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

by Jeffrey Toobin

  Patricia was uncharacteristically chipper as she moved from the courtroom lockup to the defense table for the reading of the verdict. “What kind of drink are we going to have to celebrate?” Patricia asked Jimenez. “I want a tall Margarita.”

  “Tequila and tonic for me,” the deputy marshal said.

  At 4:20 p.m., Judge Carter called for the jury. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “have you arrived at a verdict?”

  “Yes, sir,” Colonel Wright, the foreman, replied with military courtesy.

  Wright handed the envelope with the verdict form to the judge, who read it to himself and then turned it over to the clerk. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, harken to the verdict as it shall be recorded,” the clerk said, using the traditional words. “The United States of America versus Patricia Campbell Hearst, Criminal case 74-364. We the jury find Patricia Campbell Hearst, the defendant at the bar, Guilty as to Count One of the Indictment. Guilty as to Count Two of the Indictment….So say you all.”

  Patricia took the verdict in silence, without expression. Bailey patted her back. She whispered to him, “I wonder, did I ever have a chance?” She did not look back at her parents, who were in the first row. But when she left the courtroom, Patricia and Janey Jimenez dissolved in tears.

  —

  In temperament and personality, Bailey was always a poor fit with the Hearsts. His ego and preening offended Randy and Catherine, who valued and practiced patrician discretion. They were willing to tolerate him as long as they thought he could win their daughter’s case. Like most people, Patricia herself was intimidated by Bailey’s swagger. For both Patricia and her parents, Al Johnson served as a calming intermediary. But her conviction shattered the alliance between lawyers and client—in subtle ways at first and then with a vengeance.

  Bailey, in typical fashion, took the initiative to advance his own interests. Less than forty-eight hours after the verdict, he sent Al Johnson to the San Mateo jail with a letter for Patricia to sign. It read,

  March 22, 1976

  Putnam/Berkley Publishing Corp.

  New York, New York

  Gentlemen:

  I understand that F. Lee Bailey is writing a book about my trial and life story as it pertains to the trial for which he will contract with you for publication in the United States and Canada.

  As an inducement for you to publish this book, I hereby agree not to publish any account of my experiences in book, magazine, or any other form, prior to 18 months from your initial (hardcover) publication of Mr. Bailey’s book, and I further agree to cooperate fully and exclusively with Mr. Bailey in his preparation and writing of the book in any manner he requires.

  Sincerely,

  Patricia Campbell Hearst

  It speaks to Bailey’s rugged concern for himself that he would confront a client facing thirty-five years in prison (twenty-five years for bank robbery, ten for the weapons charge) with such a document. He later claimed that he had discussed his plans to write a book with both Patricia and Randy. Bailey said they both encouraged him to do so, and his legal fee was calculated with possible book proceeds in mind. (Randy and Patricia denied any such understanding.) And notwithstanding the first sentence in the letter, Bailey had already signed a contract with Putnam to write a book about the case. In any event, Patricia put her name to the letter. Bailey’s incentive for the book deal was clear. His fee to Randy Hearst for his defense of Patricia was $150,000, which he split with Johnson and a handful of other lawyers. His book contract called for a payment of $225,000 and a $40,000 first serial deal with the Ladies’ Home Journal.

  Even though Patricia had been convicted of both charges against her, there was reason to believe that she might fare well in sentencing. Oliver Carter was more casual than most judges about conducting off-the-record conversations with lawyers. Al Johnson, ever amiable, had struck up a friendship of sorts with the judge, and Carter sent the lawyer clear signals that he did not intend to impose a heavy sentence, in the event she was convicted. This hopeful feeling for Patricia’s team was reinforced on April 12, the initial date set for sentencing. In an arrangement agreed to by both sides, Carter did not impose an official sentence on that day but rather sent Patricia for a ninety-day psychological examination to determine her fitness to be sentenced. Patricia protested to her lawyers that she didn’t want any more doctors probing her mental health, but Johnson assured her that this delay was the best route to a short sentence, maybe even probation. Reluctantly, Patricia agreed.

  Then, suddenly, on June 14, Oliver Carter died. And on practically the same day, so, nearly, did Patricia Hearst.

  —

  She spent most of the months after the verdict talking—with a rotating cast of FBI agents and other law enforcement officials (often chaperoned by Al Johnson)—about SLA crimes, and, with yet another set of psychiatrists, about her past and present state of mind. After her fourth session with the agents, Patricia returned to her cell in San Mateo feeling unusually tired. She coughed and felt a sharp pain in her chest and then in her arm. Something was wrong. She made her way to the station of the deputy sheriff, who agreed to summon the jail doctor. In the manner of such things in a custodial setting, no one moved very quickly. It was an hour and a half before the physician summoned Patricia to his office.

  Patricia thought she had a collapsed lung, but the doctor wasn’t sure. In time, though, he agreed that she should be hospitalized, but there were no marshals around to transport her in the proper, secure manner. Patricia’s breaths became shorter, and she started to panic. She wanted Al Johnson, but he had headed to the airport after the FBI debriefing. In that pre-cell-phone era, Patricia decided to call her mother to see if she could somehow track Al down at the airport. (She did.) Handcuffed, with a chain around her waist, Patricia was finally taken to Sequoia Hospital, in Redwood City.

