October 10, 2024 • 30 mins
Patty Hearst is kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army. As the nation tries to understand who the SLA are, her father helps organize the People in Need program to feed the poor around San Francisco.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Rip Current. It's a production of iHeart podcasts. The views
and opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those if the host, producers,
or parent company listener discretion. Is it vied.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Mom, Dad, I'm okay. I had a few scrapes and stuff,
but they've washed them up and they're getting okay. And
I've caught a cold, but they're giving me pills for it,
and so I'm not being starved or beaten or unnecessarily frightened.
(00:44):
I've heard some press reports, and so I know that
Steve and all the neighbors are okay, that no one
was really hurt. I'm with a combat unit that's armed
with automatic weapons, and.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
And I'm ah, there's also a medical.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Team here, and I'm there's no way that I will
be released and let until they let me go. So
it wouldn't do any good for somebody to come in
here and try to get me out by force. These
(01:24):
people aren't just a bunch of nuts, and they've been
really honest with me, but they're perfectly willing to die
for what they're doing. And I wanna get out of here,
but I the only way I'm going to is if
(01:44):
we do it their way. And I just hope that
you'll do what they say, Dad, and just do it quickly.
I mean, I feel pretty sure that that I'm gonna
get out of here if everything goes the way they
wanted to. And I think you should feel that way too,
(02:06):
and and try not to worry so much. I mean,
I know it's hard, but I heard that Mom was
really upset and and that all everybody was at home,
and and I mean, I hope that this puts you
a little bit at ease, so that and that you
(02:28):
know that I that I really but I really am
all right. I just hope I can get back to
everybody really soon.
Speaker 4 (02:44):
And I'm Mary Catherine Garrison, and this is rip current.
Speaker 5 (02:52):
Meetings. To the people and fellow comrade, brothers and sisters,
my name is sin Q, and to my comrades, I
am known as.
Speaker 4 (03:02):
Sin Episode six, Death to the Fascist insect that preys
upon the life of the people. At just after nine
pm on February fourth, nineteen seventy four, a woman and
two men, all armed, burst into an apartment in the
(03:24):
building near the University of California campus in Berkeley. The
intruders beat and tied up a man named Stephen weed
and a neighbor, Steve Suanaga, who had come to see
what was causing the disturbance. The intruders then grabbed the
young woman who lived in the apartment. She was nineteen
years old and a sophomore at Berkeley. They dragged her
(03:45):
down the stairs and bundled her into the trunk of
a car. A witness described what he saw in the street.
Speaker 6 (03:52):
We heard a scream, two or three shots. So three
of us that were in the house ran downstairs, and
one of the guys the street said the guns are
loaded and to get the hell off the street. So
we got off the street, and we saw a second
carpool up, and I ran out again, and the other
fellow try to look at the license, and they started shooting,
So I just fell on the ground.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
Did you have a feeling they were shooting at you
or just shooting in any direction?
Speaker 6 (04:15):
They could seem to me they were just shooting, So
everybody would get off the street and not look at
the plates or give any positive identification.
Speaker 7 (04:21):
Were there a lot of people on the street at that.
Speaker 6 (04:23):
Time, Yeah, I'd say about twenty people were probably roused
out of their house just by the shots and screams.
Speaker 4 (04:30):
This abduction and the fate of the victim would soon
preoccupy the nation.
Speaker 8 (04:36):
There's been a big kidnapping on the West Coast. The
victim is Patricia Hurst, the daughter of newspaper executive Randolph
Hurst and a granddaughter of the legendary William Randolph Hurst.
Speaker 4 (04:48):
Before February nineteen seventy four, most of America probably hadn't
heard of Patricia Hurst or even her father, Randolph, but
people would have known the Hurst name, and certainly William
Randolph Hurst.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
William Randolph Hurst, who invented the Hearst Publishing Empire, own
the largest private residence in the United States, the Hearst
Castle at San Simeon, which is now open to the public.
I'm Jeffrey Tubin. I'm the chief legal analyst on CNN,
and I'm the author of American Heiress, The kidnapping, Crimes
(05:20):
and Trial of Patty Hurst. His life was the basis
of perhaps the greatest American movie ever made, Citizen Kane
by Arson Wells.
Speaker 9 (05:31):
He's that clearly your idea how to run a new paper.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
I don't know how to run a newspaper, mister Betcher.
Speaker 10 (05:36):
I just try everything I can think of.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
His family was among the richest in the United States,
if not the world at that time. So the Hurst name,
while still famous today, was really magical in the seventies.
So if you wanted to get attention, you would try
to do something with regard to the Hearsts, and that's
what the SLA decided to do.
Speaker 4 (05:56):
This was, of course, well before the advent of twenty
four hour news and the ending news cycle, but in
the context of the news media at the time, Patty
hurst kidnapping was a huge story. This was a product
of both the Hearst fame and the novelty of a
high profile kidnapping a rare occurrence in the US.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
There was a tremendous amount of attention, and there's no
doubt it was a real kidnapping. She didn't know the SLA,
she didn't have any connection to those people.
Speaker 4 (06:25):
Three days later, a plain, white envelope was delivered to
KPFA radio in Berkeley. Inside was a communicate from something
called the Symbionese Liberation Army West Regional Adult Unit. It
claimed responsibility for kidnapping Patty. Here, Patty's father, Randolph Hurst,
reads from the letter at a press conference.
Speaker 11 (06:47):
The United Federated Forces of the Cydianese Liberation Army armed
with cyanide loaded weapons, served in a restward upon Patricia
Campbell Herds. All communications in this court must be published
in full in all newspapers and all other forms of
the media. Figured to do so and danger the safety
of the prisoner. See any attempt be made by authorities
(07:10):
to rescue the prisoner or to arrest or harm any
SLA elements. The prisoner is to be executed, and in
capital letters under that is death to the fastest insect
that praise upon the life of the people.
