American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst

by Jeffrey Toobin

  Most of the tape recording was devoted to Patricia’s statements about her captors—assigned sentiments expressed in her own words. “These people aren’t just a bunch of nuts,” she said. “They’ve been really honest with me, but they’re perfectly willing to die for what they are doing. And I want to get out of here, but the only way I’m going to is if we do it their way. And I just hope you’ll do what they say, Dad, and just do it quickly.” She made the same point several different ways: that the SLA was sincere and that her father should meet their demands.

  Patricia made several references to the arrests of Little and Remiro, without exactly suggesting that the SLA would trade their freedom for hers. “I am a prisoner of war and so are the two men in San Quentin,” she said. “I am being treated in accordance with the Geneva Convention, one of the conditions being that I am not being tried for crimes which I’m not responsible for. I am here because I am a member of a ruling class family, and I think you can begin to see the analogy. The people, the two men in San Quentin, are being held and are going to be tried simply because they are members of the SLA and not because they’ve done anything….Whatever happens to the two prisoners is going to happen to me.”

  Patricia’s words about Little and Remiro were elliptical, but she concluded with a clear request to her parents. “I’m telling you why this happened so that you will know and so that you’ll have something to use, some knowledge to try to get me out of here,” she said. “If you can get the food thing organized before the 19th, then that’s OK, and it would just speed up my release. Today is Friday the eighth, and in Kuwait the commandos negotiated the release of their hostages, and they left the country. Bye.” (In this and subsequent communiqués, the SLA made references to events in the news to prove that the stated dates of the recordings were accurate.)

  —

  The town of Hillsborough was devoted to the tasteful display of wealth. It banned sidewalks, commercial businesses, apartment buildings, houses smaller than twenty-five hundred square feet, and lots of less than half an acre. Even by the lofty standards of Hillsborough, the French provincial house at 233 West Santa Inez Avenue stood out for its grandeur. Built in 1914, the ten-thousand-square-foot structure had twenty-two rooms, nine bedrooms, and a garage with an apartment for the chauffeur. Until Patricia was kidnapped, few were even granted the privilege of seeing the house, for it was camouflaged from the street by full-grown Monterey pines, flowering plum trees, rhododendrons, and camellias (the last a nod to the southern roots of the lady of the house).

  The house was also fraying a little around the edges, like the Hearst family itself. The small pool needed work, and the bathhouse was falling apart. With the youngest of the family’s five daughters nearly out of high school, the Hearsts had put the place on the market, just before the kidnapping, for $400,000 (roughly $2 million in 2016 dollars). There were no takers. Unbeknownst to the public, and certainly to Patricia’s kidnappers, the Hearsts had less disposable cash than many supposed. And now, suddenly, their cherished privacy had vanished. Dozens, then scores, of journalists and their support personnel camped on the edge of the driveway. The phone company ran new lines into the property for the journalists’ phones, which were nailed to trees by the street. At first, Catherine Hearst tried to preserve a measure of propriety by treating the reporters as guests. She directed Emmy Brubach, the family cook, to distribute homemade asparagus soup to the waiting throng, helping them ward off the February chill.

  Suddenly, too, the big house seemed very crowded. Randy and Catherine sequestered themselves within its walls, waiting for news, along with Emmy the cook and their live-in housekeeper. (The chauffeur’s residence was vacant and made available to reporters to use the facilities.) The other Hearst sisters came home, and Gina brought her husband, Jay. Patricia’s cousin William Randolph Hearst III, known as Will, also set up shop in the house. Twenty-four years old and a Harvard graduate, Will was known as “the cool Hearst,” the only one with a modicum of familiarity with the counterculture, and he served as a kind of interpreter for the communications from the kidnappers. On Saturday, February 9, Steven Weed was discharged from the hospital, and he moved into one of the bedrooms as well.

  The FBI’s Charlie Bates made nightly pilgrimages to Hillsborough, to report on progress in the investigation (or mostly the lack thereof), where he joined the lower-level agent who was living on the premises. (The agent’s main job was to answer the Hearsts’ home telephone, which rang more or less continuously with calls from journalists, friends, and cranks.) The FBI command post was in the library, where the agents stored their .38-caliber revolvers on the mantelpiece below a Della Robbia ceramic dating from the Renaissance. The big house quickly became claustrophobic, with all the bodies in such proximity. A river of scotch and red wine lubricated the proceedings.

  The psychics soon followed. Catherine Hearst was the most religious member of the family, but she also had a weakness for the paranormal, which was exacerbated by her worry about her daughter. Randy, too, was willing to try anything to find Patricia. So when several callers suggested that they had supernatural abilities to locate missing persons, the Hearsts, desperate for any information, took several up on their offers. Shortly after the kidnapping, Patricia’s sister Gina and her husband, Jay, went to Los Angeles to meet with Peter Hurkos, who called himself “the world’s foremost psychic” and made multiple guest appearances on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show. (Steven Weed, who was more skeptical, referred to Hurkos as Swami Number 1.) Gina and Jay brought Hurkos one of Patricia’s nightshirts, which he ran his hands over and announced that he could not immediately locate her. But he asked to keep one of Patty’s shirts, just in case the spirits changed their minds. At the same time, a former astronaut named Ed Mitchell provided the assistance of his “parapsychology” research center in Palo Alto. Mitchell told Randy that he was in touch with twelve people from various parts of the globe, and they all concurred that Patricia was being held in a house near a large body of water, probably in a beach community.