  The young doctor on duty at the emergency room took a look at an X-ray and determined that Patricia’s right lung had collapsed and her heart was in trauma. Her blood pressure was falling, and she was going into shock. The doctor said she needed an operation to put a tube in her chest, and there was no time to move to an operating room. It had to be done in the ER immediately.

  “What happens if you don’t operate?” Patricia asked him.

  “You’ll die,” the doctor said.

  Patricia had the emergency surgery, where her lung was reinflated. She spent ten days in the hospital, where she was also found to be dangerously underweight. While still in delicate health, she was sent on an odyssey around the federal prison system in California, with stops at Pleasanton and San Diego before she returned to San Francisco for sentencing. Her final day in court was delayed, because a new judge had to be assigned to her case.

  The new judge was William H. Orrick Jr., a former Justice Department official who had been on the federal bench for less than two years. He had had no previous connection to the case, and he had to learn the facts from the beginning. As it happened, Orrick was assigned to spend much of the summer as the assigned federal judge on Guam, so he took the full trial transcript with him. (It weighed a hundred pounds.) When he returned to San Francisco, he surveyed his fellow judges in the district for their suggestions about Patricia’s sentence, which ranged from probation to twenty-five years. In the end, presented with this conflicting advice, Orrick decided to aim for a median sentence—to give Patricia roughly the same sentence as the “average” bank robber in Northern California.

  On September 24, 1976, a year plus a few days after her arrest, Patricia stood before Orrick for sentencing. Al Johnson spoke on her behalf, saying she had been “brutalized, vilified, tortured, molested…punished, convicted and incarcerated.” In other words, she had suffered enough. Browning acknowledged that Patricia had cooperated with the ongoing investigations into her comrades, but he noted too that she had never demonstrated any remorse nor taken any responsibility for her crimes. In imposing the sentence, the judge acknowledged that there appeared to be no need for Patricia
to be rehabilitated—she had already turned her life around—but he said he needed to send a message that “violence is unacceptable and cannot be tolerated.” In the end, Orrick sentenced Patricia to seven years, which he determined to be the average for bank robbers in the San Francisco courthouse.

  The sentence was a bitter disappointment to Patricia, her family, and Al Johnson. In truth, Orrick’s sentence was somewhat less draconian than it appeared. Because Patricia had already spent a year in custody, she would probably be eligible for release in one more year or two years at the most. There was an immediate silver lining, too. Orrick indicated he would be receptive to a request from Patricia to be released on bail pending appeal.

  To that end, Al Johnson worked out a complicated and onerous bail package. Patricia’s parents agreed to post $1 million in security to make sure Patricia made her post-trial appearances in San Francisco, and they put up another $250,000 to guarantee that she would show up for court in Los Angeles as well. (Patricia was also facing charges with the Harrises in connection with her shooting spree at Mel’s and the kidnappings that followed.) By mid-1970s standards, these bail amounts were astronomical, and the Hearsts had less available cash than most people thought. Still, as before, the Hearsts found the cash to help their daughter.

  But there was an even more unusual, and fateful, bail requirement. Before Judge Orrick would release Patricia, the Hearsts had to agree to provide her with round-the-clock security, consisting of at least four bodyguards at all times. The judge didn’t explain how the Hearsts were supposed to go about creating such an elaborate security detail, and there were no agencies that did that sort of thing in the 1970s. So the Hearsts, and Patricia, did what they always did in this period to fix their problems. They asked Al Johnson to take care of them.

  27

  “FAVORING THE RICH OVER THE POOR”

  Al Johnson worked his way through law school as a cop, and he retained a fondness for the police long into his career as a criminal defense attorney. Bailey found his friend’s predilection mystifying at best, but Johnson sought out the cops in any city where he happened to be. Without his family in San Francisco, Johnson befriended many local officers and even went on ride-alongs to help pass the time on long, lonely nights. Suddenly, though, Judge Orrick’s order made Johnson’s familiarity with the local police a practical asset.

  He figured Patricia needed about twelve bodyguards, working in shifts. Moonlighting cops would be ideal, and they would probably welcome the extra income. So Johnson asked for recommendations from the chief of detectives in the San Francisco Police Department, who had become a good friend. The chief said he had just the man to lead the contingent. Bernie Shaw was thirty-one years old and a Vietnam veteran with expertise in hand-to-hand combat. His record as a police officer was exemplary. Even better, he had the kind of stable personal life that would allow him to withstand the attention he might receive from being around the Hearsts. He was married with two young children and had been named the Catholic man of the year in public service by the Archdiocese of San Francisco. When Johnson interviewed Shaw, he was so impressed that he put the officer in charge of hiring the rest of the bodyguards. “You’re going to be around a woman who has been through a lot emotionally,” Johnson told Shaw. “You have to be very careful around her.”

