Patty Hearst: Brainwashed or Bandit?

Published Nov 24, 2020, 10:00 AM

Patty Hearst was a young heiress living a quiet life studying art history at college when one Monday evening her home was invaded, she was kidnapped, and her life took a totally unforeseen turn that she would have trouble explaining for years to come.

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Welcome to Stuff you should Know, a production of five Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles w Chuck Bryan over there, and uh, this is stuff you should know. Just the two of us, Me and Chuck are gonna make it if we try, just the two of us, he and I. Man, Now, I wish we were doing a show on Bill Withers. Is that a Bill Withers song? What I mean? I I guess I can hear his voice now that you say that, But that's not the song I think of when I think Bill Withers. You know, what do you think on? Lean On Me? No? The theme song to Annie? Oh? Sure, song will come out tomorrow. Yeah, that's the one, right, good song. I love that Antie soundtrack. It's so good man. Hey, have I mentioned in Nola Holmes? Uh? You have? Well yet I haven't seen it yet, So good dude. Did you see the Challenger documentary? I have not seen that and it's hard to watch. Yeah. I've been watching horror movies because this October is kind of the month where I get it pass to do that on my own October more like sho October. You know what I mean, right? I finally watched the Rob Zombie movie. Never seen any of those before. I started at the beginning and did House of a Thousand Corpses. What do you think? It was good? It was just exactly what I thought it would be, which is sort of a Texas Chainsaw masaker like story. But you could you could feel his enthusiasm for filmmaking. I liked it for sure. Um, when's the last time you saw the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre? I saw it last year for the very first time. Believe it or not. Oh my, I think we talked about that. Fine. Scared the pants off of me. And it's so good if it's weird, because it keeps getting better. I remember being a teenager and the first time I saw and I was like, why what is this? And then the next time I thought, I was like, oh, this is actually pretty good, and then the last time I saw it, I was like, I just want to sit around and watch this all the time. Stone cold Classic. So, speaking of stone cold classics, I got a stone Cold Classic, which a what true crime question case for you, Chuck? What's the question? The question is? This? Was Petty Hurst a brainwashed hostage who carried out violent crimes for fear of her life. Or was she a spoiled rich kid who was basically who turned thrilled seeker to the nth degree. You know what, I don't know. I mean part of me thinks that she did flip and was radicalized. But I don't know, man. I mean, I don't think it's super clear either way. No, and I I'm in the same boat as you. I feel like I lean a little more towards radicalized. And there's a couple of things that it's just like I can't get past that. Yeah, I think I know one of them. But I think I think that she became radicalized initially out of fear for her life. Um. And it's really hard to discount what happened to her initially that got her absolutely And I think Jimmy Carter has the most sensible take on the whole thing. So we'll get into all this For those of you who don't know what we're talking about. We're talking about Patty Hurst. And Patty Hurst was the granddaughter of William Randolph Hurst, whose name might sound familiar. Um, he was the publishing magnate I think a radio guy too write I think it was yeah radio, but you know, very much well known for his newspaper, his string of newspapers, and um, he was a bit of a politico, a kingmaker, incredibly mind bogglingly wealthy. He was the model for Citizen Kane, I believe right. Um. And he had basically established this media empire um in the first half of the twentieth century. And he had a son. He had a son named Randy Hurst, no joke, Randall Hurst, not William Randolph her sorry, Randolph Hurst. And they called him Randy. And Randy had a daughter. He was brought up like a very wealthy guy. But um, he was also brought up to take over the family business. And he had by nineteen fifty four, I think when a daughter arrived to Randy and his wife, UM, Catherine, and they named their kid Patty or Patricia Hurst. That's right, Patricia Campbell. And she was what you would think, she was born into an heiress. She was born a rich kid. Uh. It's funny to think about, like in today's terms, UM, plenty of people to pick from, but like if you could imagine Paris Hilton, uh robbing a bank with a machine gun, right, that's that's kind of a good analog to who Patricia Hurst was back then. Yeah, that's that's actually really good. Although you you you could say she's quite quite a bit more low key, or she was at the time. Like by the time she was nineteen, she was living in San Francisco or the Bay Area, I should say, attending you see, Berkeley, So I guess she was living in Berkeley, because that's not necessarily that she wasn't exactly Paris Hilton, if if we're being honest, But she was just like but as far as the famous heiress in the United States, yeah, so yeah, yeah, but also living this quiet life. She was nineteen, she was engaged to a guy named Stephen weed Um who was like a Catholic high school teacher. I think he was twenty six or something and um studying art history and going to school and just kind of living life, you know. But yeah, she really she was right, especially in Berkeley in the stee so um she she but she was like mind boggling wealth and she was going to inherit all this and she was famous for being an heiress, right, and so just a few days before her twentieth birthday, on February fourth, I think right, mm hm, there was a knock on her door, like nine pm. It was a Monday night, and I actually I don't even know if they knocked or else, if they just came bursting in, but UM three people who turned out to be members of what very few people had heard of at the time, but who had become very famous, the Symbionese Liberation Army. UM burst through their door, beat up Stephen Weed, Catholic High School UH teacher, and UM dragged Patty Hurst out of her apartment to their car, where they shot off a few shots and drove off into the night with Patty Hurst kidnapped as hostage. Yeah, they threw in the trunk bound and she was gone. And as far as the s l A goes, like