Patty Hearst’s kidnapping by the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) 50 years ago at gunpoint. Later, she joined her captors back in the 1974 San Francisco bank robbery that received her a prison sentence.
The kidnapping and the following trial of Hearst, then a 19-year-old college student and the granddaughter of wealthy newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst and descendent of the Hearst publishing, Hearts case was one of the most captivating and sensational cases of the 1970s.
According to the FBI, the SLA chose to abduct Hearst because she came from a wealthy, powerful, and influential family, which would make the story of her kidnapping on the front-page news and drive the SLA’s agenda in front of the public eye. The SLA says that one of their goals was to “unite all afflicted people into a force and fight against the system to destroy the capitalist state.”
The radicals asked for food donations for the poor in return for Hearst’s safe release, the FBI states. In response, her family made $2 million in food distribution through the program named People In Need.
But despite their demands being fulfilled, Hearst was not released to see family for more than a year.
In April, SLA released an audiotape where Hearst publicly announced that she had joined them. This claim was confirmed when her photo was released posing with a gun in front of an SLA flag. Then, days passed by, and later, she was caught on surveillance footage with a gun and participating in a bank robbery with four other SLA members months after her kidnapping, according to the FBI.
Wanted posters prominently presented Hearst and were distributed across the U.S., but her capture wouldn’t be easy.
But a month later, the FBI caught her on September 18, 1975, in San Francisco — 19 months after her violent kidnapping. She was arrested and charged with bank robbery.
Hearst will turn 70 on Feb. 20. She is now known as Patricia Hearst Shaw after she married the late Bernard Shaw, a police officer who protected her when she was out on bail. Now, she has been in the news in recent years for her dogs, mostly French bulldogs, that won prizes in the Westminster Kennel Club dog show.
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