January 11, 2010 • 16 mins
In 1974, publishing heiress Patty Hearst was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army. Originally a hostage, Hearst eventually became a member of the SLA, participating in at least two robberies. Tune in to learn more about Patty Hearst.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in history class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Sarada and Sarah. What if
I walked up to your cube and said to you,
death to the fascist insect that prays upon the life
(00:22):
of the people. I would say, Katie, what are you
talking about? And I would tell you, Sarah that that
was the motto of the Symbionese Liberation Army, the group
that kidnapped Heiress Patty Hurst. And probably a lot of
us know Patty Hurst better than her famous grandfather, William
Randolph Hurst, the publishing giant who we've talked about now
in the news podcast and a podcast dedicated to his
(00:45):
life and the Hurst Castle, Pipe and the Castle. But
a short time after Patty Hurst was kidnapped, she proclaimed
herself one of the s l A and started robbing
banks with them and calling herself Tanya. So the question here,
of course, is what on earth happened? And to start
that off, we should probably get some background about who
(01:06):
the s l A is. Yeah, the Simonse Liberation Army.
The title doesn't really give us much information. It kind
of sounds like gobbledy gook. So we need to go
back into their history and find out how they started. Right.
So the group grew out of a black inmate organization
called the Black Cultural Association, and it was started with
the best of intentions. Berkeley students came to a California
(01:29):
prison in the sixties and seventies to tutor prisoners and
subjects like political science. So it was kind of a
self help group for prisoners, but it ended up turning
into a black nationalist group that got violent. Yeah, one prisoner,
Donald Defrees, took the lead, and some of the tutors
got involved too, and by nineteen seventy three, in March,
(01:52):
Defrees escapes from prison and goes to the Berkeley kids, right,
and they're stealing weapons, they're robbing places. They've got this
faux military discipline where they're training in military maneuvers, but honestly,
you don't really know what they're doing. And their ideas
were about ending racism, ending monogamy, ending the prison system,
and you know anything else that sounded vaguely capitalist. Yeah,
(02:13):
So the s LA is this strange mixture of white,
upper middle class, well educated men and women and then
a prisoner of African American prisoner who is their leader,
and they all went violence to this is not a
peaceful movement now. So in November six ninety three, the
s l A makes their move and they kill black
(02:36):
school superintendent Marcus Foster because he was trying to institute
a system of school ideas, which they were very against.
But this action turns the rest of the political left
and there are a lot of political radicals at Berkeley
against them, because well, if you're going to kill someone,
why would you start with a well respected black superintendent. Yeah,
(02:56):
so this is the start of the s l A.
The how on earth did they enter the life of
Patty Hurst, this famous heiress, right because she led a
very privileged life. She was born in nineteen fifty four
in San Francisco, and, being the granddaughter of William Randolph Hurst,
grew up very wealthy. She later described her childhood as
(03:17):
pretty perfect, although she had some rebellious moments. She started
dating one of her teachers when she was sixteen or so, which,
as you can imagine, her parents were really thrilled about,
and they ended up engaged and living together. Different sources
say she might have had more rebellion than just this
romance with her teacher, and she may have fought with nuns,
(03:38):
she may have experimented with LSD and had a sexual
history that began at age fifteen. But um, things are
a little a little dodgy about well, and that just
makes me think of I guess the Amanda Knox trial,
since at the time of recording that's been going on,
she was just convicted, and it just makes a more
interesting story to make her either a good girl or
(04:00):
a bad girl. And well, I mean, if you're experimenting
with drugs and adding sex, clearly that sticks you in
the bad girl category. Well, it's trying to to make
a context around what later happens to her, make it
makes sense. And I want to make sure my sarcasms epdence.
I am not classifying Patty hers that's a quote unquote
bad girl. So that brings us up to our main event.
(04:20):
February four, nineteen, Patty is kidnapped from her apartment in
Berkeley by the Symbionese Liberation Army. A woman comes to
the door. She says she's having car trouble, classic scam move.