you said, they were not very well known at the time. They were pretty new UM in an era of sort of I'm not gonna say they were just uh American terrorist organizations all over the place of the United States. But it was a time in our country where there were a lot of bombings, a lot. And yeah, I said about a thousand a Year's a lot. Yeah, that's a lot of compared to now where we don't have a lot of bombings. Uh. And we should thank Julia Layton for helping us put this together. But um, no one had heard of them much because, like I said, they were new. They formed a couple of months before her abduction. And it wasn't like there were you know, a hundred of these people. They were you know, it kind of varied from you know, depending on like I guess who had the good drugs at the time, but there were never more than a dozen. Um, it seems like it varied between like seven and twelve at a time. And there their ideology was basically us like anti capitalist. Um we that's kind of just it. It wasn't super inspiring. It wasn't well thought out. It was just, hey, we hate we hate the rich. It was pretty ho hume. Um And and yeah, not very inspiring. And I think that's why they never had that many members. But they were they were extremely militant. They were very paranoid, and they were willing to carry out violence. Like they didn't have many qualms with violence. They used to practice with weapons and guns and um, they had a lot of guns, a lot of ammunition. They knew how to make bombs. They weren't messing around in that sense. They were just kind of dullards when it came to political ideology. They were just following in everybody else's wake. But um, interestingly enough, chuck the whole. The whole. Simbionese Liberation Armies started out of a prison tutoring program. We're a bunch of white students from Berkeley went and tutored inmates on things like black history and Paul political science, things like that. Um. And that's where the s l A originally grew from. When one of those inmates, a guy named Donald de Freeze, escaped from prison and showed up in San Francisco and said, let's get this thing started. Yeah, he was. They all adopted different names when they joined the s l A. His name was General Field Marshal sinc Uh. Is it matu matum? And it might be chinque oh really? Yeah? Because they were super into Shakavara and the Cuban Revolution. So anything that looks even remotely Spanish is probably pronounced like that. Okay, Well, I don't know Spanish, so I'm gonna pronounce it like Spike Lee style. I think that's his sister's name, is it? So? Yeah, sinkly. I didn't know that ce I n q u E one of his sisters. I got great. So, um, yeah, he was in prison for uh, well he did a bunch of stuff. He he was well known to possess homemade bombs. He was arrested for kidnapping, um, possession of explosives. He was arrested for robbing a bank. And that's finally in nine what finally got him into prison. But and this pops up sort of throughout the story, but it was it was way easier to get away with crime back then, like to escape from prison and then just say, like I like go live in San Francisco and start a radical organization and and kind of not get caught. Uh, And that's what he did. And he ended up engineering the murder of a man named Marcus Foster. He was superintendent of the Oakland School System. And uh, he didn't actually carry out the murder, but to s l A members shot him and one one of their signature moves that would turn out to be a cyanide tipped bullets, which I didn't look into that. I don't even know if that's a thing. I know, if that helps you kill somebody, I think it's overkill, is what like literal overkill or maybe just they thought it sounded intimidating or something to put in letters. They definitely did that, but they shot Foster to draw attention to UM something they saw, which was anti black schooling policies. Uh, Foster was a black man. One of the cruel irony is there. Well, not only that, he was also a respected black community organizer. And when they killed them, everybody else on the left and Berkeley was like, what are you doing? Are you guys morons? And l A was like, oh, yeah, they were kind of morons. Yeah, yes, they were a little bit morons as far as domestic terrorist groups go. UM. So when they the shooters were actually in prison when they got Patty Hurst, and the first thought from the cops and the Feds was, here's what's gonna happen is they've kidnapped this rich girl and they're gonna try to exchange, um, giving her back to get these two guys out of prison. But they're like, no, not exactly, We're actually gonna keep her. No. But even before they they had a chance to ask, and I guess they never did bring it up. Ronald Reagan, who was governor at the time, said no, we're not doing that. But they didn't go that way. Instead they said, UM, hey Willie Hurst, UM, no sorry, Randy Hurst. Willie Randy was dead by this time. Randy Hurst, UM, you're super rich. We want you to take some of those riches and we want you to feed the poor with it. That was their first demand. UM. And they they came. They sent this demand. First of all, they sent a communicate to a radio station in San Francisco, UM. And I think that's who they basically corresponded with the public and the police through. UM was this radio station. UM. And they would send letters and they would eventually send like voice recordings as well. UM. But in this first one, they sent what was basically an arrest warrant for Petty Hirst, Patricia Campbell Hurst, daughter of Randolph A. Hirst, corporate enemy of the people. And they sent her credit cards as proof that they had her, UM, which, if you ask me, shows their hand right off the bat. They didn't send a finger, they didn't even send like a lock of hair. They send a credit card that you could pick up off the ground. They could have just taken it off of her. I don't off of her nightstand. They didn't send anything vicious. They just sent a credit card to prove that they had her UM, but they didn't make any ransom demand. Then six days later after that first communicate with the arrest warrant, that's when they said, the Hearst need to figure out how to how to feed any single person in California that can prove prove that they are not um beneficiaries of the corporate capitalist state UM with at least seventy dollars worth of high quality food per person. Yeah, and they were like, you know, we're gonna get it together and