  Swami Number 2 (as Weed dubbed her) was Helen Tully, of Nutley, New Jersey. The FBI, revealing its desperation (and lack of leads), actually embraced Tully as a source of information. Agents asked Randy Hearst and Weed to bring the bloody shirt Weed had worn on the night of the kidnapping to Tully, who was ensconced at a hotel near the San Francisco airport. Tully brought along her psychiatrist, who purported to place her in a deep trance while she held the shirt.

  “You are at the apartment now,” the psychiatrist murmured to Tully. What did she see?

  “Yes, I see them. They are driving north. They are in a great hurry.” (The kidnappers drove south, and slowly.) But she reported that it was too dark to see the license plate. Undeterred, the psychiatrist told Tully, who was still purportedly in a trance, that she had infrared glasses that allowed her to see in the dark. Tully then proceeded to announce a series of letters and numbers, which two FBI agents dutifully recorded. Tully droned on for almost two hours, and Randy Hearst, stressed and exhausted, fell asleep on the floor of the hotel room. (The FBI declined Tully’s request to be placed in the trunk of a car and driven around Berkeley, as Patricia had been.) Tully’s leads also went nowhere.

  Yet another psychic, the Dutch-born Jan Steers (Swami Number 3), actually moved in to the Hearst mansion briefly, to sense Patricia’s vibrations, but he was also eventually sent packing.

  The FBI welcomed still one more psychic, who took agents around Berkeley, looking for a blue Pontiac that the spirits had informed her was related to the kidnapping. No luck.

  —

  For all the people assembled in the house, the actual responsibility for responding to the kidnappers belonged to just one man—Randy Hearst. On the surface, he seemed almost comically ill-suited to the role—an overfed plutocrat whose cosseted existence could scarcely differ more from the lives of the criminals holding his daughter. And he did make mistakes, especially at the beginning. But the kidnapping of Patricia also turned
out to be transformational for her father. He learned a great deal about an alien and dangerous world, and by the time his daughter came home, he had become a different man.

  For starters, Randy felt compelled to respond to the tape of Patricia’s voice, so he and Catherine stepped up to a forest of microphones on February 13. This would become a familiar tableau: Patricia’s parents, standing in their crescent-shaped driveway, responding to the latest developments in the case. Randy wore tweeds, Catherine a black dress appropriate for mourning. On this occasion, Randy addressed his daughter directly. “Patty, I hope you’re listening,” he said. “We’re really pleased to know you’re OK.” (Her father’s frequent references to her as Patty, which were broadcast around the world, condemned her to a lifetime of being referred to by that sobriquet, even though she always preferred for strangers to call her Patricia.) “You sounded a little tired or like you were sedated, but you sounded all right and I’m sure that the people who have you are telling the truth when they say they are treating you under the Geneva Convention,” he went on.

  Randy Hearst was not especially articulate, but his concern for his daughter was obviously genuine. He was used to saying what was on his mind, and he did so in this long-distance negotiation as well. “It’s a little bit frightening, because the original demand is one that is impossible to meet. However, in the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours, I’ll be trying my best to come back with some kind of a counteroffer that’s acceptable. It’s very difficult because I have no one to negotiate with, except through a letter that generally comes two or three days later than we expect it.” He made one more point: “No one’s going to bust in on them or start a shoot-out.” Randy’s voice nearly broke when he said, “Hang in there, honey.”

  Catherine was already weeping when she leaned in to speak after her husband. “We love you, Patty, and we’re all praying for you,” she said. “I’m sorry I’m crying but I’m happy you’re safe, and be strong. I know God will bring you back.”

  Once Randy returned to the house, however, he realized that he made the SLA’s ransom demand sound like an invitation to a business negotiation. So a couple of hours later, he returned to the microphones and apologized for his previous remarks. He said he wasn’t trying to bargain down the price for his daughter’s freedom. “Obviously, I don’t see how I can meet a four hundred million dollar program,” he said. “But I just want these people to know, these members of the SLA, I’m going to do everything in my power to set up the type of program they’re talking about.”

  The question, then, was, how in the world was he going to do that?

  —

  Randy led a rarefied existence, but he had the good fortune to own a journalism company, which had access to people at all levels of society. So when he put out the word that he needed access to expertise in food banks, he received answers in hours. Look, he was told, to Seattle.

  When Congress killed the supersonic transport project in 1971, the fortunes of Boeing’s home city took a sharp turn for the worse. Local churches felt compelled to start food banks, and by 1974 a woman named Peggy Maze ran a network of them, called Neighbors in Need, across the state of Washington. A Hearst company functionary tracked Maze down within a day or two of the SLA’s demand. Uncomfortable with placing the fate of the project (and Patricia) in the hands of a woman, the functionary asked Maze about her boss. She didn’t really have one, but the Washington secretary of state, A. Ludlow Kramer, had taken an interest in her work. So within a matter of hours, Kramer and Maze found themselves across the dining room table from Randy Hearst in Hillsborough. Could they create a food giveaway program virtually overnight? Hearst asked. Kramer and Maze said they could, and they decided to call their creation People in Need.