Can she use the phone? Patty opens the door. Two
guys come in with automatic weapons, they beat up her fiance,
teacher teacher. Right, Patty's taken away, she's blindfolded and tied up,
(04:43):
and then she's stuck in a hot, dark closet for
days where no one talks to her but to freeze.
So we don't know what she raped, beaten. They probably
don't let her sleep or eat very much, and her
life is probably threatened. But her yeah, some of her
accounts change. She wrote a book about it, but she
said different things in court, and she'd said different things
(05:03):
and other interviews, so we're a little fuzzy on that,
but I'm going to go ahead and say it wasn't
a pleasant experience. And on the outside there's a media
frenzy going on. You can imagine this young socialite has
been kidnapped, and a few days later, the s l
A says that they have Patty, they've judged her guilty,
(05:23):
and they'd let her go of their demands were met,
And they also said that they would not cooperate with
the police, so don't even bother getting them involved. And
their main method of communication is sending recordings to the
police or the media. So an example from their February
twelve recording said greetings of profound love to all comrades
and the concentration camps of fascist America and to all
(05:46):
the children. And then they've got Patty saying that she's
with a combat unit. They're armed. She wants to get out,
and she just hopes that her parents will do what
they say. She also said that she was okay and
she wasn't being starved or beaten, and not to try
to find her. So the s l A makes their
demand to the hearsts. They want three hundred million dollars
(06:07):
worth of food given to the poor, which is a
pretty original demand, I'd have to say, yeah, And the
left actually likes this ransom. All the radicals around Berkeley
think this is a fantastic idea, but Randolph Hurst, Patty's father,
says it's impossible. So another recording comes out shortly after that,
and Patty says, since I am an example, and it's
(06:30):
really important that everybody understand that, you know, I am
an example and a warning, and because of this, it's
very important to the s l A that I returned safely.
She also says people should stop acting like she's dead,
and she wants her mom to get out of her
black dress which isn't helping, and just take care of
her fiance and just hurry. So she feels perhaps like
her family is putting on this public spectacle but not
(06:51):
really doing what needs to get done to get her out.
But she also still sounds very much like the kidnap
victim at the spot. So February nineteenth, hers are going
to start a food distribution program people in need. It
will feed a hundred thousand people for twelve months with
two million dollars, which is a far site short of
(07:11):
the three million s l A wants. And it's not
organized well because partly because it's just put together in
such a current right that riots start at the food
distribution points. So clearly this isn't working out quite as
anyone had hoped. So Patty releases another statement. She says, Mom, Dad,
I've been hearing reports about the food program so far
(07:34):
it sounds like you and your advisers have managed to
turn it into a real disaster. You said that it
was out of your hands. What you should have said
was that you wash your hands of it. It sounds
like most of the food is low quality. No one
received any beef or lamb anyway. It certainly didn't sound
like the kind of food our family is used to eating.
And then that's when you have to wonder is Patty
(07:54):
just reading off what they give her or is this,
you know, her own thing that she's saying, because that
is such an oath snap moment, like to go on
you know, national media and tell your family they simply
aren't doing a good enough of a job with their
vast wealth. So at this point the f l A
Is trying to convert Patty. Though she's rich, it's her
(08:16):
own fault that she's been kidnapped, right, and that she's
part of this capitalist machine, and they demand six million
dollars from from her father and Mr Hurst says no.
So again you have to imagine how it must have
felt to be Patty and hearing that your family has
abandoned you and they won't pay your ransom. And that
(08:39):
appears to be when she switches sides, because on April three,
another recording comes out and she said that she'd been
given the choice of being released or joining the forces
of the Symbionese Liberation Army and fighting for her freedom
and the freedom of all oppressed people, and she says,
I have chosen to stay and fight. I have been
given the name Tanya, after a comrade who fought alongside
(09:00):
Jay in Bolivia. So she's in. She's a member now.