whatnot. We but you need to arrange it through the grocery stores in California to distribute this stuff. Uh. They included in an audio tape from Patty where she says, Mom, Dad, I'm okay. I'm with a combat unit with automatic weapons. And these people aren't just a bunch of nuts or morons like Josh and Chuck and will say in the future. I want to get out of here, but the only way I'm going to do it is if we do it their way. And I just hope that you'll do what they say, Dad, uh and do it quickly, and Randy Hurst got this and he was like, these people are morons. How do they expect me to give everyone in California that proves there and needs seventy dollars worth of high quality food? What is high quality food anyway? And they're like, that's what you mean every day, sir. It's actually pretty good. Okay, I got you, And so he said, um, you know, I don't even think I can pull this off, which followed another back and forth in which Patty said, hey, stop acting like I'm dead. Um, he needs a good faith gesture from you. And so just a few days after that, the Hearst Foundation formed. I guess they looked in probably the best way to get a tax benefit out of this, informed an actual program called People in Need, which would feed a hundred thousand people for a year, uh two million dollars worth of food, which sounds fairly high quality to me. Um. Yeah. And and apparently they had a rough start at first because they didn't know what they were doing. There were food riots at the distribution site, and they finally managed to get it figured out. So in that sense, and it's kind of overlooked, I think in a lot of histories because everything they did after that was just so stupid and terrible. Um, but the s l A had a genuine impact right out of the gate that they used their their hostage for, which was to feed poor and hungry people. So clearly they were at least partially dedicated to that. And um chinque matto is it? Matt me Donald the frieze, the Field Marshal General Field Marshal. Um he he had said in a statement, he said, you know, Mr and Mrs Hurst, I I will, I have no qualms about executing your daughter. Uh if will save the lives of any starving poor people. So that was like a real big initial thing. So yeah, I was kind of surprised that they formed this program People in Need, which obviously was going to take a lot of work to make into sort of a legit charity, and they were like just for one year though, like after that, I'm surprised they didn't say, well, you know, maybe this is worthwhile. I mean I didn't get the impression they were those types well, and they probably it probably wasn't a great look to be inspired by these uh these terrorists. That's true, that's true too, Um, but I just find it significant that that was like that, that was their first demand was that, and then they actually had a real effect. But yeah, that's for more money though. I think they said two millions not enough. We want eight million total. And the hearse said Randy said, no, go, you gotta release Patty Hurst if you want that extra six mill Yeah, so they um. This I think is another kind of overlooked thing that when you look at what, you know, the process of of changing her mind that Patty Hurst eventually is said to have gone through. I think that this is really where the seeds started, because she said later on that she felt like her parents were trying to they were debating how much I was worth, and they were focusing on dollars and cents um, you know, in the balance of her daughter's life. And she, you know, like she had said before, stop acting like I'm dead. She apparently felt very um, if not left behind, definitely gambled with her life, was gambled with by her parents who were basically publicly negotiating the cost down for the release of their daughter. And I think that that really may have set up a nineteen year old um to to be more open to whatever the opposite of their parents thought processes and ideology might be. Yeah, there's another um, really good movie about the j Paul Getty Kidney happen called All the Money in the World, directed by Ridley Scott, And that's sort of one of the uh threads in that movie is you know, it's the granddad trying to like negotiate down this money, like somebody that's like one of the richest human beings on the planet trying to bargain with the life of a family member, like no, genie, no money. Really really interesting, Um, nice far ago rough by the way, thank you. Should we take a break? Yeah, sure, why not? All right, we'll take a break and we're gonna come back right for this and talk about what happens on April three. So, Chuck, you mentioned April three, and here is about the time when things really start to turn as far as the public's perception of what exactly is going on. Because fifty nine days earlier, Um, Patty Hurst, poor little Patty Hurst, never harm to flee, just you know, wanted to study art history and be super amazingly rich Um was abducted from her house and then forced into the public spotlight as a hostage who was used to negotiate um between the s l A and her parents, the hearsts Um. But then that changed. On April three, Yeah, she sent a another tape that said, I have been given the choice of one being released in a safe area or two joining forces, joining the forces of the Symbionese Liberation Army and fighting for my freedom and the freedom of all oppressed people. I have chosen to stay and fight. And then she revealed that she had taken on an s l A name, Uh, Tania or is it Taniya? I think I don't know. Let's go with Tanya, okay, Tania t A and I A. And they sent a little visual a too, and this was this became very very famous picture. One of the most famous pictures of the nineteen seventies was this photo, this polaroid of Patty Uh, we've all seen it, holding that machine gun, wearing the beret in front of the s l A flag in their emblem, which was a seven headed cobra. Very famous picture, extremely famous, and that beret was significant, and that she adopted the nom de guerre Tanya Um from another woman who adopted the nom de gear of Tanya Um back in the sixties, about a decade earlier, when she was fighting alongside Sha Gavara and Bolivia. Her name was uh Tamera bun Que. I believe um. She was Argentinean uh and she was a revolutionary. And I guess Petty Hurst admired her and adopted that name. But imagine, like put it yourself in the in the in the position is just the average public who you