July: Donald DeFreeze, not long-ago escapee from Soledad prison, together with a group of Berkeley-area activists, organizes a revolutionary group, the Symbionese Liberation Army. With DeFreeze as the assumed leader their mission is to close prisons, end monogamy, and destroy “all other institutions that have made and sustained capitalism.”
August: The SLA establishes links with black inmate leaders in California prisons, most of whom are lifers with little or no experience of contemporary America. Clifford ‘Death Row’ Jefferson believes he is the nominal leader of the SLA. Another lifer thinks he is joining the ‘Lebanese Liberation Army.’
August 14: Nancy Ling Perry rents a safe house for the SLA in Concord, California.
November 6: They spend the months weapons training and commit their first terrorist act—gunning down an Oakland school superintendent and his deputy. The deputy ‘Bob’ Blackburn survives, the super, Marcus Foster, does not. The premise for the attack, amongst others, was Foster’s support for ID cards for students.
January 10: A traffic cop stops SLA members Russ Little and Joe Remiro. In their possession, weapons and leaflets. Just to be on the safe side Nancy Ling torches their safe house in Concord and the rest of the SLA go into hiding. Turns out Nancy is a rotten arsonist and the police find a fair amount of un-burnt evidence in the property.
February 4: A 19-year-old Berkeley student called Patricia Campbell Hearst, is kidnapped from her apartment where she lives with her financé and former math teacher, Steven Weed. Her father, Randy Hearst (son of William Randolph “Citizen Kane” Hearst) is chairman of the Hearst Corporation. Members of the SLA grab Patty. Weed is badly beaten and escapes by jumping over a backyard fence. Patty’s accommodation changes from 2603 Benvenue Ave, Apt 4, Berkeley…
to a closet in Daly City for the next few months.
February 12: In a recording delivered to the local listener-owned radio station, Patty says that she’s okay and Donald DeFreeze demands that food be distributed to the poor.
In response to ransom demands the Hearst family supports a free food program. Over the next few weeks, more communiques are received, five food distributions happen with varying success and the Vietnam War ends.
April 2: Following pressure from captive SLA members, the non-captive SLA members promise to release Patty within 72 hours and will be back with more info on how this will happen. The next day…
April 3: Patty, in another communique, roundly denounces her family and claims allegiance to the SLA. She will now take the guerrilla name Tania. Patty Hearst announced she had decided to ‘stay and fight’ with the SLA that had given her a gun to defend herself.
April 15: And so to the Bonnie & Clyde phase: The Hibernia Bank in Sunset is hit by a gun-wielding ‘Tania’ along with four of her co-terrorists in the SLA. The team hold up the registers to the tune of $10,000. This appears to make the FBI a little cross and a week or so later….
April 23: The FBI puts up wanted posters for Patty (Tania) Hearst, Donald (Cinque) DeFreeze, Patricia Soltysik, Nancy Ling Perry and Camilla Christine Hall.
April 24: In a kind of post-bank robbing critique, Patty releases a new tape to the world in which she makes it clear that she willingly took part in the operation, is not brainwashed at all, her family are pigs and her fiancé Steve is too, and a sexist one at that.
Patty calls off her planned June wedding to Steve Weed and ‘falls in love’ with SLA comrade Willie Wolfe.
May 2: In a major advance to the case, the FBI finds the Golden Gate apartment from which SLA have been running operations, including the infamous bank raid. As it turns out Don and Patty and the crew left a couple of days prior.
May 16: Due to an altercation between Bill Harris and a store clerk while his wife, Emily and he are out shop-lifting, Patty, parked in a van outside, decides they need some distracting gunfire, so obliges by unloading 27 bullets into the glass front of Mel’s Sporting Goods in Inglewood. Emily, Bill & Patty make their getaway but leave far too many clues in the abandoned vehicle, including a revolver registered to Emily and a parking ticket with an address on.
May 16: Needing a new vehicle, Patty notices a van for sale on a driveway in Lynwood. She asks the owner, 18-year-old high school student, Tom Matthews for a test drive. Minutes later Bill and Emily Harris bundle Tom into the back of his own truck and kidnap him and the car.
May 17: The day when the whole thing gets totally out of hand. The FBI armed with an awful lot of ammo find out where the SLA are holed up, tipped off by disgruntled neighbors. They lay siege. It ends in a firestorm with DeFreeze, Atwood, Wolfe, Camilla Hall, Nancy Ling and Soltysik dead in the crawl space under the house. DeFreeze shot himself in the temple, the other three died from smoke inhalation. Patty and the Harris’s watched as this all unfolded on TV and they plan to take flight from California.
June 7: In her final, seventh, communique of the year Patty leaves a eulogy for the fallen SLA members, professes her love for Willie Wolfe and that the SLA will persevere.
June 1974: Patty flees via car to Pennsylvania with the Institute of Sports and Society leader Jack Scott, who poses as her husband and his parents as her in laws.
Actually November 1974 Randy, Patty’s dad, cancels his offer of $50,000 offered for her release, as against the current $2 million asked for.
On January 2nd, 1975, the deadline for the ransom to be paid, expires. Patty is still ‘kidnapped’.
June 27, 1975: Russell Little and Joe Remiro were sentenced to life imprisonment for murder and the attempted murder of Foster's assistant.
April 21 , 1975: Four SLA members rob the Crocker National Bank in Carmichael outside Sacramento. A customer, Myrna Opsahl, is killed after Emily Harris’s gun accidentally goes off. Patty drives a getaway vehicle.
September 18: Now back in San Francisco, after spotting Bill and Emily out jogging together, the FBI finally closes its net around the four. Patty is arrested in an apartment with Wendy, Bill and Emily are arrested as well.
Sept 24, 1976: Patty is sentenced to seven years in Federal prison for armed bank robbery. She later pleads no contest in Los Angeles Tom Matthews kidnapping case. Prosecutor persuades judge to issue a suspended sentence because she has already been convicted in San Francisco.
Sept 29 1976: Bill and Emily Harris plead guilty to kidnapping Hearst and are sentenced to eight years. They would serve five.
Feb 1, 1979: Patty is released from federal prison after President Jimmy Carter commutes Hearst's sentence to the 22 months served. She is freed eight months before she was eligible for parole. Her release was under stringent conditions, and she remained on probation for the state sentence on the sporting goods store plea.
January 20 1979: Bill Clinton pardons Patty Hearst. He ignores a plea from U.S. Attorney Robert Mueller III opposing the pardon: “The attitude of Hearst has always been that she is a person above the law and that, based on her wealth and social position, she is not accountable for her conduct, despite the jury’s verdict.”
Image from the imagination of AI any likeness or unlikeness to real people is in your mind.
2015 & 2017: Patty’s dogs win at the Wesminster Dog Show. Pictured here is Rocket, the 2015 winner. French bulldogs Tuggy and Rubi followed on from the shih-tzu’s success, in 2017.