And that brings us to the central question of the
whole Patty Hurst case. Is it Stockholm syndrome that's going
on here? Has she been brainwashed? Is she just trying
to survive and doing what she has to do? Or
is she rebelling? Is she acting out against this sheltered,
(09:21):
privileged life that she's had, And we have to imagine,
I mean, up until this point, it would have been
a very traumatic situation for her. And you might be
just trying to please your captors however you can. Or
is it just exciting to be around these weapons and
these political radicals and all the free love that's going on.
(09:41):
And I think you know, whether was she rebellious before
or not, that's kind of beside the point. You know,
it doesn't matter if if she tinkered with a little
rebellion before this. She's she's got an amazing chance for
rebellion on a full new level. Note, So email us
and let us know what you think at History Podcast
asked at how stuff works dot com because we like
(10:02):
some extra opinion. But going back to our story, it's
April fifteen, and this is Patty's big moment to shine
as far as the news goes. She robs a bank
with the s l A and she's armed, and the Hurst,
of course, say that Patty is in acting of her
own accord. The FBI puts out a wanted poster, but
they just want her as a material witness. They think
(10:22):
she must have been forced to do this at gunpoint.
And and this robbery is probably if you've ever seen
a picture of Patty Hurst, it's probably from the bank cameras, right,
And she releases another statement. They're big on statements, and
she says, no, she wasn't in fact forced to do this.
She also calls her former fiance an agist, sexist pig
(10:42):
and says our actions of April fifteen forced the corporate
state to help finance the revolution. As for being brainwashed,
the idea is ridiculous, to the point of being beyond belief.
I am a soldier in the People's army, so we're
not leaving any doubt there. Now she's on the lamb.
The fb I wanted poster changes. Now she's armed and
(11:03):
very dangerous. She's not just wanted for, you know, questioning.
She's not a kidnapping victim. And there's another little incident.
There are some members of the s l A who
are shoplifting at a store in Los Angeles and the
police hadn't even known that the s l A had
moved to l A, so this was kind of a
big deal. And Patty shoots out the storefront windows. So
(11:25):
again she's by herself. Now she's in a car by herself,
and she does this action by herself. So the question
that will later come up in her trial over and
over again is why didn't she ever just leave? And
that's something that comes up with a lot of kidnap victims,
um if they had a chance to leave at some point,
why didn't they? And I don't I don't think people
(11:46):
can grasp the psychological hold to that someone can have
over you. And that's what Patty keeps saying. Her life
was threatened over and over and over again, so she
thought if she left, they would still get her somehow.
But that brings us to May nine four, and this
is a big change for the s l A. To
put it very lightly, the Los Angeles Police Department has
(12:09):
completely had it with this group, and they find six
members of the s l A hold up in Compton
and start a gun battle, which is televised live. The
police end up setting the house on fire and all
six members of the s l A die. Patty's not there,
but she's watching on TV from a hotel room, and
one of the first statements they releases that no, Patty
(12:31):
Hurst was not one of the six who were killed,
but the f l as that are left send the
news of eulogy for the ones who died, and Patty
says also that she's in love with Willie Wolfe. So
sorry teacher fiance Weed, he's so out of the Xober.
She also calls her family the pig Hursts, and Mrs
(12:51):
Hurst responds, I just hope everybody will remember that physically,
Patty is still a kidnap victim. She was taken away
against her will, and psychologically she he's a victim of
thought control by terrorists and all I can do is
hope and pray that God will bring her home again.
So she sticks to this line throughout the whole story
and throughout the trial, and then they disappear. Um Patty,
(13:12):
Patty's gone, and Randolph Hurst withdraws his fifty thou dollar
reward um and it's quiet for a little while, and
then the bank rubbing starts again. And in one of
the robberies, Myrna Opsol, who's an innocent bystander, is killed
in April nineteen seventy five, and this will come up
later because we end up finding the person. And in August,
(13:35):
the l a p d finds pipe bombs under two
of their police cars, so the search is on again,
and Patty and her friends are caught in September, and
when asked for her occupation, Patty Hurst says urban guerrilla.
