On this day in 1975… “Newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst was captured by the FBI in San Francisco, 19 months after being kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army.” (source: New York Times)
Ah yes, Patty Hearst! A story that just oozes with ’70s quirkiness. Old money! Stockholm Syndrome! John Waters! (remember, Waters cast Hearst in small roles in no less than five of his films!)
I think for readers to really understand just how weird this story was, we have to remember the place of the Hearst Corporation in American publishing and broadcasting. The Hearst family was (and, I guess, still is) a big deal. To everyone under 30 who may have no clue who Patty Hearst was, just imagine if Paris Hilton was kidnapped by a group of political radicals and was then filmed participating with them in bank robberies!
In fact, the high degree of weirdness in this story sometimes obscures the more tragic aspects — such as Patty Hearsts’ claims to have been raped and physically assaulted after having been kidnapped (the alleged rapists died before they could be brought to trial). These days, it’s all too easy to just think of the Patty Hearst story just in terms of its oddness, to think of Patty Hearst as a sort of comic book character, and not in terms of the extremely traumatic experience she must have endured.
But that having been said, she’s seemed to have found some peace by embracing her very odd claim to fame. Her sentence was commuted by President Carter and she was later officially pardoned by President Clinton.
