Stuff You Should Know - Patty Hearst: Brainwashed or Bandit?

Episode Date: November 24, 2020

Patty Hearst was a young heiress living a quiet life studying art history at college when one Monday evening her home was invaded, she was kidnapped, and her life took a totally unforeseen turn that she would have trouble explaining for years to come. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart radios, How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant over there.

And this is Stuff You Should Know. Just the two of us, me and Chuck are gonna make it if we try, just the two of us, he and I. Man, now I wish we were doing a show on Bill Withers. Is that a Bill Withers song? What? I mean, I guess I can hear his voice now that you say that, but that's not the song I think of

when I think Bill Withers, you know? What do you think on Lean On Me? No, the theme song to Annie. Oh, sure, song will come out tomorrow. Yeah. Yeah. That's the one, right? Good song, I love that Annie soundtrack.

It's so good, man. Hey, have I mentioned Enola Holmes? You have. Well, I haven't seen it yet. I haven't seen it yet. It's so good, dude. Did you see the Challenger documentary? I have not seen that.

And that is hard to watch. Yeah, I've been watching horror movies because this October is kind of the month where I get a pass to do that on my own. Yeah, October, more like Shocktober, you know what I mean? All right, I finally watched a Rob Zombie movie, never seen any of those before. Which one?

I started at the beginning and did House of a Thousand Corpses. Okay, what'd you think? It was good. It was just exactly what I thought it would be, which is sort of a Texas Chainsaw Massacre-like story. But you could feel as enthusiasm for filmmaking. I liked it.

For sure. When's the last time you saw the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre? I saw it last year for the very first time, believe it or not. Oh my, I think we talked about that, finally. Yeah, it scared the pants off of me. Man, it's so good.

It's weird because it keeps getting better. I remember being a teenager and the first time I saw it and I was like, why, what is this? And then the next time I saw it, I was like, oh, this is actually pretty good. And then the last time I saw it, I was like, I just want to sit around and watch this all the time.

Stone Cold Classic. So speaking of Stone Cold Classics, I got a Stone Cold Classic, which a what true crime question case for you, Chuck. What's the question? The question is this. Was Patty Hearst a brainwashed hostage who carried out violent crimes for fear of her life?

Or was she a spoiled rich kid who was basically, who turned thrill seeker to the nth degree? You know what, I don't know. I mean, part of me thinks that she did flip and was radicalized, but I don't know, man. I mean, I don't think it's super clear either way. No. And so I'm in the same boat as you.

I feel like I lean a little more toward radicalized than there's a couple of things that it's just like, I can't get past that. Yeah, I think I know one of them. But I think that she became radicalized initially out of fear for her life. And it's really hard to discount what happened to her initially, you know, that got her in that.

And I think Jimmy Carter has the most sensible take on the whole thing. So we'll get into all of this. For those of you who don't know what we're talking about, we're talking about Patty Hearst. And Patty Hearst was the granddaughter of William Randolph Hearst, whose name might sound familiar.

He was the publishing magnate. I think a radio guy too, right? I think it was, yeah, radio, but very much well known for his newspaper, his string of newspapers. And he was a bit of a politico, a kingmaker, incredibly mind-bogglingly wealthy. He was the model for Citizen Kane, I believe, right? And he had basically established this media empire

in the first half of the 20th century. And he had a son, he had a son named Randy Hearst. No joke, Randolph Hearst. Not William Randolph Hearst, sorry, Randolph Hearst. And they called him Randy. And Randy had a daughter. He was brought up like a very wealthy guy, but he was also brought up to take over the family business.

And he had by 1954, I think, when a daughter arrived to Randy and his wife, Katherine, and they named their kid Patty or Patricia Hearst. That's right, Patricia Campbell. And she was what you would think. She was born into an heiress, she was born a rich kid. It's funny to think about, like in today's terms, plenty of people to pick from,

but like, if you could imagine Paris Hilton robbing a bank with a machine gun, that's kind of a good analog to who Patricia Hearst was back then. Yeah, that's actually really good. Although you could say she's quite a bit more low key or she was at the time, like by the time she was 19, she was living in San Francisco or the Bay Area,

I should say, attending UC Berkeley. So I guess she was living in Berkeley because that's not necessarily the Bay Area. Yeah, she wasn't exactly Paris Hilton, if we're being honest. But she was just like- As far as the famous heiress in the United States. Yeah, so yeah, but also living this quiet life. She was 19, she was engaged to a guy named Stephen Weed,

who was like a Catholic high school teacher, I think. He was 26 or something and studying art history and going to school and just kind of living life. But yeah, she really- She really missed his calling. She, right, especially in Berkeley in the 70s, you know? Stevie Weed. So she, but she was like mind-bogglingly wealthy

and she was going to inherit all this and she was famous for being an heiress, right? And so just a few days before her 20th birthday on February 4th, I think, right? 1974, there was a knock on her door at like 9 p.m. It was a Monday night. And actually, I don't even know if they knocked or else if they just came bursting in.