  Kramer was tall and taciturn, with a vague resemblance to Abraham Lincoln. Maze was short and voluble.

  “No one can make a dollar go farther than I can,” Maze boasted. Hearst was impressed. He also had no other options, so he asked the pair to take the next step in organizing the giveaway, which was to meet with what he called “the groups.”

  In their communication demanding the giveaway, the SLA had listed more than a dozen community and political groups that were to participate in and monitor the process. This proved to be a savvy move. The groups ranged from the Black Panthers and the United Farm Workers to local operations like the Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco. Several of these organizations, like the Panthers and the UFW, immediately refused to be associated with the SLA because of its responsibility for the assassination of Marcus Foster. But most of the others, including the American Indian Movement and the United Prisoners Union, agreed to take part, mostly by contributing members to assist in the distribution of food. Most important, the participating groups helped validate the operation. Their involvement marked a turning point in the brief history of the SLA—a crucial step in the laundering of its reputation.

  The Berkeley Barb, the alternative weekly that served as the unofficial paper of record for the Bay Area counterculture, reflected this change in the SLA’s public image. Following the kidnapping, and the demand for the food giveaway, the Barb heaped praise on the SLA. The group has “pulled off a devastatingly successful action, underscored the extent of poverty in this state, and written a few pages of American history,” one article noted. “Terror has always been a tool of government and has a legitimate use in actions taken by guerrilla groups against repressive governments….The life of each Vietnamese peasant is just as valuable as the life of Patty Hearst, who is another non-combatant caught up in a war.” Barb headlines from this period included “SLA, We Love You” and “How Can I Join?” In this way, the kidnapping of Hearst, and especially the food giveaway, became such important, high-profile national events that they pushed the SLA’s involvement in the Foster murder from the public consciousness. After only three months, this heinous event, amazingly enough, was on its way to being forgotten.

  —

  On the same day that Kramer and Maze visited Randy, the SLA released another tape from Patricia. Her voice was more relaxed, her message conciliatory, at least in part. “Dad, Mom, I’m making this tape to let you know that I’m still OK and to explain a few things,” she said. “First, about the good-faith gesture. There was some misunderstanding about that, and you should do what you can, and they understand that you want to meet their demands….They were not trying to present an unreasonable request. It was never intended that you feed the whole state. So whatever you come up with is basically OK. And just do it as fast as you can, and everything will be fine.”

  But there was an edge to Patricia’s voice in this new tape, too, a kind of confidence that had not been apparent before. She displayed impatience—not with her captors, but with her parents. “And so, I mean Dad you shouldn’t listen or believe what anybody else says about the way I’m being treated, this is the way I’m being treated,” she said, in language that sounded more ad-libbed than rehearsed. “And I’m not left alone, and I’m not just shoved off somewhere. I mean, I am fine. Also, since I am an example, and it’s really important that everybody understand that, you know, I am an example and a warning. And because of this it’s very important to the SLA that I return safely. And so people should stop acting like I’m dead. Mom should get out of her black dress, that doesn’t help at all.” The shot at her mother’s outfit could never have been scripted by anyone else; it was pure Patricia.

  Randy chose to see the encouraging signs in Patricia’s tape and moved ahead to fund People in Need. First, though, there was a matter of some awkwardness. Randy Hearst was less wealthy than people thought. William Randolph Hearst, the Chief, had not only excluded his five sons from managing the Hearst Corporation but controlled their financial destinies as well. Worried that his hard-drinking sons might squander the family fortune, the Chief tied up most of the Hearst fortune in trusts controlled by professional money managers, not members of the family. Randy and his brothers had access to splendid family resource
s, like the San Simeon and Wyntoon estates, but they didn’t own them—or much else. Even with the SLA acknowledging that People in Need didn’t need $400 million, the giveaway still required a big infusion of cash, and Randy had to scramble.

  After a series of quick negotiations with his bankers, Randy was able to return to the driveway, with the still-black-garbed Catherine by his side, to announce the official launch of People in Need. “Arrangements have been made for two million dollars to be delivered to a tax-exempt charitable organization approved by the Attorney General of California, capable of making distribution for the benefit of the poor and needy,” he said. “Of this amount, half a million dollars represents my own sum. This happens to be a substantial part of my personal assets.” Randy arranged for the other $1.5 million to come from the William Randolph Hearst Foundation. (Two million dollars is roughly $10 million in 2016 dollars.) He announced further that he had retained William Coblentz, a well-connected San Francisco attorney, “to see that Russell Little and Joseph Remiro get a fair trial and receive due process in all phases of the proceedings.” Randy knew that the SLA had not yet directly linked Patricia’s fate to that of Little and Remiro, but he believed this gesture in their direction represented another manifestation of his good faith.