Donald DeFreeze

Donald DeFreeze
FBI file photo showing DeFreeze robbing the Hibernia bank.
Alternate name(s):	Field Marshal Cinque
Date of birth:	November 16, 1943
Place of birth:	Cleveland, Ohio
Date of death:	May 17 1974 (aged 30)
Place of death:	Los Angeles, California
Movement:	Symbionese Liberation Army

Donald David DeFreeze, (November 16, 1943 – May 17 1974 (aged 30)), also known as Cinque Mtume, was the leader of the Symbionese Liberation Army, an American revolutionary group operating in the mid-1970s.

DeFreeze was born in Cleveland, Ohio but became a career criminal in California. In 1972, he was serving a sentence in Soledad Prison (in Soledad, California) for armed robbery. Those who knew him in his early days considered him an unimpressive thug. He had once robbed a prostitute of ten dollars and had turned a friend in to the police.[1] While in Soledad, DeFreeze met with some radical extremists who were working as volunteers in the prison and was converted to their political ideas. After being transferred to Vacaville Prison, he escaped on March 5, 1973. DeFreeze adopted the name "Field Marshal Cinque." Cinque took this name from the reported leader of the slave rebellion which took over the Spanish slave ship Amistad in 1839. DeFreeze, along with Patricia Soltysik, founded the Symbionese Liberation Army and recruited a handful of other members for the group. The group perpetrated a number of crimes, the most infamous being the murder of Marcus Foster and the abduction of Patty Hearst. On May 17, 1974, the Los Angeles Police Department surrounded a house where DeFreeze and five other SLA members were staying. During the shootout between police and SLA members that ensued, the house caught fire. DeFreeze and others crawled through a hole in the floor into a crawlspace beneath the house. Apparently burning alive, DeFreeze committed suicide by shooting himself in the right temple.^[1] His corpse was so badly burned that his family did not initially believe the remains belonged to DeFreeze.

Cultural References

He is mentioned in the poem "Scar" by Audre Lorde. He partly inspired Randall Flagg, villain of The Stand.

References