But three people who turned out to be members of what very few people had heard of at the time, but who had become very famous, the Symbianese Liberation Army burst through their door, beat up Stephen Weed, Catholic high school teacher and dragged Patty Hearst out of her apartment to their car where they shot off a few shots and drove off into the night

with Patty Hearst kidnapped as hostage. Yeah, they threw in the trunk, bound and she was gone. And as far as the SLA goes, like you said, they were not very well known at the time. They were pretty new in an era of sort of, I'm not gonna say there were just American terrorist organizations all over the place in the United States, but it was a time in our country

where there were a lot of bombings. A lot. Yeah, it said about a thousand a year. That's a lot. Yeah, that's a lot. Compared to now where we don't have a lot of bombings. And we should thank Julia Layton for helping us put this together.

But no one had heard of them much because like I said, they were new. They formed a couple of months before her abduction. And it wasn't like there were, you know, a hundred of these people. They were, you know, it kind of varied from, you know, depending on like, I guess who had the good drugs at the time, but there were never more than a dozen.

It seems like it varied between like seven and 12 at a time. And their ideology was basically just like, anti-capitalist, we, that's kind of just it. It wasn't super inspiring. It wasn't well thought out. It was just, hey, we hate, we hate the rich. It was pretty ho-hum and yeah, not very inspiring.

And I think that's why they never had that many members. But they were, they were extremely militant. They were very paranoid and they were willing to carry out violence. Like they didn't have many qualms with violence. They used to practice with weapons and guns and they had a lot of guns, a lot of ammunition. They knew how to make bombs.

They weren't messing around in that sense. They were just kind of dolerds when it came to political ideology. They were just following in everybody else's wake. But interestingly enough, Chuck, the whole, the whole Symbianese Liberation Army started out of a prison tutoring program where a bunch of white students from Berkeley

went and tutored inmates on things like black history and political science, things like that. And that's where the SLA originally grew from when one of those inmates, a guy named Donald DeFries, escaped from prison and showed up in San Francisco and said, let's get this thing started. Yeah, he was, they all adopted different names when they joined the SLA.

His name was General Field Marshall Sink. Is it Matume? Matume and it might be Chinque. Oh, really? Yeah, cause they were super into Che Guevara and the Cuban Revolution. So anything that looks even remotely Spanish is probably pronounced like that.

Okay, well, I don't know Spanish. So I'm going to pronounce it like Spike Lee style. Okay. I think that's his sister's name. Is it? So, yeah, Sink Lee. I didn't know that. C-I-N-Q-U-E, one of his sisters.

I got you, it's great. So, yeah, he was in prison for, well, he did a bunch of stuff. He was well known to possess homemade bombs. He was arrested for kidnapping, possession of explosives. He was arrested for robbing a bank. And that's finally in 1969, what finally got him into prison.

But, and this pops up sort of throughout the story, but it was way easier to get away with crime back then. Yeah. Like to escape from prison and then just say like I'm gonna go live in San Francisco and start a radical organization and kind of not get caught. And that's what he did.

And he ended up engineering the murder of a man named Marcus Foster. He was superintendent of the Oakland school system. And he didn't actually carry out the murder, but two SLA members shot him and one of their signature moves, it would turn out to be a cyanide tipped bullets, which I didn't look into that.

I don't even know if that's a thing. I know. If that helps, you know, kill somebody. I think it's overkill is what like literal overkill. Or maybe just they thought it sounded intimidating or something to put in letters. I think so. They definitely did that,

but they shot Foster to draw attention to something they saw, which was anti-black schooling policies. Foster was a black man, one of the cruel ironies there. Well, not only that, he was also a respected black community organizer. And when they killed them, everybody else on the left in Berkeley was like,

what are you doing? Are you guys morons? And the SLA was like, Yeah, they were kind of morons. Yeah. Yes, they were a little bit morons as far as domestic terrorist groups go. So when they, the shooters were actually in prison

when they got Patty Hearst, and the first thought from the cops and the feds was, here's what's gonna happen is they've kidnapped this rich girl and they're gonna try to exchange giving her back to get these two guys out of prison. But they're like, no, not exactly. We're actually gonna keep her. No, but even before they had a chance to ask,

and I guess they never did bring it up, Ronald Reagan, who was governor at the time said, no, we're not doing that. But they didn't go that way. Instead, they said, hey, Willie Hearst, no, sorry, Randy Hearst, Willie Hearst was dead by this time. Randy Hearst, you're super rich. We want you to take some of those riches

and we want you to feed the poor with it. That was their first demand. And they sent this demand. First of all, they sent a communique to a radio station in San Francisco. And I think that's who they basically corresponded with the public and the police through was this radio station.

And they would send them letters and they would eventually send like voice recordings as well. But in this first one, they sent what was basically an arrest warrant for Petty Hearst, Patricia Campbell Hearst, daughter of Randolph A. Hearst, corporate enemy of the people. And they sent her credit card as proof that they had her. Which if you ask me, shows their hand right off the bat, they didn't send a finger.

