Patty Hearst and the Twinkie Murders
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Browning wondered if they really had such “power over your life.”
“They did. It’s happening right now.”
“Has somebody been killed?”
Suddenly, Patty switched from her usual monotone to a hurried delineation of the latest terrorist acts, threats, and broken promises, including this: “San Simeon was bombed. My parents received a communiqué demanding $250,000—”
Your Honor, please, the witness is leading the prosecutor. But it was too late. The jury had heard her.
Browning countered weakly: “Was anybody killed?”
“No.”
Before the trial, Bailey’s associate, Albert Johnson, had protested that, “contrary to what Sheriff McDonald says, [Patty Hearst and Sara Jane Moore, attempted assassin of President Ford] have not exchanged cordialities … I don’t want any inferences drawn from any conduct of the two of them simply because they are in the same institution, because there is absolutely no connection between the two cases.”
But there was a missing link—the murder of Wilbert “Popeye” Jackson, leader of the United Prisoners Union. He had been killed, together with a companion, Sally Voye, while they sat in a parked car at two o’clock in the morning. I learned from impeccable sources that the hit was known in advance within the California Department of Corrections, the FBI, and the San Jose and San Francisco police departments. But now—in mid-February 1976, while the Patty Hearst trial was still in process—a similar charge was made in the company of some unusual accusations when a Berkeley underground group called Tribal Thumb prepared this statement:
It has become known to the Tribal Thumb orbit that the CIA, FBI and CCS [Criminal Conspiracy Section] have made undercurrent moves to establish a basis for the total eradication of the Tribal Thumb Community…. [They] are involved in working overtime to unravel the mystery of Popeye Jackson’s execution in an effort to plant Tribal Thumb in a web of conspiracy in that execution …
The FBI’s heavy involvement in the case of Popeye’s death largely is due to the death of Sally Voye, who in actuality was moonlighting (outside her employment as a teacher) as a narcotics agent for police forces. Moreover, she was Popeye’s control agent. Popeye was an informer on the movement.
Several days ago, Patty Hearst was slipped out of her jail cell by the FBI and Mr. Randolph Hearst and taken to a nearby jail to identify a man being held there (we’re withholding his name for now) who was allegedly closely associated with Tribal Thumb, to make an identification of this man’s alleged trafficking of large quantities of arms to Tribal Thumb and the Symbionese Liberation Army. The result is that Miss Hearst pointed the comrade out as the trafficker of such weapons …
Donald DeFreeze escaped from the California prison system with help from the FBI and California prison officials. His mission was to establish an armed revolutionary organization, controlled by the FBI, specifically to either make contact with or undermine the surfacing and development of the August Seventh Guerrilla Movement [ASGM].
We make note of the fact that the first communiqué issued by the SLA under the leadership of Donald DeFreeze was in part a duplicate of a communiqué issued by the ASGM. Further examination of those communiqués establishes that the ASGM had surfaced and was in the process of developing some kind of operational format, when the SLA hastily moved, hard pressed for something spectacular to cut off this thrust by the ASGM. The result was the incorrect and unfounded death of (school superintendent) Marcus Foster.
It is evident that the FBI through its sources of information knew of the underground existence of the ASGM and that the movement was obviously making plans to become public knowledge via armed actions against the imperialist state. Having had their attempts to infiltrate agents into the ASGM’s mainstream frustrated, they sought the diverse method of establishing an organization they could control. So they made three approaches: Donald DeFreeze, who was in contact with Nancy Ling Perry, who worked at Rudy’s Fruit Stand, from whom Patty Hearst often bought bagels and fruit juice.
DeFreeze was let loose and given a safe plan to surface as an armed guerrilla unit. That plan was to kidnap Patty Hearst—strategized by the FBI, Randolph Hearst, Patty Hearst and Nancy Ling Perry. The format of that plan of kidnapping Patty Hearst was extracted from a book, published by a publishing company named Nova, owned by the Hearst Corporation, titled Vanished.