  The Hearsts had sold the house in Hillsborough, so Patricia moved into an extra bedroom in the sprawling family apartment on Nob Hill, the most exclusive residential neighborhood in San Francisco. Janey Jimenez, the deputy marshal assigned to Patricia, gave up her career in law enforcement and moved into the apartment too, as a guide and companion. On Patricia’s third night at home, Randy and Catherine, as well as Jimenez and Al Johnson, went to the famous bar at the top of the Mark Hopkins hotel to celebrate Patricia’s release. The maître d’ sent over a bottle of champagne, but the party was cut short when the hotel received a bomb threat, apparently thanks to Patricia’s presence.

  Still, Patricia started a new life. This chapter was an entirely new one, because even before her time in jail and with the SLA she had been sheltered with Steve Weed for more than a year. Now she was a single woman living in the city and, to put it mildly, she was in an unusual situation; she was world famous, and notorious, and she was facing the prospect of a prison sentence if her appeal failed. But once again, Patricia’s strength and adaptability came to the fore. Still in her early twenties, she now embraced another new persona—that of a single and eligible heiress. She wanted to go to parties, and she wanted to date, which she did with her lead bodyguard, Bernie Shaw, seated discreetly at a nearby table.

  —

  In the meantime, the legal machinery continued to grind forward. The trial of Steve Soliah, Patricia’s former lover, for his role in the Carmichael bank robbery had unfolded at almost the same time as her own in the Hibernia case. During her debriefings, Patricia told the FBI that Soliah had served as a lookout (with Bill Harris) for the invasion team inside the bank. But the prosecutors in Sacramento had already started their case based on the theory that Soliah was one of the robbers inside. Because the prosecutors in San Francisco were arguing that Patricia had lied in her own case, the prosecutors in Sacramento decided not to call her as a witness. This proved to be a major tactical error. In a cinematic moment during Soliah’s trial, the defense called a customer who had been inside the bank at the time of the robbery. Audience members gasped as the witness walked to the stand, because he looked exactly like Soliah, lending credence to the defense theory of mistaken identity. The defense also called Emily Toback, a sometime girlfriend, who testified that he was with her at the time of the robbery. (Later, Toback was found to have lied about Soliah’s alibi; she was visiting an inmate at Folsom State Prison during the robbery.) Still, in light of all the evidence, Soliah was acquitted. The verdict proved to be a godsend for the comrades. Spooked by the jury’s decision on Soliah, the authorities all but abandoned the investigation of the robbery leading to Myrna Opsahl’s death. It would take many years of effort by her son Jon to revive the investigation.

  Patricia and the Harrises were still on the hook in Los Angeles for the shoot-out at Mel’s and the kidnappings that followed. Al Johnson, heading into his third year representing Patricia, made several trips to negotiate with lawyers in the local district attorney’s office. In the end, Johnson cut a sweet deal for Patricia. The prosecutors in L.A. decided they didn’t need to add to the punishment Patricia had received on the federal charges in San Francisco; enough was enough. Patricia agreed to plead no contest (effectively guilty) to charges relating to Mel’s, but with a guaranteed sentence of probation. Johnson also went to Sacramento, where the family of Myrna Opsahl was threatening to file a civil suit against Patricia. The Hearsts paid the Opsahls a significant amount of money to forestall a public fight. The two sides promised to keep secret both the existence and the amount of the settlement.

  Patricia detested the enforced passivity of waiting around for court decisions, but she received little comfort from her mother, even though, like many women in their twenties, Patricia now had a more sympathetic view of her mother than she did as a teenager. But the strain of the last three years had worn down Catherine, and she had an emotional breakdown after Patricia was released. She withdrew from most activities, including membership in the Board of Regents, which the comrades had found so offensive. Randy had also grieved during his daughter’s long absence, but he had grown, too. The kidnapping showed him that his life of hunting lodges and country clubs had been curiously sheltered. When Patricia was gone, a whole new world opened up to Randy. His newly acquired knowledge endeared him further to his daughter, and their bond, always strong, grew even closer.

  Knowing his daughter as he did, Randy had a good idea for how Patricia should spend at least some of her time. Like everyone around her, Randy worried about Patricia’s security, but he wanted to introduce her to working with something she loved—dogs. Randy gave her a guard dog trained at the Prion Animal Institute. Th
e institute required future owners to spend two weeks on the premises, learning to understand and command the animal. Patricia loved the experience of bonding with Arrow, a two-and-a-half-year-old German shepherd. Unlike every human Patricia encountered, the dog didn’t know or care about her history, and the intense activity offered a break from the monotony of awkward dates, FBI debriefings, and legal strategy sessions.

  Her relationship with Johnson deteriorated after she got out on bail pending the result of her appeal. During her trial, Johnson operated as her intermediary with the outside world, especially regarding anything related to the multiple legal issues in her life. After Patricia was released, Johnson still tried to play that role, but she soon felt patronized. He had reassured her throughout her trial and sentencing, and both had ended badly. She wondered why she should keep believing anything he said. Still, their bond remained more personal than that between most lawyers and clients. They knew each other well, which was why Johnson was so surprised by a question Patricia asked him out of the blue one day.