They didn't even send like a lock of hair. They sent a credit card that you could pick up off the ground. They could have just taken it off of her nightstand. They didn't send anything vicious. They just sent a credit card to prove that they had her. But they didn't make any ransom demand. Then six days later after that first communique with the arrest warrant, that's when they said

the Hearst need to figure out how to feed any single person in California that can prove that they are not beneficiaries of the corporate capitalist state with at least $70 worth of high quality food per person. Yeah, and they were like, we're gonna get it together, not we, but you need to arrange it through the grocery stores

in California to distribute this stuff. They included an audio tape from Patty where she says, mom, dad, I'm okay. I'm with a combat unit with automatic weapons and these people aren't just a bunch of nuts or morons like Josh and Chuck will say in the future. I want to get out of here, but the only way I'm going to do it is if we do it their way

and I just hope that you'll do what they say, dad, and do it quickly. Randy Hearst got this and he was like, these people are morons. How do they expect me to give everyone in California that proves they're in need $70 worth of high quality food? What is high quality food anyway? And they're like, that's what you eat every day, sir.

He's like, oh, that's actually pretty good. Okay, I gotcha. And so he said, you know, I don't even think I can pull this off, which followed another back and forth in which Patty said, hey, stop acting like I'm dead. He needs a good faith gesture from you. And so just a few days after that,

the Hearst Foundation formed, I guess they looked in probably the best way to get a tax benefit out of this, informed an actual program called People in Need, which would feed 100,000 people for a year, $2 million worth of food, which sounds fairly high quality to me. Yeah, and apparently they had a rough start at first

because they didn't know what they were doing. There were food riots at the distribution site and they finally managed to get it figured out. So in that sense, and it's kind of overlooked, I think, in a lot of histories because everything they did after that was just so stupid and terrible. But the SLA had a genuine impact right out of the gate that they used their hostage for,

which was to feed poor and hungry people. So clearly they were at least partially dedicated to that. And Cinque Matume, is it Matume? Donald DeFries, the Field Marshal, General Field Marshal. He had said in a statement, he said, you know, Mr. and Mrs. Hearst, I will, I have no qualms about executing your daughter if it will save the lives of any starving poor people.

So that was like a real big initial thing. So yeah, I was kind of surprised that they formed this program, People in Need, which obviously was going to take a lot of work to make into sort of a legit charity. And they were like, just for one year though, I'm like, after that, I'm surprised they didn't say, you know, maybe this is worthwhile.

I mean, I didn't get the impression they were those types. Well, and they probably, it probably wasn't a great look to be inspired by these terrorists. That's true. That's true too. But I just find it significant that that was like, that that was their first demand was that,

and then it actually had a real effect. But yeah, they asked for more money though. I think they said two million is not enough. We want eight million total. And the Hearst said, Randy said, no go. You gotta release Patty Hearst if you want that extra six mil. Yeah, so they, this I think is another

kind of overlooked thing that when you look at what, you know, the process of changing our mind that Patty Hearst eventually is said to have gone through. I think that this is really where the seeds started because she said later on that she felt like her parents were trying to, they were debating how much I was worth. Yeah.

And they were focusing on dollars and cents, you know, in the balance of her daughter's life. And she, you know, like she had said before, stop acting like I'm dead. She apparently felt very, if not left behind, definitely gambled with, her life was gambled with by her parents who were basically publicly negotiating the cost down for the release of their daughter.

And I think that that really may have set up a 19 year old to be more open to whatever the opposite of their parents thought processes and ideology might be. Yeah, there's another really good movie about the J. Paul Getty kidnapping called All the Money in the World, directed by Ridley Scott. And that's sort of one of the threads in that movie is, you know, is the granddad trying to like negotiate

down this money, like somebody that's like one of the richest human beings on the planet, trying to bargain with the life of a family member. Like no genie, no money. Really, really interesting. Yeah. Nice Fargo, Ruff, by the way. Thank you.

Should we take a break? Yeah, sure, why not? All right, we'll take a break. And we're gonna come back right for this and talk about what happens on April 3rd. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses

and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack it a little bit. So we're gonna take a break and we'll see you next time. Thanks for watching. Here are the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new I Heart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass.

The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place

because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael.

Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now.

If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. So Chuck, you mentioned April 3rd. And here is about the time when things really

start to turn as far as the public's perception of what exactly is going on. Because 59 days earlier, Patty Hearst, poor little Patty Hearst, never harmed a flea, just wanted to study art history and be super amazingly rich, was abducted from her house and then forced into the public spotlight as a hostage who was used to negotiate between the SLA and her parents, the Hearsts.

But then that changed on April 3rd. Yeah, she sent another tape that said, I have been given the choice of, one, being released in a safe area, or two, joining the forces of the Symbionnes Liberation Army and fighting for my freedom and the freedom of all oppressed people. I have chosen to stay and fight. And then she revealed that she had taken on an SLA name,

Tania, or is it Tania? I think, I don't know, let's go with Tania. OK, Tania, T-A-N-I-A. And they sent a little visual aid, too. And this became a very, very famous picture. One of the most famous pictures of the 1970s was this photo, this Polaroid of Patty. We've all seen it holding that machine gun, wearing the beret

in front of the SLA flag in their emblem, which was a seven-headed cobra. Very famous picture. Extremely famous. And that beret was significant in that she adopted the nom de guerre Tania from another woman who adopted the nom de guerre of Tania back in the 60s, about a decade earlier, when she was fighting alongside

Che Guevara and Bolivia. Her name was Tamara Buenke, I believe. She was Argentinian. And she was a revolutionary. And I guess Patty Hurst admired her and adopted that name. But imagine, put it yourself in the position of just the average person in the public who's following this story. It's like poor little Patty Hurst, poor little Patty Hurst.