On April 8, after Patty was found guilty, there was a front-page story in the San Francisco Examiner:
Would-be presidential assassin Sara Jane Moore and the Patricia Hearst case are intricately linked in the web of evidence that led to yesterday’s arrest of the accused murderer of militant prison-reform leader Wilbert “Popeye” Jackson, authorities have told the Examiner.
These sources said Ms. Moore, now in custody in a Federal prison in San Diego, will be a star witness in the trial of the accused slayer … And it was the arrest last September of Miss Hearst … that led to the break in the case, according to the primary investigators in the case …
Booked into the San Francisco County Jail yesterday afternoon was Richard Alan London 26, an ex-convict who has been in the Santa Clara County Jail in San Jose since last summer on an armed-robbery charge … London is a member of a revolutionary band called the United Prisoners Union …
Federal and local authorities flatly denied a report circulated by Tribal Thumb sources that Miss Hearst, convicted of bank robbery on March 20, was taken to the Santa Clara jail to identify London last week …
Last week? Why this change in chronology? The original Tribal Thumb statement alleged that Patty had identified London as a gunrunner for the SLA and Tribal Thumb more than a month-and-a-half previously. The truth is that she secretly began to turn state’s evidence early in her trial. Usually, defendants tell what they know before trial, so the prosecution can decide whether or not to plea-bargain and avoid a trial.
But this particular trial had to be held, if only to avoid giving any impression of plea-bargaining. Patty Hearst had been gang-banged behind the tent at the Hearstling Brothers Browning & Bailey Bread and Circus by both teams, prosecution and defense, while they were adversaries in a trial that was more carefully staged than a TV wrestling match.
Judge Oliver Carter had once sentenced Hedy Sarney to two and a half years for bank robbery. She claimed at her sentencing that Tribal Thumb had made her do it. Now F. Lee Bailey reminded the judge that he had commented that her claim of coercion came too late and that she had refused to testify against the people she accused of forcing her to commit the crime, whereas, in the case of Patty Hearst, Bailey said cryptically, “Your Honor has been made aware of some facts which are relevant to him.”
It was considered likely that Popeye Jackson could have been killed by police agents—to neutralize yet another black leader, rather than because he was supposed to be an informer. The United Prisoners Union reasoned that “if Popeye had been interested in snitching, he would have made all efforts to keep up his contacts with the NWLF (New World Liberation Front) rather than be ‘cold and distant’ or allow for any misunderstanding.”
But was it possible, as Tribal Thumb pointed out, that Patty Hearst had participated in the planning of her own kidnapping while ostensibly buying bagels? An SLA manuscript stated that they had expected more trouble from their intended victim, “since we were planning on carrying her away, but she turned out to be real cooperative. She just lay down on the floor while one of the comrades tied her hands and blindfolded her.”
When Patty was being interviewed in jail by prosecution psychiatrist Harry Kozol, it was as if she pulled a Raskolnikov (the character in Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment who cannot repress the force of his own guilt) by darting from the room and complaining that Kozol had accused her of arranging her own kidnapping.
Bailey asked him on the witness stand, “Did you suggest that she got herself kidnapped?”
“No.”
In their first session, Kozol questioned Patty about Willie Wolfe.
Got into what goddamn thing? Patty could have been referring to her agreement to talk with psychiatrists, or to her decision to join the SLA, or the kidnapping itself. In their second session, when she described the kidnapping scene, Kozol asked if there was anything else. He testified:
There was some delay. She was sort of thinking. She began to look very uncomfortable, and I told her, “Never mind.” And she said, “I don’t want to tell you.” And I said, “That’s okay, if it makes you uncomfortable,” and then she blurted out that she was going to tell me anyway. She told me that four days before the kidnapping, while she was sitting in class, she was suddenly struck with a terrible fear that she was going to be kidnapped.