Speaker 4 (07:25):
The SLA promised further communications to follow. The country wanted
to know what exactly was the Symbionese Liberation Army.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
The area south of San Francisco what is now known
as Silicon Valley, but also over to Oakland and San Jose.
That whole region was home to a tremendous number of
really dangerous radical groups in the nineteen seventies. The Hell's
Angels were there, the Black Panthers were but were started there,
(07:56):
and the Symbionese Liberation Army was a very small offshoot
of that radical world. It was started by an ex
con named Donald de Friese, who thought of himself as
the leader of a revolutionary group.
Speaker 4 (08:19):
Defriese had been imprisoned at the California Medical Facility at Vaccaville,
a medium security prison. He'd been given a six to
fourteen year sentence for stealing a one thousand dollars bankers check.
While he became radicalized in prison, Defrize was not a
leader in the prison radical scene. In fact, his attempts
to acquire some semblance of power were opposed by George Jackson,
(08:41):
perhaps the most important prison radical in California, if not
the country. But things changed for Defreese after he escaped
from Solidad State Penitentiary on March fifth, nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 10 (08:54):
I'm Brian Burrow.
Speaker 7 (08:55):
I'm an author of I think seven books, including Days
of Ray, which I think came out in twenty fourteen,
which was a look at violent radical groups that went
underground and started bombing things in the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 10 (09:09):
He managed to escape from Solidad in seventy three, thinking
that the texts that he'd read, whether Cleaver or Fan
or George Jackson, thinking that that's the way the world
was outside the prison wall, not realizing that it wasn't anymore.
That the America that he escaped out into in nineteen
(09:30):
seventy three and made his way to Berkeley was not
primed for bloody revolution as perhaps it had been in
nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
He recruited a very small handful of adherents, and they
called themselves Symbionese because he thought of the word symbiosis
as a bringing together, and so he made up the
word Symbionese and liberation Army was in keeping with the
sort of radical.
Speaker 11 (10:00):
Of that time.
Speaker 4 (10:03):
Some of Defries's recruits had either been a part of
or associated with Vinceerramos, a radical organization that advocated armed struggle.
It was run and mostly comprised of white radicals, but
a central belief of the group was that former black prisoners,
because of their alienation and training and violence, would play
a leading role in this struggle. These former black prisoners
(10:25):
were idealized for having survived in the prison system, which
was perceived as the most extreme and violent example of
society's racism and exploitation. This experience was the preparation that
would allow them to be leaders in revolutionary groups. This
is Britney Friedman, Assistant professor of sociology at the University
of southern California. Talking about these former prisoners, she mentions
(10:49):
political prisoners, which in this case doesn't mean people who
are incarcerated because of their politics, but inmates who became
political and social activists in prison and were often seen
by the authorities for their activism.
Speaker 12 (11:03):
To survive is considered a badge when someone gets out
because you have survived what it would be considered to
be the worst of the worst, because you've survived what
people know happens in society. Right, so we know that
in society for over a century, we've had connections between
law enforcement and the ku Klux Klan, often one and
(11:24):
the same across the country, and that being a joint
alliance to eradicate freedom movements and people you know, have
survived that. I think with political prisoners, when they come out,
people are thinking that someone was able to survive that
in generate knowledge from that while being behind the.
Speaker 4 (11:45):
Cage, and when these prisoners were released or escaped, they
held an authenticity, a certain authority that attracted young white radicals,
people who.
Speaker 12 (11:57):
Might be coming from a white middle class or white
upper middle class background, who might have an affinity for
certain political ideals, but they've never put them in practice.
They've never survived them in practice. They just read them
in a book. They're not embodied. And I think having
a close connection with someone where it is embodied, the
where they live, the way they've survived, the way they talk,
(12:20):
there is a charisma to that that draws people in.
Speaker 4 (12:25):
This dynamic between black ex convicts and young, middle and
upper class white radicals would play out in the story
of the SLA.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
Donald the Friese was black, but everyone else in the
SLA was white, and they were all young, so they
hadn't been involved in many things for very long. But
they were an eclectic group from around the country who
had sort of drifted west, like a lot of young
people in that period, and they all got together and
(12:55):
started planning to do what they thought of as revolutionary acts.
Speaker 4 (13:01):
As a symbol, the SLA adopted the image of a
seven headed cobra. Each head represented an SLA value, self determination, unity,
cooperative production, and so on. They introduced themselves to the
public in November of nineteen seventy three with a crime
that showed both their willingness to use horrific violence and
(13:22):
the incoherence of their political philosophy. After the break.
Speaker 13 (13:37):
The kidnapping of Patty Hurst brought the SLA national attention
for the first time, but people in the Bay Area
had to look back only a few months to recall
their initial act of violence.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
The bizarre and awful beginning of the SLA was the
assassination of Marcus Foster, who was the Oakland School superintendent,
an African American himself, who was really trying to improve
Oakland school system, which was known as one of the worst,
(14:10):
not just in California, but in the whole country.
Speaker 13 (14:14):
Foster, along with his deputy Robert Blackburn, were recruited from
the Philadelphia public school system and we're a reason for
optimism in the Oakland community. Here Foster appears on the
Oakland radio show The Open Pulpit with Reverend Charles H. Belcher.
Speaker 14 (14:33):
I think that in everything we need to build the
eagle strength of our young people, especially our damaged youngsters,
where society shouts at them that this is too good
for you. That's the second class. Citizenship is your natural lot.
