Whatever Happened To? Patty Hearst

Patty Hearst is the granddaughter of newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst, whose holdings included the San Francisco Examiner in the city where Patty was born. In 1974, she was 19 and a sophomore at University of California Berkeley when she was abducted by a group of left wing radicals calling themselves the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA). Two months after that kidnapping, the country was shocked to hear an audiotape of Hearst saying she had joined the SLA and adopted the name Tania.

Hearst was on the lam with her abductors for 19 months before being arrested. During that time she was linked to a number of robberies, helping to produce explosives and participated in a shootout at a sporting goods store. She was arrested in 1975 and was put on trial in January of the following year, charged with the robbery of Hibernia Bank in San Francisco. Prosecutors claimed she was a willful participant in that robbery. Hearst, who was represented by F. Lee Bailey, claimed she had been forced to participate under threat of her life. She was found guilty and was originally sentenced to 35 years in prison, a sentence that was later reduced to seven.

The real story of Patty Hearst and the SLA has been a subject of debate to this day. Among the arguments proffered:

Hearst became a young radical who denounced her privileged upbringing and voluntarily participated in the actions of the SLA.
Hearst was coerced and intimidated into joining the group, or at least, acting as if she was a willful participant.
She was brainwashed.
She exhibited Stockholm Syndrome, a condition by which a victim bonds with and identifies with his or her captor. It was the Hearst case which popularized this phenomenon.

Artist rendering of Hearst trial courtroom by Joseph Papin

Hearst would later tell her own story in the book Every Secret Thing, published in 1981.

“Every Secret Thing was written to tell the story of her kidnapping and involvement with the SLA. Rather than trying to analyze herself or her experiences with the SLA, Hearst simply offers a detailed description of what happened to her, leaving it up to the reader to resolve how Patty Hearst, the daughter of a leading American establishment figure, became Tania, revolutionary and bank robber. For the first 57 days of her captivity, Hearst was kept bound and blindfolded in a small closet, where her instinct of preservation, trying to live one day at a time, took precedence over endless fantasizing about being released or being shot. Her captors heaped physical and mental abuse on her, making her believe that she had no help coming from the outside, no support from society or from the protective family she had hoped would rescue her.

“From that point on. she resigned herself to accepting every thing her SLA captors dished out: sexual abuse, physical exercise, forced self-criticism, fiery lectures on the need for revolution in the United States, a country divided between ‘pigs’ and ‘oppressed peoples.’ The SLA was soon her only link with the outside world, since she finally became uncertain about the attitude of her parents and was led to believe the FBI would shoot her on sight. She ultimately became dependent on the group and sought to become a member, participating in a bank holdup only nine weeks after her kidnapping.” (Rick Peterson, Edmonton Journal, April 3, 1982)

Another reviewer, Josh Barkham of the Victoria (Texas) Advocate, had this to say (Dec. 27, 1981): “This is the Patty Hearst story, told by her with candor and honesty, with the skilled help of Alvln Moscow, an experienced journalist. It is a remarkable human document for its detailed portraits of the grandiloquent kidnappers who committed grave crimes for a Marxist-type cause they didn’t fully understand.

“Above all, It is revealing for the light it throws on the terror and despair of the young daughter of a prominent San Francisco family who lived with an SLA gun at her head after being kidnapped and who later feared that in a shootout the police might pull the trigger on her too.”

Her jail sentence was commuted by President Jimmy Carter and she was freed in 1979 after 21 months served. She would later be granted a full pardon by President Bill Clinton. Carter had urged Clinton to grant that pardon. “Carter said his rationale is simple. Hearst is a model citizen and deserves a pardon. ‘Her oldest daughter has just entered college. And all this time, Patty has not been able to vote, she’s not been a full-fledged American citizen…

“‘And I think she’s one special case.’” (Vineland NJ Daily Journal, Oct. 8, 1999)

Patty Hearst with Bernard Shaw — Hearst with husband Bernard Shaw, 1979 (Rick Meyer, Los Angeles Times)

Nine years after being freed from prison a story by Jane Gross in the New York Times (Sept. 10, 1988) described her radically changed lifestyle. “Raised amid privilege and plenty as Patty Hearst; then frozen in memory as Tania, carbine jutting from her hip in a blurry bank surveillance photo, she now seems at ease in her latest incarnation: Mrs. Shaw, a suburban housewife having a bad day.