This was an overwhelming sensation. It stayed with her. I said, “What’s so surprising about a girl from a well-to-do family worrying about kidnapping?” She brushed it aside and said, “It wasn’t anything of the sort. It was different.” For four solid days, she couldn’t shake the fear. She finally thought in terror of running home to her parents, where she would be safe. She somehow fought that. Then the thing she dreaded, occurred.
• • •
The family of slain SLA member Willie Wolfe hired Lake Headley—an ex-police intelligence officer who was chief investigator at Wounded Knee—to find out what had really happened. What he discovered, with fellow researchers Donald Freed and Rusty Rhodes, was that the SLA was part of the CIA’s CHAOS program. In that context, they were planning to kill Black Panther leader Huey Newton and succeeded in killing black school superintendent Marcus Foster after he agreed to meet Panther demands for educational reforms.
At Vacaville Prison, DeFreeze was permitted to set up Unisight, a program by which convicts could get laid by visiting females. According to investigator Headley, DeFreeze’s visitors included kidnappers-to-be Nancy Ling Perry and Patricia Soltysik—and Patty Hearst, then eighteen, not going under her own name but using the ID of Mary Alice Siems, a student at Berkeley.
Headley’s affidavit stated: “That Patricia Campbell Hearst and her parents disagreed bitterly over Patricia’s political and personal relations. That a love affair between a black man and Patricia Hearst did take place prior to her relationship with her fiancé Steven Weed. That Mrs. Randolph A. Hearst subjected her daughter to extreme pressure to change her personal and political relationships.”
Patty began living with Weed in Berkeley later that year, in the fall of 1972. DeFreeze was transferred to Soledad Prison in December 1972, where he was given the special privilege of using the trailers ordinarily reserved for married trustees. DeFreeze became a leader of the SLA and, according to Headley, renewed his affair with Patty for a brief time. The affidavit continued: “Discussions were held between Patricia Campbell Hearst and the Symbionese Liberation Army concerning a kidnapping—not her own.”
Whose, then? Her sisters, Anne and Vicki. The idea of kidnapping Patty, too, was brought up—this was a year before it actually took place—but she didn’t think it was such a great option. However, if true, this would explain Patty’s outburst at the moment of kidnapping: “Oh, no! Not me! Oh, God! Please let me go!” Not to mention her confession of pre-kidnap fear to Dr. Kozol.
The investigators presented their findings to the Los Angeles City Council, charging that the intelligence unit of the police department—the Criminal Conspiracy Section—knew of the SLA’s presence but wanted the shootout for test purposes. Headley acquired official film footage of the massacre, showing that the FBI used a pair of German Shepherds to sniff out Patty’s presence and make sure she wouldn’t be inside the safe-house.
Steven Weed was told by a cop at the shootout, “Don’t worry, Patty’s not in there.”
On the tape of April 3, 1974, Patty said, “I have been given the name Tania after a comrade who fought alongside Che in Bolivia for the people.” And on tape of June 6, she said, “I renounced my class privilege when Cin [DeFreeze] and Cujo [Willie Wolfe] gave me the name Tania.” But in a New Times interview, Bill Harris said, “She chose the name Tania herself.”
According to Weed, her reading matter had ranged from the Marquis de Sade to Do It by Jerry Rubin. And, according to my Berkeley source, Patty and a former roommate had both read the book Tania, the Unforgettable Guerrilla a year prior to the kidnapping.
Further, I was told, the roommate had been subpoenaed to testify for the prosecution in Patty’s trial, but the subpoena was withdrawn. I wrote about that in the Berkeley Barb. The FBI’s liaison to the U.S. Attorney’s office, Parks Stearns Jr., denied this vehemently, shouting at me in the press room, “You’re wrong!”
It could’ve been just a coincidence, but after that incident, the head marshal began hassling me for identification, even though I had been coming to the trial every day. One time he asked for my driver’s license. I told him I didn’t drive a car. Another time he asked for my Social Security card. I told him I never carried that around. I would present only my press credentials, which he accepted because there were too many media people around, and he didn’t want the attention that a scene would automatically create.