know, person in the public who's following this story. It's like, poor little Patty Hurst, Poor little little Patty Hurst. And then oh my god, what is this. There's a picture of Petty Hurst looking like a total b a holding a machine gun in a beret. Yeah, that's little ba Bakas. Yeah. And she said, I they said that they would let me go and I could go free or I could stay and fight. And I'm choosing to fight. And not only that, I have a new name of war. Yeah. I think this started a lot of confusion. I don't think it was immediately everyone was like, oh my god, uh, the future Paris Hilton of our times is now radicalized and wants to kill people. That's true, I think it. I think it just really confused a lot of people that are like wait a minute, what's going on here? I thought she was kidnapped, and now she says she's not, and uh, it really gripped the nation. I mean, obviously I was just a wee toddler when this is going on, But I remember when I was a little kid, this sort of still reverberating in the public sphere a little bit, Like I remember hearing the name Patty Hurst when I was like six or seven. Well, she also, I mean, she came out with her memoirs, you know, and about when you were probably ten, So I'm sure that that really brought her to your attention as well. But I'm sure that was we read that in uh whatever, fifth grade, right, So um, so, yeah, you're right. You're right, that wasn't the necessarily the turning point because a picture like that, you know, if you're somebody's hostage, your captors can dress you up however they want and take a picture of you and put it said, put it out there. There was It was still shocking, but it was confusing, like you said, too, and then people generally knew like if you somebody had a gun to your head, you could say like, yeah, I'm gonna stay and fight and here's my new name. The turning point, the real turning point, that came about two weeks after that, almost two weeks after that, and that is when Tanya made her real world debut. And at this point there was there was very little, um question about whether she was actually involved in the s l A or just a hostage in a lot of people's mind. This is where that turning point came. Yeah. So, um, the High Bernia Bank in San Francisco was robbed by the s l A, including Tania, and they shot two people. Um, Like we said earlier, you know, it wasn't one of these things where they were just espousing radicalism and threatening violence. They killed people. Um, they didn't kill these two people, but they did shoot them. Um. They made off with about tin grand to help fund their group. On the surveillance surveillance footed, you see Patty right there pointing an assault rifle machine gun and screaming at people to get down the floor, um, announcing her I am Tania. And the footage played on the news and this is when he said. Everyone was like, man, this is getting really really interesting. Uh. I think the FBI wasn't fully convinced. She still wasn't being um forced to do this though, because it's not like they didn't and they didn't issue a warrant for her arrest for robbing a bank. She was wanted as a material witness at this point. Still yeah, still, I mean, don't forget she's white and she's rich, so you know, you can't just go around saying that she's a bank robber just because she robbed a bank and plain view of everybody on security footage that's on TV, you know, so she has a material witness. Another tape comes along, and this time she called her family the pig Hursts, and she said, I mean, this is sort of the ideas like has she been brainwasht or not? And she said, in no uncertain terms as for being brainwashed, the idea is ridiculous, beyond belief. I am a soldier in the people's army, UM. And see, this is one of those things where people are like, if you had a time machine, what's something you would do. I would go back to the beginning of nineteen seventy five so that I could watch this whole thing unfold in real time, like on the nightly news and in the newspaper. It must have just been totally mind blowing, because everything I have ever known about Patty Hurst was all in retrospect, and I knew the whole story from beginning to end all at once. To watch the sunfold must have just been just nuts, you know. So you wouldn't go back and kill Hitler in his cradle? Fine, that's fine, Now, that's fine to see what happens with Petty Hurst. Yeah, I want to sit on a couch in nineteen seventy five, So what can I say? Okay, we could kill Hitler too, That's fine, all right, we can. Can we do that first and then go watch the Petty Hurst thing and go to woods Well, I think the order of operation is would kill Hitler. We go to Woodstock together, we avoid the purple acid, is brown acid, brown acid, and then we we wind up in nineteen seventy and TV dinners watching this on TV. Okay, that sounds pretty nice, actually, like let's do um so so Patty Her sister Recap, has said that she is a member of the s l A by choice, that she has a new war name, that she is not brainwashed, and now she's been out in public on foot on video caught on camera shout holding a machine gun during a bank robbery, shouting at people to get on the floor, and witnesses are saying like she shouted, I am Tanya, And apparently on her way out of the bank, she dropped the clip out of her submachine gun and m wine M one carbine submachine gun like an assault rifle UM, and the clip dropped out and it fell to the floor and two bullets UM were knocked out of the clip. She stopped and picked him up, put him back in the clip, and then jammed the clip back in her machine gun and strodeed out the door. Like from from witnesses accounts, like she sounds like she was not some meek, timid thing who was taking orders. That she seemed to be like a warrior, a princess. Yeah, and you gotta go back in time to nineteen seventy five and seventy four, when you know, we did a great episode on brainwashing. I encourage you to go back and listen to that. But um, briefly, we should just say that in nineteen four, Stockholm syndrome and brainwashing, this stuff wasn't as part of the you know, just regular conversation like it is today. The banks from stock that created the Stockholm syndrome idea had just taken place like a year or less before this. Yeah. So if you if someone would have said Stockholm syndrome on the news, um, yeah, people might not even know what they were talking about it. So it would have been not out of the