And you see that reflected in symbols of racism in
terms of housing patterns and the quality of homes in
(14:53):
certain sections of the city. This kind of symbolism tends
to be degrading and debilitating and denigrating, and whatever you
can do to offset that by giving a person a
sense of his power, by helping him shape a positive
image of himself, to help him develop a sense of
belonging to a church or to a school, or to
(15:13):
some institution that is pro social, and really building that
so that he feels that when he opens his mouth
to talk, someone is going to hear him. You're on
your way to making that child a fine individual and
pulling out of him the potential that's there.
Speaker 13 (15:31):
Jared Kobec, author of Motor Spirit and Where to Find Zodiac.
Speaker 15 (15:37):
If I'm not mistaken, I believe he was the first
African American superintendent in Oakland. He was there specifically to
just get poor kids, particularly poor black kids, a better education.
Speaker 13 (15:52):
But Defreese developed conspiratorial beliefs about some of Foster's new
policies and decided that the SLA needed to assassinate Foster.
Speaker 15 (16:02):
This is the extent of their political thinking, right, that
this person is somehow the fascist insect preying on the people,
when clearly, by any possible measure, he's not.
Speaker 13 (16:16):
On November sixth, nineteen seventy three, After an uneventful school
board meeting, Marcus Foster, along with the deputy superintendent Robert Blackburn,
was ambushed in the parking lot at the Oakland School
Administration Building. Three SLA soldiers Defriese. Nancy Ling and mis
(16:37):
Moon Soltiesek opened fire as Foster and Blackburn approached Blackburn's
Chevy Vega. Ling fired two shots with a Walther PP
three eighty, missing once then hitting Foster in the leg.
Defree shot Blackburn twice with a shotgun, seriously wounding him
but not killing him. Soltiesik then advanced the wounded Foster,
(17:01):
firing at him with the thirty eight the fatal shots.
The police would later find that the bullets that killed
Foster were tipped with cyanide. They fled two blocks to
where two other SLA members, Joe Ramiro and Russell Little
waited with a getaway car. They escaped late on the
(17:23):
night of November seventh, barely twenty four hours after the attack,
Radio station KPFA received a letter from the SLA detailing
the reasons for the Foster assassination. Two newspapers also received
copies of the letter. The letter was immediately recognized as
authentic because it referenced the use of cyanide laced bullets,
(17:47):
a detail that had not been made public. The contents
of the letter revolved around the proposed placement of armed
guards in Oakland schools and the implementation of a student
I D system, which they believed would allow information to
be entered into a clearly fictitious federal initiative called the
Internal Warfare Identification Computer System. If they thought this was
(18:11):
going to win them supporters, they were wrong.
Speaker 15 (18:15):
It gives you a sense of what Patty Hurst was
brought into, which is just a group that is senselessly violent,
and she gives over.
Speaker 13 (18:27):
To it again. Author Brian Burrow.
Speaker 14 (18:33):
I mean, they.
Speaker 10 (18:33):
Literally thought that they could overthrow the government and change
the world. Twelve of these nobodies in Berkeley, and you know,
for every person that they recruited in Berkeley, I'm sure
there were fifteen that laughed at them. I mean, nobody
took this group seriously until a faithful night when they
managed to kidnap Pettyhurst, and that changed everything, that made
(18:58):
them into a joke that it actually done something noteworthy,
that it had actually done something that no radical group
up until that point had done, had executed an action
in this case of kidnapping of a very wealthy person
that resurrected the entire underground radical movement. The SLA erupts
(19:21):
out of nowhere to give a second and entirely unexpected
birth to the underground movement.
Speaker 13 (19:28):
And it all happened right there in Berkeley. The SLA
had pulled off an action that drew intense national attention.
The question was, now that they had their hostage, what
would be their demands. The demands arrived on February twelfth,
in the form of a letter and an audio tape.
(19:50):
All the SLA members took on new revolutionary names. We
don't need to go through them, ma, all but Defreese's
SLA name was sinqter to the leader of a revolt
on the Spanish slaveship Amistad in eighteen thirty nine.
Speaker 5 (20:07):
Greetings to the people and fellow comrade, brothers and sisters.
My name is sin Q, and to my comrades, I
am known as Sin. I am a black man and
a representative of black people. I hold the rank of
General Phield Marshall in the United Federated Forces of the
(20:28):
Symbonese Liberation Army. Today I have received in order from
the Symbonese war counsul the Court of the People, to
the effect that I am ordered to convey the following
message in behalf of the SLA, and to insert a
tape word of comfort and verification that Patricia Campbell Hurst
(20:50):
is alive and safe. That an action of good faith
be shown the part of the Hurst family to allow
the Court and the oppressed people of this world and
this nation to ascertain as to the real interests and
cooperative attitude of the Hearst family, and in so doing
show some form of repentance for the murder and suffering
(21:12):
they have aided and profited from. And this good faith
gesture is to be in the form of a token
gesture to the oppressed people that they aid the corporate
state in robbing and removing their rights to freedom and liberty.
This gesture is to be in the form of food
to the needy and the unemployed, and to which the
(21:32):
following instructions are directed to be followed to the letter.
Speaker 13 (21:37):
It ended in the way that all of the essla's
communicates ended with this phrase, death.
Speaker 5 (21:44):
Of the fascist insect that praised upon the life of
the people.
Speaker 13 (21:49):
This audiotape included Patty Hurst explaining that she was as
yet unharmed in her understanding of the situation. You heard
a part of this at the beginning of this episode.
The tape also included the piece you just heard with
Donald de Frees. Using his nom de guerre Sinq, he
demanded that Patty's father, Randolph Hurst, feed the poor in
(22:12):
the Bay area. The specifics were daunting. The token gesture
that Sinq mentions, in fact, is to provide seventy dollars
worth of food to everyone in the state on welfare
or Social Security or several other programs. Experts believe that
the costs would run to about three hundred million dollars.
