLA of her own free will.
On May 17, Los Angeles police raided the SLA’s secret headquarters,
killing six of the group’s nine known members. Among the dead was the
SLA’s leader, Donald DeFreeze, an African American ex-convict who called
himself General Field Marshal Cinque. Patty Hearst and two other SLA
members wanted for the April bank robbery were not on the premises.
Finally, on September 18, 1975, after crisscrossing the country with
her captors–or conspirators–for more than a year, Hearst, or “Tania” as
she called herself, was captured in a San Francisco apartment and
arrested for armed robbery. Despite her claim that she had been
brainwashed by the SLA, she was convicted on March 20, 1976, and
sentenced to seven years in prison. She served 21 months before her
sentence was commuted by President Carter. After leaving prison, she
returned to a more routine existence and later married her bodyguard.
She was pardoned by President Clinton in January 2001.
(More Events on This Day in History)
-
American Revolution
- 1789 Washington unanimously elected by Electoral College to first and second terms
-
Automotive
- 1922 Ford buys Lincoln
-
Civil War
- 1861 Provisional Confederate Congress convenes
-
Cold War
- 1945 Yalta Conference foreshadows the Cold War
-
Crime
- 1974 The Symbionese Liberation Army abducts Patty Hearst
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Disaster
- 1976 Earthquake rocks Guatemala City
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General Interest
- 1789 First U.S. president elected
- 1861 States meet to form Confederacy
- 1969 PLO is founded
-
Hollywood
- 1938 Disney releases Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
-
Literary
- 1826 The Last of the Mohicans is published
-
Music
- 1983 Karen Carpenter dies of anorexia
-
Old West
- 1961 The Misfits released by United Artists
-
Presidential
- 1789 George Washington is elected president
-
Sports
- 1959 Football great Lawrence Taylor born
-
Vietnam War
- 1962 First U.S. helicopter is shot down in Vietnam.
- 1965 Rumors fly about U.S.-Soviet pressure on allies in Vietnam
- 1972 Last Thai contingent departs South Vietnam
-
World War I
- 1915 Germany declares war zone around British Isles
-
World War II
- 1945 The Yalta Conference commences
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