realm for people to not even understand that someone could be brainwashed like this as far as just you know, an average American goes. Yeah. But at the same time, I mean, there there had been a real, um, a real newsworthy and like celebrated case of po dubbed views taken in the Korean War, you know, twenty years before this that had said, you know, they signed confessions that they had engaged in germ warfare when they hadn't. Um, there was evidence that they colluded with the enemy. Um, some of them, twenty one Air Force officers that have been captured refused to return home when they had the ability to be returned home. And so the idea of brainwashing was out there, but it was still very it was nothing like our conception of it now, and it was still very much in the beginnings of being studied and understood. Yeah. So nineteen seventy four May sixteenth is when things really really change. And this was the incident. I don't know if you were referring to, but this is the one that really made me go, Okay, I'm really I'm not so sure about this um being brainwashed or trying to just save her own bacon thing. Uh. They were. It was Patty and then Bill and Emily Harris a couple of other s l A members. Um went to Bill and Emily went into a sporting goods store for some supplies. Bill shoplifted bullets, got caught and then tried to bolt out of there, and an employee tackled him as he was leaving. They got Emily and captured her and then patties across the street sort of waiting in the getaway car. She jumps out. She points that submachine gun at the store and empties the clip and then gets another rifle and keep shooting. She fires about thirty shots total on a public street into a store. By the grace of God, didn't hit anybody, which is just yeah, I mean that's the most remarkable part of this whole thing. Uh. And the Harrises got out of it, I mean it worked. They got out of there, jumped in the van and they all got away. And this is the point, and this is the one that would really haunt her in court later on, which we'll get to. But it's like it's really hard to believe. I mean, she could have left. She was out there by herself. Um, she could have once the s went down, she could have left. But now she jumped out and she just she fired thirty shots trying to help them get out of there. She was left alone in the van with the keys, reading a newspaper while they were there. And and like, you don't even have to be a hostage. You could just be an accomplice. And there's a good chance that if somebody's getting busted inside, you might just drive off and save your own bacon. Um, like you said, just such a great term. Um, But yeah, she did the opposite. She went and fought to free her comrades. So that, yes, that's definitely one of the things that I, I and basically anybody else familiar with the case points to, is like this makes basically everything else questionable. Yea, this is just not nice. So here's the thing. Um that was I think May sixteenth, you said, Um, so Patty's been kidnapped for you know, just a few months from February four to May um and she's already engaged in a bank robbery and shot up in a Los Angeles street in storefront um and just the very next day, like the s l A is all over the news, like the cops are looking for him. They started out in Berkeley, and they moved their way down to l A at some point. But they are again more ronic, uh in A lot of their actions and a lot of their um judgment is just really insensible. But one of the things they did was they, I guess, identified somebody's house in Compton. I don't know if somebody knew them or not, or if it just looked like a good place to hide out in sell central Los Angeles. And they said, hey, you, um, can we give you a hundred dollars? I think there's just some middle aged woman who is running a house. If we give you a hundred dollars, can we all stay here? And she said okay, And they said, great, let's go get all of our guns, like like several dozen guns, six thousand rounds of ammunition, a few bombs and move them in. And that lady started to get freaked out, and apparently her daughter said went and flagged down a traffic cop and said, hey, are you looking for a bunch of white people who have a bunch of guns that seemed to be hiding out, And that led to this convergence of the l A p D on this house and and comped him and a firefight, a shootout with most of the members of the s l A in this house. Yeah, so there is a firefight that goes down. Um, they lobbs some tear gas in there, that starts a fire and it burns the house to the ground and kills all six of the s l A members inside. Um, Patty and the Harrises are not there. They were on the lamb at this point, waiting it out in a hotel room after the shoplifting thing. And then three weeks after this, the few remaining. I mean, you gotta think if they killed six, there were another three hiding out, and there were never more than twelve. There could only be just a few more remaining. But the remaining members released another message that Patty had a real hard time with at the trial, um explaining it away because she uh it was clearly upset about these deaths. She talked about the fascist pig media and her brothers and sisters dying, and then talked about remember Willie wolf in particular as the gentlest, most beautiful man I've ever known, and said that neither she nor wolf had ever loved an individual the way we loved each other. I read a UM interview with Willie Wolfe's father, who was a doctor back yeast. Willie wolf was just raised this like upper middle class son of a doctor, you know, pretty privileged, but also not um spoiled Brady that kind of thing. I loved the outdoors and he Um apparently just his father still was just like I. I don't I don't get it at all. Like that guy. He really was just super gentle and sweet and kind and not very political. But something happened to him out in Berkeley, and and he became extremely concerned. I think, a natural propensity toward caring about what happened to other people became radicalized by in the you know, by the s l A. He was a founding member of the s l A. It's not like he was some lamb led to the slaughter like. He was one of the guys who founded the s l A with um Donald the freeze and I think the um the couple that were shoplifting the Harrises Um. But his father really really struggled to explain it. But what was remarkable to me about the interviews his father wasn't like over