While Patty’s trial was in progress, Sundaz, a Santa Cruz weekly, reported that Research West—the private right-wing spy organization that maintained files supplied by confessed burglar Jerome Ducote—“was purchased in October of 1969 with funds provided by Catherine Hearst,” and that “after the Hearst connection became known to employees … at least one Examiner reporter was told to drop any further investigation into the Ducote case.”
The Sundaz story stated not only that Catherine Hearst gave or lent most of the $60,000–$70,000 purchase price for the company, but also that prior to the purchase, the foundation supported itself through “contributions” averaging $1,000, provided by Pacific Telephone, Pacific Gas & Electric, railroads, steamship lines, banks and the Examiner. In return, the files were available to those companies, as well as to local police and sheriff departments, the FBI, the CIA and the IRS. The Examiner paid $1,500 a year through 1975 to retain the services of Research West.
In another case, a member of the Santa Clara district attorney’s office testified that FBI agent Charles Bates had “categorically denied” having any of the stolen documents sought by the Santa Clara district attorney for an investigation of FBI-sponsored political burglaries. After being confronted with the testimony of one of his own subordinates, Bates ultimately turned over the documents. Some of the stolen documents, according to Sundaz, ended up with Catherine Hearst’s pet project, Research West.
In 1969, Charles Bates was a Special Agent at the Chicago office of the FBI when police killed Black Panthers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark while they were sleeping. Ex-FBI informer Maria Fischer told the Chicago Daily News that the then-chief of the FBI’s Chicago office, Marlon Johnson, personally asked her to slip a drug to Hampton; she had infiltrated the Black Panther Party at the FBI’s request a month before. The drug was a tasteless, colorless liquid that would put him to sleep. She refused. Hampton was killed a week later. An autopsy showed “a near fatal dose” of secobarbital in his system.
In 1971, Bates was transferred to Washington, DC. According to Watergate burglar James McCord’s book, A Piece of Tape, on June 21, 1972 (four days after the break-in), White House attorney John Dean checked with acting FBI Director L. Patrick Gray as to who was in charge of handling the Watergate investigation. The answer: Charles Bates—the same FBI official who in 1
974 would be in charge of handling the SLA investigation and the search for Patty Hearst. When she was arrested, Bates became instantly ubiquitous on radio and TV, boasting of her capture.
And, in the middle of her trial—on a Saturday afternoon, when reporters and technicians were hoping to be off duty—the FBI called a press conference. At five o’clock that morning, they had raided the New Dawn collective—supposedly the aboveground support group of the Berkeley underground Emiliano Zapata Unit—and accompanying a press release about the evidence seized were photographs still wet with developing fluid. Charles Bates held the photos up in the air.
“Mr. Bates,” a photographer requested, “real close to your head, please.”
Bates proceeded to pose with the photos like Henry Fonda doing a camera commercial. Was there a search warrant? No, but they had a “consent to search” signed by the owner of the house, Judy Sevenson, who later admitted to being a paid FBI informant.
Not only did the raid seem timed to break into print simultaneously with the Sunday funnies, but the investigative technique also smacked of comic-strip morality. In Dick Tracy, the “Crimestoppers Textbook” depicted a trio of stereotypical hippie terrorists preparing a time bomb, underscored by the question, “Would you deny police access to knowledge of persons planning your demise?”
Almost six weeks after that Saturday-morning raid, I received a letter by registered mail on Department of Justice stationery:
Dear Mr. Krassner:
Subsequent to the search of a residence in connection with the arrest of six members of the Emiliano Zapata Unit, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, San Francisco, has been attempting to contact you to advise you of the following information:
During the above-indicated arrest of six individuals of the Emiliano Zapata Unit, an untitled list of names and addresses of individuals was seized. A corroborative source described the above list as an Emiliano Zapata Unit “hit list,” but stated that no action will be taken, since all of those who could carry it out are in custody.