(22:34):
This was far beyond Randolph Hurst's means. Again, author Jeffrey Tubin.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
The Hurst family decided to try to meet the demand,
at least somewhat, and they set up an organization very
much on the spur of the moment called People in Need,
which was a shoe string operation to try to spend
really a great deal of money of feeding the poor
(23:04):
of the San Francisco area.
Speaker 13 (23:07):
Hurst contributed five hundred thousand dollars to the effort, and
the Hurst Foundation added another one point five million. This
is what they had to work with. The initiative was
called People in Need or PEN.
Speaker 3 (23:21):
In fairness to the Hurst family, no, it was difficult
to set up something like this on the fly since
it had literally never been done before, especially under the
pressure of this kidnapping. But even by that standards, it
was kind.
Speaker 13 (23:37):
Of nuts to run this spur of the moment program.
Hirst brought a man named Ludlow Kramer down from Washington State,
where he had served as Secretary of State. Kramer had
previously run a successful private program called Neighbors in Need,
providing food and basic staples to unemployed aerospace workers in
(23:59):
his state. His work in Washington, though, was dealing mostly
with middle class families who had suffered a sudden employment emergency.
This would be an entirely different challenge here. At a
press conference outside the Hearst residence, Creamer asked for donations
to augment the food purchased through the PIN funds.
Speaker 8 (24:21):
We are asking today that any producer of any commodities
that wants to donate to the People in Need program
to contact us. We have been given thirty two trucks
to date, and we'll be able to pick that food
up tomorrow. We have sixteen phones in operation as of now, and.
Speaker 5 (24:42):
We believe we'll be able to.
Speaker 11 (24:43):
Take care of the calls that take place.
Speaker 8 (24:46):
The only thing that we have to pay for under
the laws of this country is the telephone system. If
anyone want to donate what that cost, we would gladly
accept that.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
They did set up an operation in a very short
period of time in a warehouse down by the water,
very close to where the San Francisco Giants Ballpark is today,
and they did start these food distributions.
Speaker 10 (25:12):
That's up.
Speaker 5 (25:14):
How are you give me a one shot.
Speaker 8 (25:18):
Of the black guy when you can't.
Speaker 13 (25:21):
Here's Loudlow Kreamer at the Pin warehouse addressing the press
about plans for the first food distribution.
Speaker 16 (25:30):
We hope to open those sites at approximately ten AM
and we hope to within those eleven sites have between
twenty and twenty four thousand bags of groceries to distribute.
We believe that the type of food meets the demands
of the SLA. We have meat, poultry, fresh vegetables, fruit.
Speaker 13 (26:00):
The first PIN food distribution was a disaster. Veteran San
Francisco community organizer Calvin Welch.
Speaker 9 (26:09):
The successful food distribution happened as a result of the
activities of a community coalition, the People in Need Program
created a mess, and these people had no idea how
to distribute food. They actually threw it off the back
of a truck. It was a joke and it was
(26:32):
humiliating to our people. There were community based organizations in
Bayview that could have very effectively distributed that food that
the People in Need Program didn't even know exist.
Speaker 13 (26:46):
Four distribution sites had been designated around the Bay area.
At one of the sites in Oakland, the Shabbaz Bakery,
which was run by the Nation of Islam, a food
riot broke out. People climbed into the trucks and threw
food into the surrounding crowd. Chaos ensued, people were injured.
Speaker 9 (27:08):
Hey, man, I was fucked up.
Speaker 7 (27:09):
What they did.
Speaker 14 (27:09):
Man doing the food out the talk they should have
done that.
Speaker 8 (27:12):
That was found.
Speaker 9 (27:13):
I was upsetting.
Speaker 14 (27:14):
It was really found.
Speaker 13 (27:17):
When the trucks were empty, a crowd moved on Shabba's Bakery.
There was no more food to distribute, but they were
demanding their share, and the bakery workers apparently felt as
though they had to distribute food from their own supplies.
The Black Muslims who owned the bakery sent Pinnabill for
one hundred and fifty four thousand dollars to compensate them
(27:39):
for supposedly giving away seventy five tons of fish and
eight hundred and twenty cartons of eggs. Pinn eventually wrote
a check for ninety nine thousand and twenty six dollars,
though it wasn't clear that this food had actually been
given out. These are difficult days, Louvelo Kramer commented. The
PIN operation itself verged on spinning out of control. Different
(28:03):
groups tried to take command of the food distribution, including
the Black Panthers and the People's Temple, led by the
Reverend Jim Jones, who in nineteen seventy eight would lead
more than nine hundred of his followers to commit mass
suicide in Jonestown. Guyana. Volunteers also came from other radical
organizations and from the ranks of idealists who wanted to
(28:26):
help feed the poor. A reporter for the Los Angeles
Times described visiting the PIN headquarters.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
The dominant impression is of a paranoid security consciousness, a
vast concern for favorable public relations image, and the confusion
of a dozen petty officers and aging radicals who wander
about with plastic cups of coffee in one hand and
clipboards in the other, issuing mutually disregarded orders and declarations
of policy emanating apparently from some unknown source.
Speaker 4 (28:59):
And into this arrived a suburban divorcee in her mid
forties who would twenty months later take a shot at
the President. Her name was Sarah Jane Moore. She was,
according to Patty Hirst fiance Stephen Weed, shrill, abrasive, and
totally unpredictable. She had arrived at Penn to volunteer her
services as a bookkeeper. She said, God sent me next
(29:23):
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Speaker 1 (29:46):
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Speaker 2 (00:16):
Mom, Dad, I'm okay. I had a few scrapes and stuff,
but they've washed them up and they're getting okay. And
I've caught a cold, but they're giving me pills for it,
and so I'm not being starved or beaten or unnecessarily frightened.