explaining. It wasn't like, uh me thinks he he doth protest too much kind of thing. Like he just seemed genuinely baffled and like he just didn't understand it. And I was reading an article UM in the l A Times and like the twentieth anniversary of that that shootout in Compton Um and the owner of the house that had been burned down that the s l A was in, he said that every year Willie Wolf's mother would come and on the anniversary of of her son's death and leave this wreath UM on a palm tree at the vacant lot where the burned out house had been. It would just stand there in silence for hours, just once here. He said. She was the only person who ever came. Yeah, very sad. Uh And I'm sure yeah, the parents of these kids were just yeah, like it's sort of like being the um parents of like one of the Manson family or something, Right, Yeah, and then here's the other thing too, Like this is a really complicated thing. Like Donald DeFries who was an escaped convict from prison, but I also read that his stepfather on three different occasions broke both of his arms um to punish him. So I mean, like there's there there, and then um, Willie wolf it was accused of raping Patty Hurst too, So just how general and sweet could he be? Like It's it's a really murky, messy case, and appropriately so because even still today we're, you know, in we're trying to suss out exactly what happened with Patty Hurst in her mind back in Yeah, it's really I mean it's hard to figure out, um. And I think that's what makes this such an enduring case, you know. So the that eulogy tape was released while she was on the run with the Harrises, and they stayed on the run, driving across the country sort of uh bad Land style. I don't think they were killing people, that they were committing crimes. They were stealing stuff and they did this for eighteen months, which is another example of like it was just a lot easier to get away with crimes back then, before there were cameras everywhere, and obviously camera phones everywhere and the internet. Uh. They remained on the LAMB for eighteen months. About a year into that, they robbed another bank in San Francisco and actually killed a customer in the process. Yeah. And and you know this would come up later at the trial. Patty Hurst was not the trigger person, but she was involved. She was one of the three, and a person lost their life. You know, it's very sad. Yeah. Um, she was apparently a church lady who was there depositing like that week's collection into the bank, the church's bank account, and she was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and apparently um made a fast move because she was freaked out and got shot and died pretty quickly from what I understand. Right, should we take another break? Yeah? Sure, all right, this is our last break, and then we'll talk about the arrest and the trial of Patty Hurst right after this. Alright, So she gets arrested. Um, and you know this is where things get really weird, because you've got to stories playing out in court. Uh. One is that I'm Patty Hurst and I was brainwashed. I was kept in a closet for fifty seven days when they abducted me, I was blindfolded and bound. I was raped by Donald DeFreeze and Willie Wolf. I was abused and lectured about how righteous they were. And then after fifty seven days, I was told, hey, you can either join up with us or we can kill you, and she said I joined up. So story number one is that. Story number two is the other. Yeah, Story number two is, we have video evidence of you robbing a bank. Witnesses say that you were involved in another bank robber, a woman was killed. We have you on tape talking about how you're not brainwashed, and how you joined this by your own free will and your parents are pigs. So it was it was a pretty airtight case as far as the prosecution goes for it not for one thing, and that is that she was initially kidney apped. She didn't run off and do this like, she didn't get bored and like go to a community center and end up falling in with the s l A like she was kidnapped. And our understanding of um of psychology was still kind of jelling around the idea of brainwashing, but it wasn't just completely unheard of. The thing is it had never been tried in a criminal case before Um and the Hursts hired the very famous I think already he was a very famous attorney, eff Lee Bailey UM who defended the Boston Strangler. He was also on O J's team. Um. He was just a super famous lawyer. UM. And he tried it, and I think in retrospect that's the only thing he possibly could have tried was to say she was brainwashed, like you said, yeah, And they had psychiatrists that came in to back that up and say, this is very possible. That brought up the stuff about the p POW's Um. They had multiple psychiatrists come in and kind of take their side. Then as far as the tapes go, Patty said, you know what, those were scripted and I had no choice. I had to read them as they said. And if you think they're believable, it's because I believe that my life depended on how well of a job I did reading these things. Uh, and that those tapes were I mean, that was the big big evidence in in the trial was how passionate she was and how she talked about her love of Willie Wolf and you know, other psych psychiatrists for the prosecution came in and they were like, you know what, I've listened to these things over and over, and I don't know an actress on earth who could pull this off like she was. If she was reading scripted stuff, it surely doesn't sound that way to me, right, And she also did not she literally did not help her case. Um. When she was arrested, she put down as her occupation urban guerrilla. Um. She was you know, Um, she was like, uh throwing like fight the power fists. Anytime somebody took a picture of her. Um, she was very which like not the oh my god, I'm glad to be freed kind of thing that you would expect, and I think that the public wanted to see. And then also when she took the stand, Um, I can't believe. I cannot believe it either. Um, but she took the stand. On cross examination, she played the fifth forty two times, which I mean, yeah, the public does not really trust people who plead the fifth, especially forty two times, especially if they're supposed to be a kidnapped victim. So there's a there's a there was a lot that the prosecution had going for them in that sense. And then the defense has basically had brainwashed. He's brainwashed. One