So Patty's trial began January nineteen seventy six, and the
Heirst get f lee Bailey to defend her, who's a big,
(13:57):
big time lawyer write in a good celebrity attorne everyone
needs one, and Mrs Hurst says she's primarily a kidnap victim.
She never went off and did anything of her own
free will. So that's the line the defense is going
to stick to, saying that she was terrified, she was abused,
it's possible she was drugged, and also that she was brainwashed.
But that's kind of a disaster because the jury doesn't
(14:20):
seem to understand the science behind that. A bunch of
doctors are called in to explain, but maybe it's not
explained well enough and it's very inconsistent, right, So I
think a bunch of them just thought it was BS.
And the trial itself is kind of bananas. It's definitely sensational.
The judge is off giving interviews to all sorts of papers,
which of course inappropriate and unethical. We'd like to add.
(14:43):
A doctor for the prosecution even calls Patty a rebel
looking for a cause, so they really are trying to
demonize her, and she ends up being convicted on March
tent nineteen six. She's guilty of armed bank robbery and
sentenced to seven years in PRIs, but she gets out
after twenty two months. Jimmy Carter commuted her sentence and
(15:04):
she gets a full pardon from Bill Clinton on the
last day of his terms. The s l A members
who kidnapped hers later received eight year terms, and Patty
Hurst went on to live a relatively quiet life. She's
co authored some books. She married her bodyguard and had children,
one of whom is Lydia Hurst, the socialite. She's bred
(15:24):
some dogs, been in some John Waters films, but this
was probably the defining episode of her life, whether she
likes it or not, and the question will always remain
was it Stockholm syndrome or was it just a fun,
exciting time in her life brief window of craziness, or
of course was she brainwashed? And luckily for you all,
(15:47):
we have articles on both at how stuffworks dot com.
If you go to wear homepage and type in Stockholm
syndrome or brainwashing at www dot how stuff works dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
how staff works dot com and be sure to check
out this stuff you missed in History Class blog on
the house stuff works dot com home page. Bo
Welcome to Stuff you missed in history class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Sarada and Sarah. What if
I walked up to your cube and said to you,
death to the fascist insect that prays upon the life
(00:22):
of the people. I would say, Katie, what are you
talking about? And I would tell you, Sarah that that
was the motto of the Symbionese Liberation Army, the group
that kidnapped Heiress Patty Hurst. And probably a lot of
us know Patty Hurst better than her famous grandfather, William
Randolph Hurst, the publishing giant who we've talked about now
in the news podcast and a podcast dedicated to his
(00:45):
life and the Hurst Castle, Pipe and the Castle. But
a short time after Patty Hurst was kidnapped, she proclaimed
herself one of the s l A and started robbing
banks with them and calling herself Tanya. So the question here,
of course, is what on earth happened? And to start
that off, we should probably get some background about who
(01:06):
the s l A is. Yeah, the Simonse Liberation Army.
The title doesn't really give us much information. It kind
of sounds like gobbledy gook. So we need to go
back into their history and find out how they started. Right.
So the group grew out of a black inmate organization
called the Black Cultural Association, and it was started with
the best of intentions. Berkeley students came to a California
(01:29):
prison in the sixties and seventies to tutor prisoners and
subjects like political science. So it was kind of a
self help group for prisoners, but it ended up turning
into a black nationalist group that got violent. Yeah, one prisoner,
Donald Defrees, took the lead, and some of the tutors
got involved too, and by nineteen seventy three, in March,
(01:52):
Defrees escapes from prison and goes to the Berkeley kids, right,
and they're stealing weapons, they're robbing places. They've got this
faux military discipline where they're training in military maneuvers, but honestly,
you don't really know what they're doing. And their ideas
were about ending racism, ending monogamy, ending the prison system,
and you know anything else that sounded vaguely capitalist. Yeah,
(02:13):
So the s LA is this strange mixture of white,
upper middle class, well educated men and women and then
a prisoner of African American prisoner who is their leader,
and they all went violence to this is not a
peaceful movement now. So in November six ninety three, the
s l A makes their move and they kill black
(02:36):
school superintendent Marcus Foster because he was trying to institute
a system of school ideas, which they were very against.