(00:44):
I've heard some press reports, and so I know that
Steve and all the neighbors are okay, that no one
was really hurt. I'm with a combat unit that's armed
with automatic weapons, and.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
And I'm ah, there's also a medical.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Team here, and I'm there's no way that I will
be released and let until they let me go. So
it wouldn't do any good for somebody to come in
here and try to get me out by force. These
(01:24):
people aren't just a bunch of nuts, and they've been
really honest with me, but they're perfectly willing to die
for what they're doing. And I wanna get out of here,
but I the only way I'm going to is if
(01:44):
we do it their way. And I just hope that
you'll do what they say, Dad, and just do it quickly.
I mean, I feel pretty sure that that I'm gonna
get out of here if everything goes the way they
wanted to. And I think you should feel that way too,
(02:06):
and and try not to worry so much. I mean,
I know it's hard, but I heard that Mom was
really upset and and that all everybody was at home,
and and I mean, I hope that this puts you
a little bit at ease, so that and that you
(02:28):
know that I that I really but I really am
all right. I just hope I can get back to
everybody really soon.
Speaker 4 (02:44):
And I'm Mary Catherine Garrison, and this is rip current.
Speaker 5 (02:52):
Meetings. To the people and fellow comrade, brothers and sisters,
my name is sin Q, and to my comrades, I
am known as.
Speaker 4 (03:02):
Sin Episode six, Death to the Fascist insect that preys
upon the life of the people. At just after nine
pm on February fourth, nineteen seventy four, a woman and
two men, all armed, burst into an apartment in the
(03:24):
building near the University of California campus in Berkeley. The
intruders beat and tied up a man named Stephen weed
and a neighbor, Steve Suanaga, who had come to see
what was causing the disturbance. The intruders then grabbed the
young woman who lived in the apartment. She was nineteen
years old and a sophomore at Berkeley. They dragged her
(03:45):
down the stairs and bundled her into the trunk of
a car. A witness described what he saw in the street.
Speaker 6 (03:52):
We heard a scream, two or three shots. So three
of us that were in the house ran downstairs, and
one of the guys the street said the guns are
loaded and to get the hell off the street. So
we got off the street, and we saw a second
carpool up, and I ran out again, and the other
fellow try to look at the license, and they started shooting,
So I just fell on the ground.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
Did you have a feeling they were shooting at you
or just shooting in any direction?
Speaker 6 (04:15):
They could seem to me they were just shooting, So
everybody would get off the street and not look at
the plates or give any positive identification.
Speaker 7 (04:21):
Were there a lot of people on the street at that.
Speaker 6 (04:23):
Time, Yeah, I'd say about twenty people were probably roused
out of their house just by the shots and screams.
Speaker 4 (04:30):
This abduction and the fate of the victim would soon
preoccupy the nation.
Speaker 8 (04:36):
There's been a big kidnapping on the West Coast. The
victim is Patricia Hurst, the daughter of newspaper executive Randolph
Hurst and a granddaughter of the legendary William Randolph Hurst.
Speaker 4 (04:48):
Before February nineteen seventy four, most of America probably hadn't
heard of Patricia Hurst or even her father, Randolph, but
people would have known the Hurst name, and certainly William
Randolph Hurst.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
William Randolph Hurst, who invented the Hearst Publishing Empire, own
the largest private residence in the United States, the Hearst
Castle at San Simeon, which is now open to the public.
I'm Jeffrey Tubin. I'm the chief legal analyst on CNN,
and I'm the author of American Heiress, The kidnapping, Crimes
(05:20):
and Trial of Patty Hurst. His life was the basis
of perhaps the greatest American movie ever made, Citizen Kane
by Arson Wells.
Speaker 9 (05:31):
He's that clearly your idea how to run a new paper.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
I don't know how to run a newspaper, mister Betcher.
Speaker 10 (05:36):
I just try everything I can think of.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
His family was among the richest in the United States,
if not the world at that time. So the Hurst name,
while still famous today, was really magical in the seventies.
So if you wanted to get attention, you would try
to do something with regard to the Hearsts, and that's
what the SLA decided to do.
Speaker 4 (05:56):
This was, of course, well before the advent of twenty
four hour news and the ending news cycle, but in
the context of the news media at the time, Patty
hurst kidnapping was a huge story. This was a product
of both the Hearst fame and the novelty of a
high profile kidnapping a rare occurrence in the US.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
There was a tremendous amount of attention, and there's no
doubt it was a real kidnapping. She didn't know the SLA,
she didn't have any connection to those people.
Speaker 4 (06:25):
Three days later, a plain, white envelope was delivered to
KPFA radio in Berkeley. Inside was a communicate from something
called the Symbionese Liberation Army West Regional Adult Unit. It
claimed responsibility for kidnapping Patty. Here, Patty's father, Randolph Hurst,
reads from the letter at a press conference.
Speaker 11 (06:47):
The United Federated Forces of the Cydianese Liberation Army armed
with cyanide loaded weapons, served in a restward upon Patricia
Campbell Herds. All communications in this court must be published
in full in all newspapers and all other forms of
the media. Figured to do so and danger the safety
of the prisoner. See any attempt be made by authorities
(07:10):
to rescue the prisoner or to arrest or harm any
SLA elements. The prisoner is to be executed, and in
capital letters under that is death to the fastest insect
that praise upon the life of the people.
Speaker 4 (07:25):
The SLA promised further communications to follow. The country wanted
to know what exactly was the Symbionese Liberation Army.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
The area south of San Francisco what is now known
as Silicon Valley, but also over to Oakland and San Jose.