“Mrs. Shaw, 34 years old, now lives in Westport, Conn., with her husband, Bernard, who was one of her bodyguards while she was out on bail in the midst of a prison term for armed robbery. Her politics, she said, are conservative, and she doubts ‘I was ever as liberal as I thought of myself in college.’ She has two daughters, 7-year-old Gillian and 3-year-old Lydia, and a circle of friends that includes Rita Hayworth’s daughter, Yasmin Aga Khan, who joins her in work on charity events.”

Hearst would be involved in a number of things. She produced a Travel Channel special that toured her grandfathers mansion. She tried her hand at writing fiction, Murder at San Simeon (1996). She had a handful of TV appearances and volunteered with Elton John’s AIDS charity.

But one of her stranger ventures was a collaboration with the filmmaker John Waters.

“When Patty Hearst met John Waters in 1988, she was at the Cannes Film Festival promoting Paul Schrader’s biopic about her.

“John Waters was also infamous in 1988, and Hearst’s ordeal was the sort of curiosity on which the so-called ‘pope of trash’ thrived. Waters ― best known for directing ‘Hairspray’ and ‘Pink Flamingos’ ― had long cast outsiders, has-beens and beatniks, extending as much dignity to them as he did to A-listers. Waters and Hearst’s friendship grew, and she appeared in five of his films: the campy musical ‘Cry-Baby’ (1990), the splendid suburban satire ‘Serial Mom’ (1994), the art-scene parody ‘Pecker’ (1998), the rowdy Hollywood sendup ‘Cecil B. Demented’ (2000) and the lurid sex comedy ‘A Dirty Shame’ (2004), some of which wink at her past.

“‘[John and I] had lunch. It was just kind of serendipitous. It was kind of silly, and John couldn’t wait to tell me that he was just so anxious to meet me and that he wanted to put me in a movie. And I went, Yeah, right. I just thought he was being crazy. But he was serious. Well, he’s crazy, but crazy in the best possible way.’

“‘The probably initial appeal was the incredible notoriety,’ Waters said of Hearst in 2001. ‘But now it’s not that at all. Because if it was that, I would have used her once.’” (Mathew Jacobs, Huffington Post, April 16, 2020)

If you’re looking for Patty Hearst these days, you might try the annual Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show at Madison Square Garden. She has had some notable success there.

Kelly Whiteside of the New York Times wrote this story (Feb. 13, 2017):

“As the French bulldogs entered the ring on Monday afternoon, Patricia Hearst Shaw, looking as unassuming as the average spectator, took a seat in the front row of the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. Dressed casually in a striped top and black pants, she did not seem to fit the part of the well-heeled women of Westminster or its dog-sweater-wearing fanciers. On the edge of a green-carpeted show ring, she teetered between anonymity and renown.

“Hearst Shaw, the 62-year-old granddaughter of William Randolph Hearst, has been a regular on the dog-show circuit for more than decade. Here she is known as Patricia. Before her French bulldogs, Tuggy and Rubi, entered the show ring at Pier 94 on Manhattan’s West Side, Hearst Shaw mingled in the benching area with two of her granddaughters. The girls smooshed the dogs’ ears and snuggled in close for kisses as their mother, Gillian Hearst, smiled.

“Before the judge made her final decision, Hearst Shaw jumped to her feet. She just knew. Tuggy won best of breed, and Rubi took runner-up honors as best of opposite sex.”

But questions about the 19-year-old kidnap victim and her time with the SLA never completely go away. Jeffrey Toobin, author of several notable books including one on the OJ Simpson trials, published “American Heiress” in 2017. He posited that Hearst was a willing participant in the SLA crimes. Twentieth Century Fox acquired the movie rights, but it was a movie that would never see the light of day. Here’s why:

“Twentieth Century Fox said Thursday that it’s canceling an upcoming biopic of newspaper heiress Patty Hearst, a film based on a book by Jeffrey Toobin that chronicles Hearst’s 1974 kidnapping and eventual conviction for bank robbery.

“Although the studio did not explain why the film had been pulled, the announcement came just hours after Hearst released a lengthy statement criticizing Toobin’s book, ‘American Heiress,’ as factually incorrect and for ‘romanticizing my rape and torture.’ Hearst, now 63, also said she was ‘saddened and appalled’ that Fox ‘agreed to finance and produce a movie based on Toobin’s book.’” (Travis M. Andrews, Washington Post, Jan. 12 2018)

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Whatever Happened To?