But this action turns the rest of the political left
and there are a lot of political radicals at Berkeley
against them, because well, if you're going to kill someone,
why would you start with a well respected black superintendent. Yeah,
(02:56):
so this is the start of the s l A.
The how on earth did they enter the life of
Patty Hurst, this famous heiress, right because she led a
very privileged life. She was born in nineteen fifty four
in San Francisco, and, being the granddaughter of William Randolph Hurst,
grew up very wealthy. She later described her childhood as
(03:17):
pretty perfect, although she had some rebellious moments. She started
dating one of her teachers when she was sixteen or so, which,
as you can imagine, her parents were really thrilled about,
and they ended up engaged and living together. Different sources
say she might have had more rebellion than just this
romance with her teacher, and she may have fought with nuns,
(03:38):
she may have experimented with LSD and had a sexual
history that began at age fifteen. But um, things are
a little a little dodgy about well, and that just
makes me think of I guess the Amanda Knox trial,
since at the time of recording that's been going on,
she was just convicted, and it just makes a more
interesting story to make her either a good girl or
(04:00):
a bad girl. And well, I mean, if you're experimenting
with drugs and adding sex, clearly that sticks you in
the bad girl category. Well, it's trying to to make
a context around what later happens to her, make it
makes sense. And I want to make sure my sarcasms epdence.
I am not classifying Patty hers that's a quote unquote
bad girl. So that brings us up to our main event.
(04:20):
February four, nineteen, Patty is kidnapped from her apartment in
Berkeley by the Symbionese Liberation Army. A woman comes to
the door. She says she's having car trouble, classic scam move.
Can she use the phone? Patty opens the door. Two
guys come in with automatic weapons, they beat up her fiance,
teacher teacher. Right, Patty's taken away, she's blindfolded and tied up,
(04:43):
and then she's stuck in a hot, dark closet for
days where no one talks to her but to freeze.
So we don't know what she raped, beaten. They probably
don't let her sleep or eat very much, and her
life is probably threatened. But her yeah, some of her
accounts change. She wrote a book about it, but she
said different things in court, and she'd said different things
(05:03):
and other interviews, so we're a little fuzzy on that,
but I'm going to go ahead and say it wasn't
a pleasant experience. And on the outside there's a media
frenzy going on. You can imagine this young socialite has
been kidnapped, and a few days later, the s l
A says that they have Patty, they've judged her guilty,
(05:23):
and they'd let her go of their demands were met,
And they also said that they would not cooperate with
the police, so don't even bother getting them involved. And
their main method of communication is sending recordings to the
police or the media. So an example from their February
twelve recording said greetings of profound love to all comrades
and the concentration camps of fascist America and to all
(05:46):
the children. And then they've got Patty saying that she's
with a combat unit. They're armed. She wants to get out,
and she just hopes that her parents will do what
they say. She also said that she was okay and
she wasn't being starved or beaten, and not to try
to find her. So the s l A makes their
demand to the hearsts. They want three hundred million dollars
(06:07):
worth of food given to the poor, which is a
pretty original demand, I'd have to say, yeah, And the
left actually likes this ransom. All the radicals around Berkeley
think this is a fantastic idea, but Randolph Hurst, Patty's father,
says it's impossible. So another recording comes out shortly after that,
and Patty says, since I am an example, and it's
(06:30):
really important that everybody understand that, you know, I am
an example and a warning, and because of this, it's
very important to the s l A that I returned safely.
She also says people should stop acting like she's dead,
and she wants her mom to get out of her
black dress which isn't helping, and just take care of
her fiance and just hurry. So she feels perhaps like
her family is putting on this public spectacle but not
(06:51):
really doing what needs to get done to get her out.