That whole region was home to a tremendous number of
really dangerous radical groups in the nineteen seventies. The Hell's
Angels were there, the Black Panthers were but were started there,
(07:56):
and the Symbionese Liberation Army was a very small offshoot
of that radical world. It was started by an ex
con named Donald de Friese, who thought of himself as
the leader of a revolutionary group.
Speaker 4 (08:19):
Defriese had been imprisoned at the California Medical Facility at Vaccaville,
a medium security prison. He'd been given a six to
fourteen year sentence for stealing a one thousand dollars bankers check.
While he became radicalized in prison, Defrize was not a
leader in the prison radical scene. In fact, his attempts
to acquire some semblance of power were opposed by George Jackson,
(08:41):
perhaps the most important prison radical in California, if not
the country. But things changed for Defreese after he escaped
from Solidad State Penitentiary on March fifth, nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 10 (08:54):
I'm Brian Burrow.
Speaker 7 (08:55):
I'm an author of I think seven books, including Days
of Ray, which I think came out in twenty fourteen,
which was a look at violent radical groups that went
underground and started bombing things in the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 10 (09:09):
He managed to escape from Solidad in seventy three, thinking
that the texts that he'd read, whether Cleaver or Fan
or George Jackson, thinking that that's the way the world
was outside the prison wall, not realizing that it wasn't anymore.
That the America that he escaped out into in nineteen
(09:30):
seventy three and made his way to Berkeley was not
primed for bloody revolution as perhaps it had been in
nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
He recruited a very small handful of adherents, and they
called themselves Symbionese because he thought of the word symbiosis
as a bringing together, and so he made up the
word Symbionese and liberation Army was in keeping with the
sort of radical.
Speaker 11 (10:00):
Of that time.
Speaker 4 (10:03):
Some of Defries's recruits had either been a part of
or associated with Vinceerramos, a radical organization that advocated armed struggle.
It was run and mostly comprised of white radicals, but
a central belief of the group was that former black prisoners,
because of their alienation and training and violence, would play
a leading role in this struggle. These former black prisoners
(10:25):
were idealized for having survived in the prison system, which
was perceived as the most extreme and violent example of
society's racism and exploitation. This experience was the preparation that
would allow them to be leaders in revolutionary groups. This
is Britney Friedman, Assistant professor of sociology at the University
of southern California. Talking about these former prisoners, she mentions
(10:49):
political prisoners, which in this case doesn't mean people who
are incarcerated because of their politics, but inmates who became
political and social activists in prison and were often seen
by the authorities for their activism.
Speaker 12 (11:03):
To survive is considered a badge when someone gets out
because you have survived what it would be considered to
be the worst of the worst, because you've survived what
people know happens in society. Right, so we know that
in society for over a century, we've had connections between
law enforcement and the ku Klux Klan, often one and
(11:24):
the same across the country, and that being a joint
alliance to eradicate freedom movements and people you know, have
survived that. I think with political prisoners, when they come out,
people are thinking that someone was able to survive that
in generate knowledge from that while being behind the.
Speaker 4 (11:45):
Cage, and when these prisoners were released or escaped, they
held an authenticity, a certain authority that attracted young white radicals,
people who.
Speaker 12 (11:57):
Might be coming from a white middle class or white
upper middle class background, who might have an affinity for
certain political ideals, but they've never put them in practice.
They've never survived them in practice. They just read them
in a book. They're not embodied. And I think having
a close connection with someone where it is embodied, the
where they live, the way they've survived, the way they talk,
(12:20):
there is a charisma to that that draws people in.
Speaker 4 (12:25):
This dynamic between black ex convicts and young, middle and
upper class white radicals would play out in the story
of the SLA.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
Donald the Friese was black, but everyone else in the
SLA was white, and they were all young, so they
hadn't been involved in many things for very long. But
they were an eclectic group from around the country who
had sort of drifted west, like a lot of young
people in that period, and they all got together and
(12:55):
started planning to do what they thought of as revolutionary acts.
Speaker 4 (13:01):
As a symbol, the SLA adopted the image of a
seven headed cobra. Each head represented an SLA value, self determination, unity,
cooperative production, and so on. They introduced themselves to the
public in November of nineteen seventy three with a crime
that showed both their willingness to use horrific violence and
(13:22):
the incoherence of their political philosophy. After the break.
Speaker 13 (13:37):
The kidnapping of Patty Hurst brought the SLA national attention
for the first time, but people in the Bay Area
had to look back only a few months to recall
their initial act of violence.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
The bizarre and awful beginning of the SLA was the
assassination of Marcus Foster, who was the Oakland School superintendent,
an African American himself, who was really trying to improve
Oakland school system, which was known as one of the worst,
(14:10):
not just in California, but in the whole country.
Speaker 13 (14:14):
Foster, along with his deputy Robert Blackburn, were recruited from
the Philadelphia public school system and we're a reason for
optimism in the Oakland community. Here Foster appears on the
Oakland radio show The Open Pulpit with Reverend Charles H. Belcher.
Speaker 14 (14:33):
I think that in everything we need to build the
eagle strength of our young people, especially our damaged youngsters,
where society shouts at them that this is too good
for you. That's the second class. Citizenship is your natural lot.
And you see that reflected in symbols of racism in
terms of housing patterns and the quality of homes in
(14:53):
certain sections of the city. This kind of symbolism tends
to be degrading and debilitating and denigrating, and whatever you
can do to offset that by giving a person a
sense of his power, by helping him shape a positive
image of himself, to help him develop a sense of
belonging to a church or to a school, or to
(15:13):
some institution that is pro social, and really building that
so that he feels that when he opens his mouth
to talk, someone is going to hear him. You're on
your way to making that child a fine individual and
pulling out of him the potential that's there.
