Patty Hearst: Brainwashed or Bandit?

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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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
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

(00:22):
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,

(00:45):
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

(01:08):
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

(01:29):
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.

(01:52):
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,

(02:15):
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

(02:36):
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

(03:02):
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

(03:24):
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

(03:44):
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

(04:06):
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

(04:26):
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

(04:47):
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

(05:10):
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,

(05:31):
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

(05:54):
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,

(06:16):
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

(06:37):
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.

(06:57):
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

(07:18):
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,

(07:40):
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.

(08:02):
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

(08:23):
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

(08:44):
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.

(09:07):
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?

(09:30):
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

(09:52):
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

(10:14):
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

(10:35):
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

(10:57):
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.

(11:19):
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

(11:40):
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,

(12:02):
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

(12:23):
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,

(12:45):
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.

(13:07):
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

(13:29):
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

(13:50):
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

(14:12):
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,

(14:36):
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

(14:56):
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

(15:17):
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

(15:38):
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.

(15:59):
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,

(16:20):
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

(16:43):
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

(17:04):
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.

(17:26):
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

(17:48):
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

(18:12):
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

(18:34):
gonna come back right for this and talk about what
happens on April three. So, Chuck, you mentioned April three,

(19:10):
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

(19:33):
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,

(19:53):
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.

(20:15):
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

(20:38):
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

(20:58):
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,

(21:19):
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.

(21:43):
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,

(22:04):
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

(22:24):
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

(22:46):
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

(23:06):
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,

(23:31):
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

(23:51):
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

(24:15):
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

(24:35):
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

(24:56):
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

(25:16):
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,

(25:38):
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

(26:03):
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,

(26:26):
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

(26:47):
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,

(27:08):
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

(27:30):
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.

(27:50):
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

(28:11):
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

(28:31):
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

(28:53):
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

(29:14):
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,

(29:36):
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

(29:56):
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

(30:16):
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,

(30:38):
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

(30:58):
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

(31:20):
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

(31:40):
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

(32:00):
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

(32:22):
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

(32:43):
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

(33:06):
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

(33:28):
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

(33:49):
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

(34:11):
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

(34:32):
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

(34:55):
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

(35:17):
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

(35:40):
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

(36:01):
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

(36:24):
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

(36:46):
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

(37:07):
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

(37:55):
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

(38:18):
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

(38:41):
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

(39:03):
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

(39:24):
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

(39:47):
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,

(40:08):
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

(40:30):
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,

(40:53):
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

(41:16):
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

(41:37):
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

(42:00):
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

(42:22):
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

(42:44):
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,

(43:04):
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

(43:27):
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

(43:49):
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,

(44:12):
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

(44:34):
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

(44:55):
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

(45:15):
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

(45:35):
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.

(45:56):
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

(46:18):
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

(46:39):
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

(47:00):
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

(47:20):
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

(47:40):
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

(48:00):
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,

(48:21):
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

(48:42):
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

(49:03):
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,

(49:23):
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,

(49:44):
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

(50:07):
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

(50:27):
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

(50:50):
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,

(51:11):
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

(51:35):
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

(51:56):
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.

(52:17):
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,

(52:40):
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.

(53:01):
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

(53:21):
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.

(53:42):
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

(54:02):
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

(54:26):
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,

(54:47):
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

(55:09):
my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H