But she also still sounds very much like the kidnap
victim at the spot. So February nineteenth, hers are going
to start a food distribution program people in need. It
will feed a hundred thousand people for twelve months with
two million dollars, which is a far site short of
(07:11):
the three million s l A wants. And it's not
organized well because partly because it's just put together in
such a current right that riots start at the food
distribution points. So clearly this isn't working out quite as
anyone had hoped. So Patty releases another statement. She says, Mom, Dad,
I've been hearing reports about the food program so far
(07:34):
it sounds like you and your advisers have managed to
turn it into a real disaster. You said that it
was out of your hands. What you should have said
was that you wash your hands of it. It sounds
like most of the food is low quality. No one
received any beef or lamb anyway. It certainly didn't sound
like the kind of food our family is used to eating.
And then that's when you have to wonder is Patty
(07:54):
just reading off what they give her or is this,
you know, her own thing that she's saying, because that
is such an oath snap moment, like to go on
you know, national media and tell your family they simply
aren't doing a good enough of a job with their
vast wealth. So at this point the f l A
Is trying to convert Patty. Though she's rich, it's her
(08:16):
own fault that she's been kidnapped, right, and that she's
part of this capitalist machine, and they demand six million
dollars from from her father and Mr Hurst says no.
So again you have to imagine how it must have
felt to be Patty and hearing that your family has
abandoned you and they won't pay your ransom. And that
(08:39):
appears to be when she switches sides, because on April three,
another recording comes out and she said that she'd been
given the choice of being released or joining the forces
of the Symbionese Liberation Army and fighting for her freedom
and the freedom of all oppressed people, and she says,
I have chosen to stay and fight. I have been
given the name Tanya, after a comrade who fought alongside
(09:00):
Jay in Bolivia. So she's in. She's a member now.
And that brings us to the central question of the
whole Patty Hurst case. Is it Stockholm syndrome that's going
on here? Has she been brainwashed? Is she just trying
to survive and doing what she has to do? Or
is she rebelling? Is she acting out against this sheltered,
(09:21):
privileged life that she's had, And we have to imagine,
I mean, up until this point, it would have been
a very traumatic situation for her. And you might be
just trying to please your captors however you can. Or
is it just exciting to be around these weapons and
these political radicals and all the free love that's going on.
(09:41):
And I think you know, whether was she rebellious before
or not, that's kind of beside the point. You know,
it doesn't matter if if she tinkered with a little
rebellion before this. She's she's got an amazing chance for
rebellion on a full new level. Note, So email us
and let us know what you think at History Podcast
asked at how stuff works dot com because we like
(10:02):
some extra opinion. But going back to our story, it's
April fifteen, and this is Patty's big moment to shine
as far as the news goes. She robs a bank
with the s l A and she's armed, and the Hurst,
of course, say that Patty is in acting of her
own accord. The FBI puts out a wanted poster, but
they just want her as a material witness. They think
(10:22):
she must have been forced to do this at gunpoint.
And and this robbery is probably if you've ever seen
a picture of Patty Hurst, it's probably from the bank cameras, right,
And she releases another statement. They're big on statements, and
she says, no, she wasn't in fact forced to do this.
She also calls her former fiance an agist, sexist pig
(10:42):
and says our actions of April fifteen forced the corporate
state to help finance the revolution. As for being brainwashed,
the idea is ridiculous, to the point of being beyond belief.
I am a soldier in the People's army, so we're
not leaving any doubt there. Now she's on the lamb.
The fb I wanted poster changes. Now she's armed and
(11:03):
very dangerous. She's not just wanted for, you know, questioning.
She's not a kidnapping victim. And there's another little incident.
