February 20, 1954
Tania
Robber
Patricia Hearst, the granddaughter of newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst, gained notoriety in 1974, when she was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), a radical group seeking to incite people to rebel against the U.S. government and corporate America. In a strange twist of events that has never been fully explained, the nineteen-year-old newspaper heiress began to sympathize with her captors.
Hearst began participating in SLA activities, including bank robberies. Caught on bank security film toting a sub-machine gun during a heist, she also drove a getaway car in a bank robbery that ended in the death of an innocent woman. Sentenced to eight years in prison, Hearst was released early and began telling her story to the world. Claiming to have been brainwashed by her captors, the woman who at one time had adopted the revolutionary name Tania rejected the SLA and embraced fame. (See original entry on Hearst in Outlaws, Mobsters, & Crooks, Volume 1.)
After serving twenty-two months of her eight-year sentence, Hearst was released from prison after U.S. President Jimmy Carter (1924–) shortened her sentence. In 1998 she was granted a full pardon by President Bill Clinton (1946–). During and after her trial, Hearst argued that she had been the victim of abuse and brainwashing. That brainwashing, she claimed, was responsible for her seemingly voluntary participation in the SLA cause. Hearst also maintained that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) knew in advance that the SLA planned to abduct her—and did nothing to warn her. “The FBI had the plans for my kidnapping a month before it happened and didn’t bother to tell me,” she told Interview magazine. “I think their behavior was disgraceful.”
Not everyone believed that the newspaper heiress was brainwashed. William Harris, an SLA member who was imprisoned for his role in SLA-sponsored terrorism, said Hearst’s version of events is inaccurate. The SLA, he claimed, did not torture or control Hearst. “We’re accused of brainwashing her,” he told Newsweek. “That’s ridiculous—we didn’t know how to do that.” Further, he claimed that the SLA did not understand the psychological relationship between the kidnap victim and her captors. “It was all beyond our control and hers,” he continued. “We were all swept up in the thing.” Harris was among those who believed that Hearst might have experienced something known as the “Stockholm syndrome,” a condition in which a hostage begins to identify with his or her abductors.
After her release from prison, Hearst did not shun publicity. “I guess hiding has never been a part of who I am,” she told Interview. “And I have nothing to hide.” In fact, she enjoyed a certain amount of celebrity after her release. Hearst had been interested in acting since her youth and had performed in high school plays. She now enjoys a career in film—thanks, in large part, to director John Waters. Hearst first met Waters at a cocktail party in 1988, during the Cannes Film Festival, the prestigious annual film event held in Cannes, a city on the southern coast of France.
In 1989 Hearst and Waters worked together on Cry Baby, a rock comedy starring Johnny Depp. Hearst went on to appear in four more Waters films, including Cecil B. Demented, in which a famous Hollywood star (Melanie Griffith) is kidnapped by terrorists who plan to destroy a large corporate film business. In this movie, the onetime SLA prisoner portrays the mother of a kidnapper. Hearst viewed the role as a cleansing. “I feel I have cinematic immunity now,” she told Newsweek. “I’ve been inoculated.” Commenting on Hearst’s role in a comedy involving terrorists and kidnapping, Waters said, “She doesn’t think what happened to her was funny, but she has had a sense of humor to survive it.”
In a more serious matter, Hearst was expected to play a critical role in the murder trial of former SLA member Kathy Soliah (see entry). Arrested in June 1999, Soliah had been living peacefully under the name of Sara Jane Olson in a Minneapolis, Minnesota suburb. The mother of three, Soliah and three other members of the SLA were charged with first-degree murder. During an SLA bank robbery in Carmichael, California (near Sacramento), in 1975, Myrna Opsahl, a forty-two-year-old mother of four children, was killed by a shotgun blast. Hearst drove the getaway car.
In spite of testimony that described her as a peaceful citizen, Soliah was convicted in January 2002 for taking part in a plot to blow up a police car. Sentenced to twenty years to life in prison, she is expected to plead not guilty to the murder of Myrna Opsahl. The case against her rests on Hearst’s testimony. Because the bank robbers wore ski masks, they cannot be identified by witnesses or bank film footage. But Hearst, who participated in the heist, can identify the robbers.
Not everyone considers Hearst to be a reliable witness. Stuart Hanlon, a lawyer representing another SLA member charged in the Opsahl shooting, claimed that the newspaper heiress was again attempting to portray herself as a victim. “She has continually used her money, her position, to try to rewrite history,” he said. “She took no responsibility for anything she ever did.”
Whatever role she played in SLA activities in the 1970s, Hearst now condemns the group. In an interview on CNN in 2002, she compared members of the SLA to mass murderers Charles Manson and Timothy McVeigh and she likened the group’s tactics to those of modern-day terrorists. She told CNN, “It was their own little jihad [holy war] they had going.”
She’s a Lady
To celebrate their seventeenth anniversary, Hearst’s husband, Bernard Shaw, bought his wife a title [a position among the British royalty]. The woman once known as Tania now has the title of Lady of Ballycashel.
Sorry Waters
Director John Waters first met Hearst at a party during the Cannes Film Festival, where the newspaper heiress was celebrating the release of the biographical film Patty Hearst, directed by Paul Schraeder. Waters approached Hearst and said, “I always thought you were guilty until I saw that film. And I’m so sorry.” The following year, Hearst and Waters began working together on films.
“Citizen Hearst.” Interview (October 1996): p. 64.
“The Fascist Insect Bites Back.” The Economist (January 26, 2002).
“From Villain to Victim.” Newsweek (February 4, 2002): p. 29.
Ramsland, Katherine. “Hearst, Soliah and the S.L.A.” The Crime Library. http://www.crimelibrary.com/classics4/hearst/ (accessed on August 2, 2002).
“Hearst to Testify.” Maclean’s (February 4, 2002): p. 14.
“Patty’s Paranoia Pays Off.” Time (June 22, 1998): p. 85.
“Two Birds of a Feather: John Waters and Patricia Hearst Conspire in the Kidnapping Caper ‘Cecil B. Demented.’” Newsweek (August 14, 2000): p. 62.
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