And then, oh my god, what is this? There's a picture of Patty Hurst looking like a total BA holding a machine gun and a beret. Yeah, a total BA berrakis. Yeah, and she said, they said that they would let me go. And I could go free, or I could stay and fight. And I'm choosing to fight. And not only that, I have a new name of war.

Yeah, I think this started a lot of confusion. I don't think it was immediately everyone was like, oh my god, the future parasilton of our times is now radicalized and wants to kill people. That's true. I think it just really confused a lot of people. They were like, wait a minute, what's going on here? I thought she was kidnapped.

And now she says she's not. And it really gripped the nation. I mean, obviously, I was just a wee toddler when this is going on. But I remember when I was a little kid, this sort of still reverberating in the public sphere a little bit. I remember hearing the name Patty Hurst when I was like six

or seven. Well, she also, I mean, she came out with her memoirs about when you were probably 10. So I'm sure that that really brought her to your attention as well, too. Well, sure. We read that in whatever, fifth grade. All right.

So yeah, you're right. You're right. That wasn't necessarily a turning point because a picture like that, if you're somebody's hostage, your captors can dress you up however they want and take a picture of you and put it out there. It was still shocking, but it was confusing, like you said, too.

And then people generally knew if somebody had a gun to your head, you could say, yeah, I'm going to stay and fight. And here's my new name. The turning point, the real turning point, that came about two weeks after that, almost two weeks after that. And that is when Tanya made her real world debut. And at this point, there was very little question

about whether she was actually involved in the SLA or just a hostage in a lot of people's mind. This is where that turning point came. Yeah. So the high Bernia Bank in San Francisco was robbed by the SLA, including Tanya. And they shot two people. Like we said earlier, it wasn't one of these things

where they were just espousing radicalism and threatening violence. They killed people. They didn't kill these two people, but they did shoot them. They made off with about 10 grand to help fund their group. On the surveillance footage, you see Patty right there pointing an assault rifle machine gun

and screaming at people to get down on the floor, announcing her, I am Tanya. And the footage played on the news. And this is when, like you said, everyone was like, man, this is getting really, really interesting. I think the FBI wasn't fully convinced she still wasn't being forced to do this, though, because it's not like they didn't issue a warrant for her arrest

for robbing a bank. She was wanted as a material witness at this point still. Yeah, still. I mean, don't forget she's white and she's rich. So you can't just go around saying that she's a bank robber just because she robbed a bank and plain view of everybody on security footage that's on TV, you know? So she's a material witness.

Another tape comes along. And this time she called her family the pig hearsts. And she said, I mean, this is sort of the ideas, like has she been brainwashed or not? And she said in no uncertain terms, as for being brainwashed, the idea is ridiculous beyond belief, I am a soldier in the people's army. See, this is one of those things where people are like,

if you had a time machine, what's something you would do? I would go back to the beginning of 1975 so that I could watch this whole thing unfold in real time, like on the nightly news and in the newspaper. It must have just been totally mind blowing because everything I have ever known about Patty Hearst was all in retrospect. And I knew the whole story from beginning to end all at once.

To watch the sun fold must have just been just nuts, you know? No, you wouldn't go back and kill Hitler and his cradle. Fine, whatever, that's fine. No, I just want to see what happens with Patty Hearst. Yeah, I want to sit on a couch in 1975, 74. Well, I'd be a Woodstock, so what can I say? Okay, we could kill Hitler too, that's fine. All right, can we do that first?

And then go watch the Patty Hearst thing and go to Woodstock? Well, I think the order of operation is we kill Hitler, we go to Woodstock together, we avoid the purple acid. It's brown acid. Brown acid, and then we wind up in 1975 eating TV dinners, watching this on TV. Okay, that sounds pretty nice actually. Yeah, let's do it.

Let's do it. So, Patty Hearst, just to recap, has said that she is a member of the SLA by choice, that she has a new war name, that she is not brainwashed, and now she's been out in public on video, caught on camera, holding a machine gun during a bank robbery, shouting at people to get on the floor.

And witnesses are saying like, she shouted, I am Tanya. And apparently on her way out of the bank, she dropped the clip out of her submachine gun, an M1 carbine submachine gun, like an assault rifle. And the clip dropped out and it fell to the floor and two bullets were knocked out of the clip. She stopped and picked them up, put them back in the clip and then jammed the clip back in her machine gun

and strode it out the door, like from witnesses' accounts, like she sounds like she was not some meek, timid thing who was taking orders, that she seemed to be like a warrior princess. Yeah, and you gotta go back in time to 1975 and 74, when, you know, we did a great episode on brainwashing, I encourage you to go back and listen to that. But briefly, we should just say that in 1974,

