Episode 556: Patty Hearst: Victim or Vicious?
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On this episode of the Sofa King Podcast, we hit you with a little urban guerrilla true crime and look at the kidnapping, crimes, and domestic terrorism or Patty Hearst. Patricia Hearst is the granddaughter of William Randolph Hearst. In 1974, she was kidnapped from her apartment in Berkeley by a group called the Symbionese Liberation Army. While she was with them, she helped them rob a couple banks, shot up a sporting goods store, and made homemade bombs. Was she abused, drugged, and raped to become a victim-participant, or did she willingly join forces?
Patty Hearst was born to a very wealthy family, obviously, but she was nowhere near granddaddy rich. She lived a normal life and eventually went to college at UC Berkeley to study art history. Meanwhile, a man named Donald DeFreeze was starting a terrorist group called the SLA. Their goal was to fight for the poor in America. Or something.
After a few months, Hearst released recordings of herself saying she had joined the cause and shortly after that, she was seen on video footage in a bank robbery. The SLA killed some people, robbed some stuff, and demanded hundreds of millions of dollars to feed all the poor in American. Hearst’s dad managed to get two million, and the food delivery was a disaster.
Eventually, this one got crazy. There was a Waco style shoot out between the feds and the SLA while their house burned. There was a nationwide manhunt by the FBI to find Hearst, and then when she was arrested, the trial was a circus. Was this a wild case of Stockholm Syndrome, or was it just a rich girl sowing her wild oats? Listen, laugh, learn.
Visit Our Sources:
https://www.biography.com/crime-figure/patty-hearst
https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/patty-hearst
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patty_Hearst
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/patty-hearst-kidnapped
https://www.npr.org/2016/08/03/488373982/whose-side-was-she-on-american-heiress-revisits-patty-hearst-s-kidnapping
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbionese_Liberation_Army
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/guerrilla-patricia-campbell-hearst/
Bank Robbery Video: https://youtu.be/xDPyT-6lh8E
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