There are some members of the s l A who
are shoplifting at a store in Los Angeles and the
police hadn't even known that the s l A had
moved to l A, so this was kind of a
big deal. And Patty shoots out the storefront windows. So
(11:25):
again she's by herself. Now she's in a car by herself,
and she does this action by herself. So the question
that will later come up in her trial over and
over again is why didn't she ever just leave? And
that's something that comes up with a lot of kidnap victims,
um if they had a chance to leave at some point,
why didn't they? And I don't I don't think people
(11:46):
can grasp the psychological hold to that someone can have
over you. And that's what Patty keeps saying. Her life
was threatened over and over and over again, so she
thought if she left, they would still get her somehow.
But that brings us to May nine four, and this
is a big change for the s l A. To
put it very lightly, the Los Angeles Police Department has
(12:09):
completely had it with this group, and they find six
members of the s l A hold up in Compton
and start a gun battle, which is televised live. The
police end up setting the house on fire and all
six members of the s l A die. Patty's not there,
but she's watching on TV from a hotel room, and
one of the first statements they releases that no, Patty
(12:31):
Hurst was not one of the six who were killed,
but the f l as that are left send the
news of eulogy for the ones who died, and Patty
says also that she's in love with Willie Wolfe. So
sorry teacher fiance Weed, he's so out of the Xober.
She also calls her family the pig Hursts, and Mrs
(12:51):
Hurst responds, I just hope everybody will remember that physically,
Patty is still a kidnap victim. She was taken away
against her will, and psychologically she he's a victim of
thought control by terrorists and all I can do is
hope and pray that God will bring her home again.
So she sticks to this line throughout the whole story
and throughout the trial, and then they disappear. Um Patty,
(13:12):
Patty's gone, and Randolph Hurst withdraws his fifty thou dollar
reward um and it's quiet for a little while, and
then the bank rubbing starts again. And in one of
the robberies, Myrna Opsol, who's an innocent bystander, is killed
in April nineteen seventy five, and this will come up
later because we end up finding the person. And in August,
(13:35):
the l a p d finds pipe bombs under two
of their police cars, so the search is on again,
and Patty and her friends are caught in September, and
when asked for her occupation, Patty Hurst says urban guerrilla.
So Patty's trial began January nineteen seventy six, and the
Heirst get f lee Bailey to defend her, who's a big,
(13:57):
big time lawyer write in a good celebrity attorne everyone
needs one, and Mrs Hurst says she's primarily a kidnap victim.
She never went off and did anything of her own
free will. So that's the line the defense is going
to stick to, saying that she was terrified, she was abused,
it's possible she was drugged, and also that she was brainwashed.
But that's kind of a disaster because the jury doesn't
(14:20):
seem to understand the science behind that. A bunch of
doctors are called in to explain, but maybe it's not
explained well enough and it's very inconsistent, right, So I
think a bunch of them just thought it was BS.
And the trial itself is kind of bananas. It's definitely sensational.
The judge is off giving interviews to all sorts of papers,
which of course inappropriate and unethical. We'd like to add.
(14:43):
A doctor for the prosecution even calls Patty a rebel
looking for a cause, so they really are trying to
demonize her, and she ends up being convicted on March
tent nineteen six. She's guilty of armed bank robbery and
sentenced to seven years in PRIs, but she gets out
after twenty two months. Jimmy Carter commuted her sentence and
(15:04):
she gets a full pardon from Bill Clinton on the
last day of his terms. The s l A members
who kidnapped hers later received eight year terms, and Patty
Hurst went on to live a relatively quiet life. She's
co authored some books. She married her bodyguard and had children,
one of whom is Lydia Hurst, the socialite. She's bred
(15:24):
some dogs, been in some John Waters films, but this
was probably the defining episode of her life, whether she
likes it or not, and the question will always remain
was it Stockholm syndrome or was it just a fun,
exciting time in her life brief window of craziness, or
of course was she brainwashed? And luckily for you all,
(15:47):
we have articles on both at how stuffworks dot com.
If you go to wear homepage and type in Stockholm
syndrome or brainwashing at www dot how stuff works dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
how staff works dot com and be sure to check
out this stuff you missed in History Class blog on
the house stuff works dot com home page. Bo
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