Stockholm syndrome and brainwashing, this stuff wasn't as part of the, you know, just regular conversation like it is today. No, the bank that created the Stockholm syndrome idea had just taken place like a year or less before this. Yeah, so if someone would have said Stockholm syndrome on the news, yeah, people might not have know

what they were talking about it. So it would have been not out of the realm for people to not even understand that someone could be brainwashed like this, as far as just, you know, an average American goes. Yeah, but at the same time, I mean, there had been a real newsworthy and like celebrated case of POWs taken in the Korean War,

you know, 20 years before this that had said, you know, they signed confessions that they'd engaged in germ warfare when they hadn't. There was evidence that they colluded with the enemy. Some of them 21 Air Force officers that had been captured refused to return home when they had the ability to be returned home. And so the idea of brainwashing was out there,

but it was still very, it was nothing like our conception of it now. And it was still very much in the beginnings of being studied and understood. Yeah, so 1974, May 16th is when things really, really change. And this was the incident, I don't know if you were referring to, but this is the one that really made me go,

oh, okay, I'm really not so sure about this being brainwashed or trying to just save our own bacon thing. They were, it was Patty and then Bill and Emily Harris, a couple of other SLA members went to, Bill and Emily went to a sporting goods store for some supplies. Bill shoplifted bullets, got caught, and then tried to bolt out of there

and an employee tackled them as he was leaving. They got Emily and captured her. And then Patty's across the street, sort of waiting in the getaway car. She jumps out, she points that submachine gun at the store and empties the clip and then gets another rifle and keeps shooting. She fires about 30 shots total on a public street

into a store by the grace of God didn't hit anybody. I can't believe it. Yeah, I mean, that's the most remarkable part of this whole thing. And the Harris's got out of there, I mean, it worked. They got out of there, jumped in the van, and they all got away. And this is the point,

and this is the one that would really haunt her in court later on, which we'll get to. But it's like, it's really hard to believe. I mean, she could have left, she was out there by herself. She could have, once the S went down, she could have left. But now she jumped out and she just, she fired 30 shots, trying to help them get out of there. She was left alone in the van with the keys

reading a newspaper while they were there. And like, you don't even have to be a hostage. You could just be an accomplice. And there's a good chance that if somebody's getting busted inside, you might just drive off and save your own bacon. Like you said, it's just such a great term. But yeah, she did the opposite. She went and fought to free her comrades.

So that, yes, that's definitely one of the things that I, I and basically anybody else familiar with the case points to is like, this makes basically everything else questionable. Yeah, this is just not nice. So here's the thing. That was, I think, May 16th, you said? Yeah. So Patty's been kidnapped for, you know,

just a few months from February 4th to May 16th. And she's already engaged in a bank robbery and shot up a Los Angeles street in storefront. And just the very next day, like the SLA is all over the news, like the cops are looking for them. They started out in Berkeley and they moved their way down to LA at some point, but they are, again, more ironic in a lot of their actions

and a lot of their judgment is just really insensible. But one of the things they did was they, I guess, identified somebody's house in Compton. I don't know if somebody knew them or not, or if it just looked like a good place to hide out in South Central Los Angeles. And they said, hey, you, can we give you $100? I think there's just some middle-aged woman

who was running a house. If we give you $100, can we all stay here? And she said, okay. And they said, great, let's go get all of our guns, like several dozen guns, 6,000 rounds of ammunition, a few bombs and move them in. And that lady started to get freaked out. And apparently her daughter went and flagged down

a traffic cop and said, hey, are you looking for a bunch of white people who have a bunch of guns that seem to be hiding out? And that led to this convergence of the LAPD on this house in Compton. And a firefight, a shootout, with most of the members of the SLA in this house. Yeah, so there is a firefight that goes down.

They lobbed some tear gas in there. That starts a fire and it burns the house to the ground and kills all six of the SLA members inside. Patty and the Harris's are not there. They were on the land at this point, waiting it out in a hotel room after the shoplifting thing. And then three weeks after this, the few remaining,

I mean, you gotta think, if they killed six, there were another three hiding out and there were never more than 12. There could only be just a few more remaining, but the remaining members released another message that Patty had a real hard time with at the trial, explaining it away because she was clearly upset about these deaths.

She talked about the fascist pig media and her brothers and sisters dying. And then talked about member Willie Wolf in particular as the gentlest, most beautiful man I've ever known and said that neither she nor Wolf had ever loved an individual the way we loved each other. I read an interview with Willie Wolf's father, who was a doctor back east.

Willie Wolf was just raised this upper middle class son of a doctor, pretty privileged, but also not spoiled bratty, that kind of thing. Love the outdoors and he apparently just, his father still was just like, I don't get it at all. Like that guy, he really was just super gentle and sweet and kind and not very political, but something happened to him out in Berkeley

and he became extremely concerned, I think a natural propensity toward caring about what happened to other people, became radicalized by the SLA. He was a founding member of the SLA. It's not like he was some lamb led to the slaughter. Like he was one of the guys who founded the SLA with Donald DeFries and I think the couple

that were shoplifting the heresies. But his father really struggled to explain it, but what was remarkable to me about the interviews, his father wasn't like over explaining, it wasn't like me thinks he doth protest too much kind of thing, like he just seemed genuinely baffled and like he just didn't understand it. And I was reading an article in the L.A. Times

on like the 20th anniversary of that shootout in Compton. And the owner of the house that had been burned down that the SLA was in, he said that every year Willie Wolf's mother would come and the anniversary of her son's death and leave this wreath on a palm tree at the vacant lot where the burned out house had been and would just stand there in silence for hours.