Speaker 13 (15:31):
Jared Kobec, author of Motor Spirit and Where to Find Zodiac.
Speaker 15 (15:37):
If I'm not mistaken, I believe he was the first
African American superintendent in Oakland. He was there specifically to
just get poor kids, particularly poor black kids, a better education.
Speaker 13 (15:52):
But Defreese developed conspiratorial beliefs about some of Foster's new
policies and decided that the SLA needed to assassinate Foster.
Speaker 15 (16:02):
This is the extent of their political thinking, right, that
this person is somehow the fascist insect preying on the people,
when clearly, by any possible measure, he's not.
Speaker 13 (16:16):
On November sixth, nineteen seventy three, After an uneventful school
board meeting, Marcus Foster, along with the deputy superintendent Robert Blackburn,
was ambushed in the parking lot at the Oakland School
Administration Building. Three SLA soldiers Defriese. Nancy Ling and mis
(16:37):
Moon Soltiesek opened fire as Foster and Blackburn approached Blackburn's
Chevy Vega. Ling fired two shots with a Walther PP
three eighty, missing once then hitting Foster in the leg.
Defree shot Blackburn twice with a shotgun, seriously wounding him
but not killing him. Soltiesik then advanced the wounded Foster,
(17:01):
firing at him with the thirty eight the fatal shots.
The police would later find that the bullets that killed
Foster were tipped with cyanide. They fled two blocks to
where two other SLA members, Joe Ramiro and Russell Little
waited with a getaway car. They escaped late on the
(17:23):
night of November seventh, barely twenty four hours after the attack,
Radio station KPFA received a letter from the SLA detailing
the reasons for the Foster assassination. Two newspapers also received
copies of the letter. The letter was immediately recognized as
authentic because it referenced the use of cyanide laced bullets,
(17:47):
a detail that had not been made public. The contents
of the letter revolved around the proposed placement of armed
guards in Oakland schools and the implementation of a student
I D system, which they believed would allow information to
be entered into a clearly fictitious federal initiative called the
Internal Warfare Identification Computer System. If they thought this was
(18:11):
going to win them supporters, they were wrong.
Speaker 15 (18:15):
It gives you a sense of what Patty Hurst was
brought into, which is just a group that is senselessly violent,
and she gives over.
Speaker 13 (18:27):
To it again. Author Brian Burrow.
Speaker 14 (18:33):
I mean, they.
Speaker 10 (18:33):
Literally thought that they could overthrow the government and change
the world. Twelve of these nobodies in Berkeley, and you know,
for every person that they recruited in Berkeley, I'm sure
there were fifteen that laughed at them. I mean, nobody
took this group seriously until a faithful night when they
managed to kidnap Pettyhurst, and that changed everything, that made
(18:58):
them into a joke that it actually done something noteworthy,
that it had actually done something that no radical group
up until that point had done, had executed an action
in this case of kidnapping of a very wealthy person
that resurrected the entire underground radical movement. The SLA erupts
(19:21):
out of nowhere to give a second and entirely unexpected
birth to the underground movement.
Speaker 13 (19:28):
And it all happened right there in Berkeley. The SLA
had pulled off an action that drew intense national attention.
The question was, now that they had their hostage, what
would be their demands. The demands arrived on February twelfth,
in the form of a letter and an audio tape.
(19:50):
All the SLA members took on new revolutionary names. We
don't need to go through them, ma, all but Defreese's
SLA name was sinqter to the leader of a revolt
on the Spanish slaveship Amistad in eighteen thirty nine.
Speaker 5 (20:07):
Greetings to the people and fellow comrade, brothers and sisters.
My name is sin Q, and to my comrades, I
am known as Sin. I am a black man and
a representative of black people. I hold the rank of
General Phield Marshall in the United Federated Forces of the
(20:28):
Symbonese Liberation Army. Today I have received in order from
the Symbonese war counsul the Court of the People, to
the effect that I am ordered to convey the following
message in behalf of the SLA, and to insert a
tape word of comfort and verification that Patricia Campbell Hurst
(20:50):
is alive and safe. That an action of good faith
be shown the part of the Hurst family to allow
the Court and the oppressed people of this world and
this nation to ascertain as to the real interests and
cooperative attitude of the Hearst family, and in so doing
show some form of repentance for the murder and suffering
(21:12):
they have aided and profited from. And this good faith
gesture is to be in the form of a token
gesture to the oppressed people that they aid the corporate
state in robbing and removing their rights to freedom and liberty.
This gesture is to be in the form of food
to the needy and the unemployed, and to which the
(21:32):
following instructions are directed to be followed to the letter.
Speaker 13 (21:37):
It ended in the way that all of the essla's
communicates ended with this phrase, death.
Speaker 5 (21:44):
Of the fascist insect that praised upon the life of
the people.
Speaker 13 (21:49):
This audiotape included Patty Hurst explaining that she was as
yet unharmed in her understanding of the situation. You heard
a part of this at the beginning of this episode.
The tape also included the piece you just heard with
Donald de Frees. Using his nom de guerre Sinq, he
demanded that Patty's father, Randolph Hurst, feed the poor in
(22:12):
the Bay area. The specifics were daunting. The token gesture
that Sinq mentions, in fact, is to provide seventy dollars
worth of food to everyone in the state on welfare
or Social Security or several other programs. Experts believe that
the costs would run to about three hundred million dollars.
(22:34):
This was far beyond Randolph Hurst's means. Again, author Jeffrey Tubin.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
The Hurst family decided to try to meet the demand,
at least somewhat, and they set up an organization very
much on the spur of the moment called People in Need,
which was a shoe string operation to try to spend
really a great deal of money of feeding the poor
(23:04):
of the San Francisco area.
