Patty Hearst, was born February 20, 1954 in Los Angeles, California. She was an heiress of the William Randolph Hearst newspaper empire and was kidnapped in 1974 by leftist radicals called the Symbionese Liberation Army.
On February 4, 1974, she and her fiancé were out when they were attacked by the Symbionese Liberation Army. Her fiancé was beaten and she was kidnapped. She was coerced and brainwashed and kept in the closet of an apartment. While being held captive, she renounced her family and changed her name. She publicly made statements and tape recordings condemning the capitalistic “crimes” of her parents.
The Symbionese Liberation Army extorted $2 million from her father in a food giveaway to the poor and forced her to join in two robberies of a San Francisco bank and a Los Angeles store amongst many crimes she committed, some very serious. She was a fugitive from the law for 19 months after her abduction when she was found and arrested.
Hearst was arrested, tried and convicted in March, 1976 for bank robbery and felony use of arms. She and her defense tried to use Stockholm Syndrome as a defense in her trial after her arrest, but the defense didn’t work and she was sentenced to seven years in prison. She spent the next three years partly in prison and partly at liberty. She was fully released in February, 1979.