Just once a year and he said she was the only person who ever came. Wow. Yeah. Very sad. And I'm sure, yeah, the parents of these kids were just, yeah, they were like, it's sort of like being the parents of like one of the Manson family or something.

Right, yeah. And then here's the other thing too, like this is a really complicated thing, like Donald DeFries, he was an escaped convict from prison, but I also read that his stepfather on three different occasions broke both of his arms to punish him.

So, I mean, like there's, and then Willie Wolf, it was accused of raping Patty Hearst too. So just how gentle and sweet could he be? Like it's a really murky, messy case, and appropriately so, because even still today, we're, you know, in 2020,

we're trying to suss out exactly what happened with Patty Hearst in her mind back in 1974. Yeah, it's really, I mean, it's hard to figure out. And I think that's what makes this such an enduring case, you know? Yeah. So the, that eulogy tape was released while she was on the run with the Hearst's

and they stayed on the run, driving across the country sort of bad land style. I don't think they were killing people, that they were committing crimes, they were stealing stuff. And they did this for 18 months, which is another example of like, it was just a lot easier to get away with crimes back then

before there were cameras everywhere and obviously camera phones everywhere. And the internet, they remained on the land for 18 months, about a year into that, they robbed another bank in San Francisco and actually killed a customer in the process. Myrna Opsol. Yeah, and, you know,

this would come up later at the trial, Patty Hearst was not the trigger person, but she was involved, she was one of the three, and the person lost their life, you know? It's very sad. Yeah. She was apparently a church lady who was there depositing like that week's collection

into the bank, the church's bank account. And she was in the wrong place at the wrong time and apparently made a fast move because she was freaked out and got shot and died pretty quickly from what I understand. All right, should we take another break? Yeah, sure. All right, this is our last break

and then we'll talk about the arrest and the trial of Patty Hearst right after this. Here we go. Here we go. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses

and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references

to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist?

So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll wanna be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called

on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing.

Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear.

And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so, my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step.

Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass

on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesha Tickler and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke,

but you're gonna get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams,

canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer,

I think your ideas are gonna change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. So she gets arrested, and this is where things get really weird because you've got two stories playing out in court. One is that she says,

One is that I'm Patty Hearst and I was brainwashed. I was kept in a closet for 57 days when they abducted me. I was blindfolded and bound. I was raped by Donald DeFries and Willie Wolf. I was abused and lectured about how righteous they were. And then after 57 days, I was told, hey, you can either join up with us or we can kill you. And she said, I joined up.

So story number one is that. Story number two is the other. Yeah, story number two is we have video evidence of you robbing a bank. Witnesses say that you're involved in another bank robbery or a woman was killed. We have you on tape talking about how you're not brainwashed and how you joined this by your own free will

and your parents are pigs. So it was a pretty airtight case as far as the prosecution goes, wore it not for one thing. And that is that she was initially kidnapped. She didn't run off and do this. Like she didn't get bored and like go to a community center and end up falling in with the SLA. Like she was kidnapped.

And our understanding of psychology was still kind of gelling around the idea of brainwashing, but it wasn't just completely unheard of. The thing is it had never been tried in a criminal case before. And the Hearst hired the very famous, I think already he was a very famous attorney, F. Lee Bailey, who defended the Boston Strangler.

He was also an OJ's team. He was just a super famous lawyer and he tried it. And I think in retrospect, that's the only thing he possibly could have tried was to say she was brainwashed, like you said. Yeah, and they had psychiatrists that came in to back that up and say, this is very possible that brought up the stuff about the POWs.

They had multiple psychiatrists come in and kind of take their side. And then as far as the tapes go, Patty said, you know what, those were scripted. And I had no choice. I had to read them as they said. And if you think they're believable, it's because I believe that my life depended

on how well of a job I did reading these things. Right. And that those tapes were, I mean, that was the big, big evidence in the trial was how passionate she was and how she talked about her love of Willie Wolf and other psychiatrists for the prosecution came in and they were like, you know what,

I've listened to these things over and over and I don't know an actress on earth who could pull this off. Like she was, if she was reading scripted stuff, it surely doesn't sound that way to me. Right. And she also did not, she literally did not help her case. When she was arrested,

she put down as her occupation, Urban Guerrilla. She was, you know, she was like throwing like, fight the power fists. Anytime somebody took a picture of her, she was very much like not the, oh my God, I'm glad to be freed kind of thing that you would expect. And I think that the public wanted to see. And then also when she took the stand,

I can't believe. I can't believe she did that. I cannot believe it either. But she took the stand on cross-examination. She pled the fifth 42 times. Yeah. The public does not really trust people who plead the fifth, especially 42 times,

especially if they're supposed to be a kidnapped victim. So there was a lot that the prosecution had going for them in that sense. And then the defense just basically had brainwashed, she's brainwashed. One of the things they said was like she was raped. She was raped by these men. So of course, like she feared them.