Speaker 13 (23:07):
Hurst contributed five hundred thousand dollars to the effort, and
the Hurst Foundation added another one point five million. This
is what they had to work with. The initiative was
called People in Need or PEN.
Speaker 3 (23:21):
In fairness to the Hurst family, no, it was difficult
to set up something like this on the fly since
it had literally never been done before, especially under the
pressure of this kidnapping. But even by that standards, it
was kind.
Speaker 13 (23:37):
Of nuts to run this spur of the moment program.
Hirst brought a man named Ludlow Kramer down from Washington State,
where he had served as Secretary of State. Kramer had
previously run a successful private program called Neighbors in Need,
providing food and basic staples to unemployed aerospace workers in
(23:59):
his state. His work in Washington, though, was dealing mostly
with middle class families who had suffered a sudden employment emergency.
This would be an entirely different challenge here. At a
press conference outside the Hearst residence, Creamer asked for donations
to augment the food purchased through the PIN funds.
Speaker 8 (24:21):
We are asking today that any producer of any commodities
that wants to donate to the People in Need program
to contact us. We have been given thirty two trucks
to date, and we'll be able to pick that food
up tomorrow. We have sixteen phones in operation as of now, and.
Speaker 5 (24:42):
We believe we'll be able to.
Speaker 11 (24:43):
Take care of the calls that take place.
Speaker 8 (24:46):
The only thing that we have to pay for under
the laws of this country is the telephone system. If
anyone want to donate what that cost, we would gladly
accept that.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
They did set up an operation in a very short
period of time in a warehouse down by the water,
very close to where the San Francisco Giants Ballpark is today,
and they did start these food distributions.
Speaker 10 (25:12):
That's up.
Speaker 5 (25:14):
How are you give me a one shot.
Speaker 8 (25:18):
Of the black guy when you can't.
Speaker 13 (25:21):
Here's Loudlow Kreamer at the Pin warehouse addressing the press
about plans for the first food distribution.
Speaker 16 (25:30):
We hope to open those sites at approximately ten AM
and we hope to within those eleven sites have between
twenty and twenty four thousand bags of groceries to distribute.
We believe that the type of food meets the demands
of the SLA. We have meat, poultry, fresh vegetables, fruit.
Speaker 13 (26:00):
The first PIN food distribution was a disaster. Veteran San
Francisco community organizer Calvin Welch.
Speaker 9 (26:09):
The successful food distribution happened as a result of the
activities of a community coalition, the People in Need Program
created a mess, and these people had no idea how
to distribute food. They actually threw it off the back
of a truck. It was a joke and it was
(26:32):
humiliating to our people. There were community based organizations in
Bayview that could have very effectively distributed that food that
the People in Need Program didn't even know exist.
Speaker 13 (26:46):
Four distribution sites had been designated around the Bay area.
At one of the sites in Oakland, the Shabbaz Bakery,
which was run by the Nation of Islam, a food
riot broke out. People climbed into the trucks and threw
food into the surrounding crowd. Chaos ensued, people were injured.
Speaker 9 (27:08):
Hey, man, I was fucked up.
Speaker 7 (27:09):
What they did.
Speaker 14 (27:09):
Man doing the food out the talk they should have
done that.
Speaker 8 (27:12):
That was found.
Speaker 9 (27:13):
I was upsetting.
Speaker 14 (27:14):
It was really found.
Speaker 13 (27:17):
When the trucks were empty, a crowd moved on Shabba's Bakery.
There was no more food to distribute, but they were
demanding their share, and the bakery workers apparently felt as
though they had to distribute food from their own supplies.
The Black Muslims who owned the bakery sent Pinnabill for
one hundred and fifty four thousand dollars to compensate them
(27:39):
for supposedly giving away seventy five tons of fish and
eight hundred and twenty cartons of eggs. Pinn eventually wrote
a check for ninety nine thousand and twenty six dollars,
though it wasn't clear that this food had actually been
given out. These are difficult days, Louvelo Kramer commented. The
PIN operation itself verged on spinning out of control. Different
(28:03):
groups tried to take command of the food distribution, including
the Black Panthers and the People's Temple, led by the
Reverend Jim Jones, who in nineteen seventy eight would lead
more than nine hundred of his followers to commit mass
suicide in Jonestown. Guyana. Volunteers also came from other radical
organizations and from the ranks of idealists who wanted to
(28:26):
help feed the poor. A reporter for the Los Angeles
Times described visiting the PIN headquarters.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
The dominant impression is of a paranoid security consciousness, a
vast concern for favorable public relations image, and the confusion
of a dozen petty officers and aging radicals who wander
about with plastic cups of coffee in one hand and
clipboards in the other, issuing mutually disregarded orders and declarations
of policy emanating apparently from some unknown source.
Speaker 4 (28:59):
And into this arrived a suburban divorcee in her mid
forties who would twenty months later take a shot at
the President. Her name was Sarah Jane Moore. She was,
according to Patty Hirst fiance Stephen Weed, shrill, abrasive, and
totally unpredictable. She had arrived at Penn to volunteer her
services as a bookkeeper. She said, God sent me next
(29:23):
time on Rip Current.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
Rip Current was created and written by Toby Ball and
developed with Alexander Williams. Hosted by Toby Ball with Mary
Catherine Garrison. Original music by Jeff Sanoff, Show art by
Jeffney as Goda and Charles rudder Is, Jesse funk, Rema
O'Kelly and Noams Griffin. Supervising producer Trilie Young, Executive producers
(30:07):
Alexander Williams and Matt Frederick. Hear episodes of Rip Current
early completely add free and receive exclusive bonus content by
subscribing to iHeart True Crime Plus only on Apple podcasts.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows, and visit
(30:28):
our website ripcurrentpod dot com
Host
Toby Ball
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