of the things they said was like she was raped. She was raped by these men, so um, of course, like she feared them. Uh, they threatened her life. Of course she feared him. And apparently I guess the prosecution got her to say that, no, she didn't love Willie wolf By the way, she never saw Stephen Weed again as far as I could tell. She didn't want to see him. She didn't get back together with them, um, And I don't think they ever saw each other again, even though he was, you know, speaking to the press the whole time and being very supportive. But she was like, now I'm moving on. Um. But the prosecution got her to say, uh, you know you said you love Willy wolf Did you love him? She said, no, I hated him. And then they produced this thing that is another I think another uh mark that that really stands against her in the mind of a lot of people, which is little statue that she had gotten from Willy Wolfe. Right, Yeah, they pull this out and they're like, then what is this? Is this not, in fact a gift from your supposed captor and supposed rapist, Willie Wolfe, Why would you keep this gift still in her reply was the opposite of my famous saying. She said, I like art, yeah, instead of I hate art yeah. And uh she said, you know, I'm an art history student and I like art. And you know, if you're trying to move the needle for a jury, that's that's not the way to well. One of the women jurors um on the case said, like, no woman would carry around a love trinket from a man who raped her, and that that really ruined her credibility. UM. At the same time, though, Jeffrey Tuban, who wrote a book on this um American heiress. Yes, but he still had a legitimate book despite what he's done since then, I just started to I know, I know, um he He made a really good point though that I think it is worth repeating here, and that is that regardless of um, you know, maybe how she ended up feeling about Willie Woolf, for anybody that that were her captors, she was kept in a closet for fifty seven days, and anyone who had sex with her in that closet raped her. That there's no chance for that to have been consensual, no matter how she behaved during that was that was rape and then then she was raped, and that should be you know, it shouldn't be brushed aside no matter. You know, how she came to feel about Willie Wolf, and I think that's that's definitely a good point to remember. Yeah, I mean, if that entire story is true about being kept in the closet, and you know, most of this testimony comes from her, uh, and there are still people that think she cooked up this entire thing. Um, and you know what, she just wanted to get out of her engagement to Steve Weed to begin with. And that's why that's such a conspiracy theory or people saying that. I'm sure they are, but really, you came out Okay, No, I was literally making a joke. If you see, if you see the like footage of Steve Weed, He's the kind that somebody would do that to get out of relationship with him. I'm sorry Steve and Weed, but yeah, just to just to get out of just because he's a guy. It'll only take a few years, right, one person has to die. I'm sorry, but oh boy, so um she on March twenty two years old. By the way, I don't think that has really you know, may have hit home to our listeners, she's still just a kid. She was sentenced to seven years in prison for robbing that bank. She served twenty two months of that near San Francisco at pleasant in prison. And you mentioned Jimmy Carter earlier, and we put a pin in that, and I'm sure people are like, what does Jimmy Carter have to do with any of this? He commuted her sentence. It was very controversial at the time. He said that he um, he fully believed her, that she was a victim and would not have done any of this had she not been brainwashed and kidnapped and brainwashed. And they said what about steviewed and he was like, I don't know who that is, and uh. He was just a big supporter of her, and he eventually um actually helped persuade Bill Clinton to pardon her. In two thousand one. He did, um, he granted her. He commuted her sentence, so she was let let out after twenty two months. But it was Clinton who pardoned her. And I said earlier that you know, Carter, I think had the most sensible opinion of the whole thing, and it was simply that had she not been kidnapped, um By the s l A and forced into these, you know, a life of crime. Basically, she otherwise would never have engaged in any of those criminal acts like she was. Her life was not in any way, shape or form on a trajectory to robbing banks. She was just going to end up being kind of a a a art history a rich art history person. Yeah, you've got a collected by expensive art probably, yeah, basically, which you know, like that was gonna be your contribution to the world. Had some kids and and um be very very wealthy. She was not going to go rob banks. And the s l A forced her to do there, forced her into that life, even if they didn't force her to rob banks. The thing is, though, is that still leaves dangling. There's a big blank space after that sentence, and that is but she still robbed the banks. And it does seem like you did it from her own volition. And I mean, anybody who was nineteen can imagine what it must have been like to be a nineteen or early twenty year old shooting up a storefront to free a couple of friends. You know, as reckless, as dangerous, as murderous, as unjustifiable and indefensible as that is. It also must have been probably the most thrilling moment of Patty Hurst's entire life to this day. Well, of course it was, because shockingly she led a pretty low key life for many many years after this. She got out of prison, she married a former cop. His name was Bernard Shaw, not the composer, but um, he was her bodyguard. He was moonlighting once she was out on bail as a bodyguard, had a couple of kids, raised their kids in Connecticut, and lived a really quiet life until nineteen one. A couple of years after that, she published her memoir Like Said, which we read in our our fifth grade reading class, Every Secret Thing, and Um. Then she kind of was very public, but not Uh. She was public in the way that I'm not saying she should have had shame, but shamelessly public, going on TV shows plugging her book, talking about her memoirs, talking about what happened, buddying up with maybe the weirdest thing in this whole story, budding up with John Waters and starring in four of his