They threatened her life. Of course she feared them. And apparently, I guess the prosecution got her to say that no, she didn't love Willie Wolf. By the way, she never saw Steven Wheat again as far as I could tell. She didn't want to see him. She didn't get back together with him.

And I don't think they ever saw each other again, even though he was speaking to the press the whole time and being very supportive. But she was like, now I'm moving on. But the prosecution got her to say, you said you love Willie Wolf, did you love him? And she said, no, I hated him. And then they produced this thing that is another,

I think another mark that really stands against her in the mind of a lot of people, which is little statue that she'd gotten from Willie Wolf, right? Yeah, they pull this out and they're like, then what is this? Is this not in fact a gift from your supposed captor and supposed rapist Willie Wolf?

Why would you keep this gift still? And her reply was the opposite of my famous saying. She said, I like art. Yeah. Instead of I hate art. Yeah. And she said, you know, I'm an art history student and I like art.

And you know, if you're trying to move the needle for a jury, that's not the way to do it. Well, one of the women jurors on the case said like no woman would carry around a love trinket from a man who raped her and that that really ruined her credibility. At the same time though, Jeffrey Tubin, who wrote a book on this, American heiress.

Yes, but he still had a legitimate book, this is probably what he's done since then. I know, I just, it's hard not to. I know, I know, I know. He made a really good point though that I think it is worth repeating here. And that is that regardless of, you know, maybe how she ended up feeling about Willie Wolf

or anybody that were her captors, she was kept in a closet for 57 days. And anyone who had sex with her in that closet raped her that there's no chance for that to have been consensual. No matter how she behaved during that was, that was rape. And then she was raped and that should be, you know, it shouldn't be brushed aside, no matter, you know, how she came to feel about Willie Wolf.

And I think that's definitely a good point to remember. Yeah, I mean, if that entire story is true about being kept in the closet and, you know, most of this testimony comes from her. And there are still people that think she cooked up this entire thing. And you know what? She just wanted to get out of her engagement

to Steve Weed to begin with. And that's what she orchestrated. Oh, that's such a conspiracy theory. Are people saying that? I'm sure they are, but really you came, oh, okay. No, I was literally making a joke. If you see, if you see though, like footage of Steve Weed, he's the kind that somebody would do that

to get out of a relationship with them. Stay to kidnapping? I'm sorry, Steve and Weed. I'm sure you're super nice, but yeah. Just to get out of an engagement with Steve. I'm just breaking off the engagement. Cause he seems like such a nice guy. It'll only take a few years.

Right. One person has to die, I'm sorry, but. Oh boy. So she, on March 20th, 1976, 22 years old, by the way, I don't think that has really, you know, may have hit home to our listeners. She's still just a kid. Yeah.

She was sentenced to seven years in prison for robbing that bank. She served 22 months of that, near San Francisco at Pleasanton Prison. And you mentioned Jimmy Carter earlier, and we put a pin in that, and I'm sure people are like, what does Jimmy Carter have to do with any of this? He commuted her sentence.

It was very controversial at the time. He said that he fully believed her that she was a victim and would not have done any of this had she not been brainwashed and kidnapped and brainwashed. And they said, what about Stevie Weed? And he was like, I don't know who that is. And he was just a big supporter of her. And he eventually actually helped persuade Bill Clinton

to pardon her in 2001. He did. He granted her, he commuted her sentence. So she was let out after 22 months, but it was Clinton who pardoned her. And I said earlier that, you know, Carter I think had the most sensible opinion of the whole thing and it was simply

that had she not been kidnapped by the SLA and forced into these, you know, a life of crime basically, she otherwise would never have engaged in any of those criminal acts. Like she was, her life was not in any way, shape, or form on a trajectory to robbing banks. She was just going to end up being kind of a rich art history person.

Yeah. So you're going to collect in by expensive art probably. But yeah, basically, which, you know, like that was going to be your contribution to the world, have some kids and be very, very wealthy. She was not going to go rob banks. And the SLA forced her to do that, forced her into that life,

even if they didn't force her to rob banks. The thing is though, is that still leaves dangling. There's a big blank space after that sentence. And that is, but she still robbed the banks. And it does seem like she did it from her own volition. And I mean, anybody who was 19 can imagine what it must have been like to be a 19 or early 20 year old. Shooting up a storefront to free a couple of friends.

You know, as reckless, as dangerous, as murderous, as unjustifiable and indefensible as that is, it also must have been probably the most thrilling moment of Patty Hurst's entire life to this day. Well, of course it was because shockingly she led a pretty low key life for many, many years after this. She got out of prison.

She married a former cop. His name was Bernard Shaw, not the composer, but he was her bodyguard. He was moonlighting once he was out on bail as a bodyguard. Had a couple of kids, raised their kids in Connecticut and lived a really quiet life until 1981. Couple of years after that, she published her memoir, like you said,

which we read in our fifth grade reading class. Mrs. Shallow's Clive. Every secret thing. And then she kind of was very public, but not, she was public in the way that, I'm not saying she should have shame, but shamelessly public, going on TV shows, plugging her book, talking about her memoirs, talking about what happened,

budding up with maybe the weirdest thing in this whole story, budding up with John Waters and starring in four of his movies. Including Cry Baby. Yeah, I mean, she was in a bunch of them. She was in Serial Mom. Yeah, I remember when I saw her in these movies thinking, is that Patty Hearst, Patty Hearst?

