On February 4, 1974, Patty Hearst, 19-year-old heiress to the Hearst media empire, was kidnapped by the left-wing extremist Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA). Advised that paying the ransom might encourage similar kidnappings, her father Randolph Apperson Hearst refused to pay the initial demand for nearly $400 million in food donations, though he did pledge $2 million.
While captive, Hearst participated in bank robberies and other crimes committed by the SLA, adopted the name “Tania” and went on the run to avoid arrest. Though the SLA initially announced they’d taken Hearst as a “prisoner of war,” the group released a tape in April 1975 in which the heiress said she’d joined the fight to free the opposed. Hearst was ultimately taken into custody on September 18, 1975. Tried and convicted of bank robbery and firearms violations, she was sentenced to seven years in prison. After two years, her sentence was commuted by President Jimmy Carter. She was later pardoned by President Bill Clinton.
Hearst’s arrest and subsequent trial sparked a debate that still resonates today about whether she was a victim or a willing accomplice.
Suspicious Activity
The SLA was a domestic terrorist group that used violence to try to further its altruistic-sounding agenda.
“Corporate socialism was one of the SLA’s objections,” journalist and Searching for Patty Hearst author Roger D. Rapoport tells A&E Crime + Investigation. “What the SLA was trying to argue is a lot of what the debate is about right now, which is: who pays for public services? Their argument was that most of the money that's supporting all this largesse for big companies comes from the average taxpayer who doesn't get all these tax breaks and deals. They were obviously part of the anti-war movement, but a lot of the left did not agree with their tactics.”
Rapoport, who covered Hearst’s story at the time and knew or interviewed several key players in the case, notes a telling detail about her participation with the extremist group: “She wasn't even living with the SLA at the time she was arrested.”
An iconic photo of Hearst holding a machine gun—the cover image of author and legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin’s 2017 book American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst—adds to Hearst’s lore. “I describe it as a modern Mona Lisa, because her expression is so mysterious you can read into it whatever you want,” Toobin tells A&E Crime + Investigation. “That photograph serves as a great metaphor for the whole case, because her position is mysterious. Did she remain a victim, or did she become a criminal?”
Between the kidnapping and her September 1975 arrest, Hearst participated in multiple bank robberies and appeared in surveillance footage wielding a machine gun, leaving onlookers wondering whether she truly embraced the SLA’s mission, or if she was psychologically manipulated into thinking she believed in their cause.
“She very much insists that she was coerced throughout and has stuck by that story since shortly after her arrest, although not immediately after her arrest,” Toobin says. “That was the position she took at her trial and in her book and in subsequent interviews.”
Duped or Indoctrinated?
But other possibilities abound. “In my professional opinion, she was a brainwashing victim, a mind control victim,” Dr. Steven Hassan, a licensed mental health professional specializing in cults and founding director of Freedom of Mind Resource Center, tells A&E Crime + Investigation. “The American Psychiatric Association Diagnostic Statistical Manual defines a dissociative disorder and talks about cults and thought reform and brainwashing as a disruption of identity. This is a known phenomenon. It's known as a dissociative disorder.”
To understand how brainwashing works, Hassan suggests imagining a computer operating system infected with malware: “You got deceived into clicking on a link, it brought malware in and took over your operating system. It's fixable, but you have to understand who put the malicious code in, what was the agenda. The result with me was a change of identity and a radical personality change, as it was with Patricia Hearst, who became ‘Tania.’”
Hassan uses his BITE [Behavior, Information, Thought, Emotional] Model of Authoritarian Control to prove his assertion. “Did they control her sleep? Yes. Did they control her physical environment? Yes. Did they control what she ate? Yes? Did they control her clothing? Yes,” he says. “The more you can tick off in the four overlapping components, the clearer it is that this is an authoritarian mind control cult. This is why I say she was brainwashed.”
A Product of Her Time
Understanding the political and social climate of the era offers context to Hearst’s situation. Hearst came from a wealthy, powerful family that owed a publishing empire with newspapers across the nation, the Vietnam War was ending and Watergate was the biggest news of the day—until the Hearst case pushed it off the front page.
“The amount of political violence in the United States in the 1970s, the number of bombings, of shootings, of actual violence was astonishing,” Toobin says. “I’d assumed that the ‘60s were the time of greatest tumult in the United States, but I think the ‘70s were worse. It was simply extraordinary how routine it was, especially in California, that power plants would be bombed, offices would be bombed.”
It was a period of upheaval in which political and religious cults thrived. Hassan, who boasts 40 years of experience as an expert on cults and mind control, reveals he was recruited by the Unification Church movement the same month the SLA abducted Hearst. The church has been compared to a cult for its “love bombing” tactics, strong group mentality and apocalyptic beliefs.
“There's a big difference between people who get into a group like I did—with the illusion that I was making choices, even though I was being lied to and manipulated—and her case,” he says. “She knew they were the enemy, was thrown in a trunk, put in a closet and [underwent] more overt coercion.”
Hearst’s case presents a fascinating societal contrast. “It involves one of the most famous names of the 20th century, Hearst—famous for wealth and power—juxtaposed with genuine acts of political terror. It's extremely compelling, and there’s a genuine mystery about whether she voluntarily changed sides,” Toobin says.
Rapoport wonders why, if Hearst was a victim, she went on the run for a year and a half. He notes that only three people living today know what really transpired, though: Hearst and two surviving SLA members—former spouses Bill and Emily Harris—who all have their own interpretation of events. “I still think it's very much an open question,” Rapoport says. “If Patty Hearst hadn't been arrested, would she have remained underground forever or not?”