movies. Yeah, I mean she she was in a bunch of them. Mom, Yeah, I remember when I saw her in these movies, thinking, is that Patty Hurst Patty Hirst, and it totally was that. I think this is before the internet when I saw these and um, so like I read a newspaper article or something confirming that. I was like, all right, I guess that's what she's doing. Now. Were you in a van waiting for your accomplices while you read that newspaper article. No, it was a very strange time though. Um. And then there were a couple of more cases in the late nineties. Uh, the FBI captured this woman. She was an s L a fugitive named Kathleen Solia. She was living. She managed to get out and live a very quiet life as Sarah Jane Olsen. She's basically like Homer Simpsons mom. Yeah, also a wife and mother in Connecticut. And she was arrested for a car bombing carried out in seventy five. Actually, I think the weirdest part of the story is is that her daughter ended up being a contestant on American Idol. Is that right? That's a little weird. I don't know if that's starring in John Waters movies level weird, but it's definitely that's a great little It's a nice little tidbit. Her daughters though, when they were questioned about this, We're like, you know, this was Berkeley in the seventies, Like it was kind of not everybody up they were. That was kind of their attitude. It was interesting. It is interesting. Um, I've got a little detail I turned up that I hadn't seen anywhere else, but it was from the recollections of an the one of the FBI agents who arrested Patty Hurst finally, and they said, get this man. She was on the run with another s l A member, Wendy Yoshimura, And when the agents came up these backstairs to this house where she and Wendy were hiding out, they were sitting at the kitchen table, and the agents came in with their guns drawn, and Wendy Yoshimura had both hands on the table and did everything those FBI agents said. Patty Hurst jumped up and ran to the front room, and apparently the FBI agents said, you know, get back here, We're gonna shoot Wendy or something like that. They said that they couldn't guarantee Wendy's safety unless, um, Patty came back. So Patty reluctantly came back into the kitchen where she was arrested, but when they went back and searched the house in the front room, they found her M one carbine and a twelve gage shotgun, which really it's very difficult not to imagine that she was jumping up to go get her gone to engage in a gun battle. Interesting. That's nuts, man. Wow. Well, Celia gets uh found out as Sarah Jane Wilson. Like I said, that trial and then another one. Remember that bank robbery that we mentioned earlier when they were on the lamb Uh that comes back to haunt her as well. And there are these two kind of trials popping up where she has immunity. If she's going to come in and testify and say who the shooter was, she was gonna say it was Emily Harris. She was all prepared to testify against them, and they both everyone ended up leading guilty and so she didn't have to go to court again and she kind of just went back to her Her life is as Patty Hurst, the mom in Connecticut. That's right, very interesting story. And like we said, we look back now and I don't think anyone has the clearest picture still of exactly what happened. My guess is it might have been a little bit of both. Yeah, I think there was an initial brainwashing hostage thing, but um, you know, William Harris later said we inadvertently kidnapped a revolutionary freak like she was, just she had a real propensity for it. Yeah, and that they were still they were astounded by how how eagerly she took it on. So well, and this is coming you know, you gotta remember too, this is a nineteen year old coming off the heels of being a middle schooler in the late sixties when all of that's going on, and you know, so that was in the public sphere as in her whole life growing up really this radical revolutionary kind of thing, growing up in northern California near San Francisco. So yes, she may have been like, hey, this is my chance. Yeah, and she took it. Uh. Well, that's Petty Hurst, everybody. If you want to know more about it, there's a lot of ink that's been spilled on her story, and just go down that rabbit hole as deep as you like. And since I said that, it's time for a listener, ma'am. I'm curious to read her or I guess reread her memoir years Yeah, it's been many years. Uh, let me see here. I'm gonna call this Bavarian Beavers. Hey, guys, want to take the opportunity to talk about your recent show on beavers. To tell you what I have been doing for a few years now. Um, between finishing school and starting university, I did nine months of civil service and my regional environmental authority. My main focus, besides cleaning up local forest was taking care of beavers. I basically had to maintain live traps and had to perform sabotage on dams of beavers which flooded fields of local farmers. Now I did so on a daily basis, since overnight the dams were of course restored by their respective constructors. Uh. This was done in order to softly, softly forced the beavers to find a new place to live, which mostly worked after a few months. Also, two beavers were called alive during my period of service, and we're moved to the UK as far as I know, in order to reintroduce them there. As far as I know, they went to go live on a farm in England. I learned a lot about these animals during this time and I was stoked when I saw this episode title pop up as usual. You did a great job gathering and summarizing all the facts and interesting good to knows, including the weird classification as fish for religious reasons. Keep up the great work. This is from Bavaria, Germany, and that is from Nico. Nico says, uh, Chuck, hats off to you and your German skills. To Nico's being very kind, Yeah, what about me, Nko? What about Josh? Well, you you own Japanese and Spanish, all right, But Nico didn't say anything about it, No, she did. That was the pss. Okay, Okay, there you go. So thanks a lot Nico for complimenting both of us. I appreciate you finally getting to it. And if you want to be like Nico and compliment both of us, we love that kind of thing. You can send us an email to Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H

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If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD,  
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