And it totally was. I think this was before the internet when I saw these. So I read a newspaper article or something confirming that. I was like, all right, I guess that's what she's doing now. Were you in a van waiting for your accomplices while you read that newspaper article? No, it was a very strange time though. And then there were a couple of more cases in the late 90s.

The FBI captured this woman. She was a SLA fugitive named Kathleen Solia. She was living, she managed to get out and live a very quiet life with Sarah Jane Olson. She's basically like Homer Simpson's mom. Yeah, also a wife and mother in Connecticut. And she was arrested for a car bombing carried out in 75. Actually, I think the weirdest part of the story is,

is that her daughter ended up being a contestant on American Idol. Is that right? That's a little weird. I don't know if that's starring in John Waters movies, level weird, but it's definitely, that's a great little lanyard. It's a nice little tidbit.

Her daughters though, when they were questioned about this, were like, you know, this was Berkeley in the 70s. Like it was kind of not a big deal. Everybody was blowing stuff up. That was kind of their attitude, it was interesting. It is interesting. I've got a little detail I turned up that I hadn't seen anywhere else,

but it was from the recollections of one of the FBI agents who arrested Patty Hearst finally. And they said, get this man. She was on the run with another SLA member, Wendy Yoshimura. And when the agents came up these back stairs to this house where she and Wendy were hiding out, they were sitting at the kitchen table.

And the agents came in with their guns drawn and Wendy Yoshimura had both hands on the table and did everything those FBI agents said. Patty Hearst jumped up and ran to the front room. And apparently the FBI agent said, you know, get back here, we're gonna shoot Wendy or something like that. They said that they couldn't guarantee Wendy's safety unless Patty came back.

So Patty reluctantly came back into the kitchen where she was arrested. But when they went back and searched the house, in the front room, they found her M1 carbine and a 12 gauge shotgun. Wow. Which really, it's very difficult not to imagine that she was jumping up to go get her gun

to engage in a gun battle. Interesting. That's nuts, man. Wow, well, so Leah gets found out as Sarah Jane Olson, like I said, that trial and then another one. Remember that bank robbery that we mentioned earlier when they were on the lamb?

That comes back to haunt her as well. And there are these two kind of trials popping up where she has immunity. If she's gonna come in and testify and say who the shooter was, she was gonna say it was Emily Harris. She was all prepared to testify against them. And they both, everyone ended up pleading guilty.

And so she didn't have to go to court again. And she kind of just went back to her life as Patty Hearst the mom. In Connecticut. That's right, very interesting story. And like we said, we look back now and I don't think anyone has the clearest picture still of exactly what happened.

My guess is it might have been a little bit of both. Yeah, I think there was an initial brainwashing hostage thing. But, you know, William Harris later said, we inadvertently kidnapped a revolutionary freak. Like she was just, she had a real propensity for it. Yeah, and they were astounded by how eagerly she took it on, so.

Well, and this is coming, you gotta remember too, this is a 19 year old coming off the heels of being a middle schooler in the late 60s when all of that's going on. And, you know, so that was in the public sphere as in her whole life growing up really, this radical revolutionary kind of thing growing up in Northern California near San Francisco.

So yes, she may have been like, hey, this is my chance. Yeah, and she took it. Well, that's Patty Hearst everybody. If you want to know more about it, there's a lot of ink that's been spilled on her story and just go down that rabbit hole as deep as you like. And since I said that, it's time for Listener Man. I'm curious to read her, or I guess reread her memoir.

Yeah, it's been years, right? Yeah, it's been many years. Let me see here. I'm gonna call this Bavarian Beavers. Hey guys, wanna take the opportunity to talk about your recent show on Beavers to tell you what I have been doing for a few years now. Between finishing school and starting university,

I did nine months of civil service in my regional environmental authority. My main focus besides cleaning up local forest was taking care of Beavers. I basically had to maintain live traps and had to perform sabotage on dams of Beavers, which flooded fields of local farmers. I did so on a daily basis since overnight,

the dams were of course restored by their respective constructors. This was done in order to softly, softly force the Beavers to find a new place to live, which mostly worked after a few months. Also, two Beavers were caught alive during my period of service and were moved to the UK as far as I know

in order to reintroduce them there. As far as I know, they went to go live on a farm. They told me. In England. I learned a lot about these animals during this time and I was stoked when I saw this episode title pop up. As usual, he did a great job gathering and summarizing all the facts and interesting good to knows, including the weird classification as fish

for religious reasons. Keep up the great work. This is from Bavaria, Germany. And that is from Nico. Thanks, Nico. And Nico says, Chuck hats off to you and your German skills. So Nico's being very kind.

Yeah, what about me, Nico? What about Josh? Well, you own Japanese and Spanish. All right, but Nico didn't say anything about it. No, she did. That was the PSS. Okay, good. There you go. So thanks a lot, Nico, for complimenting both of us. I appreciate you finally getting to it.

And if you want to be like Nico and compliment both of us, we love that kind of thing. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast.ihartradio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen

to your favorite shows. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back

into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. About my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the I Heart

Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.