The amazing biography of Patty Hearst, from the family of a newspaper magnate and an American billionaire, has become the basis for two Hollywood films. But these were not paintings about the secular life that she now leads, but about her youth. When Patty was kidnapped by a pro-communist radical group, and then joined them and participated in bank robberies. Whether it was Stockholm Syndrome, or whether she was forced under pain of death and violence is not known for certain.
Early years
Patricia Campbell Hearst is the full name of Patti - was born February 20, 1954 in San Francisco, California. She is the third of five daughters of Randolph A. Hearst - the fourth son of William Hearst. Her grandfather, founder of the dynasty, legendary 19th-century magnate and founder of the Hearst media publishing empire.
She spent her childhood in a luxurious mansion in the small town of Hillsborough, which is located 9 kilometers from San Francisco. She studied at a private school for girls "Crystal Springs" in Hillsborough, then in "Santa Catalina" in Monterey. She was considered a calm and obedient child.
Her universities
After high school, Patty Hearst entered Menlo College, which is located in Atherton (California), then transferred to the University of California at Berkeley, where she studied art history. Patricia's fellow students at the most prestigious college later recalled that the rich girl was restrained and arrogant, adhered to strict ethical rules. For example, one of her fans was fired for occasional marijuana smoking.
In the 70s, Berkeley was the center of revolutionary youth protests, one of these riots even had to be suppressed with the use of force by California Governor Ronald Reagan. However, Patty herself was not interested in communist ideas, then very fashionable, especially among the students of the humanities departments, who read out the books of Mao Zedong and Malcolm X.
Despite the fact that her grandfather was a billionaire, her father was only one of the possible heirs and did not control the media empire. Therefore, the parents did not consider it necessary to take any special measures to ensure her safety. At the time of the abduction, she was in her second year at university and was living in an apartment with her fiancé, an ordinary young teacher, Stephen Vee, whose marriage was scheduled for the summer of 1974.
Kidnapping
Nineteen-year-old Pattywas captured on February 4, 1974 right in her apartment on the university campus of the University of California. During the abduction, Patty Hearst was beaten, lost consciousness, and the terrorists fired several shots from a machine gun.
Responsibility for the terrorist act was claimed by the Symbiotic Liberation Army (SAO) - an American radical left organization. Representatives called Patty's father, Randolph Hearst, and reported that his daughter had been taken hostage. The group's first demand was the release of two members of the CAO, who had been recently arrested by the FBI for a political assassination.
Who are the CAO
The founder and leader of the Symbiotic Liberation Army was Donald Defries, the only African American in it, although the CAO positioned itself as a supporter of the black revolution. The purpose of the organization was revolutionary propaganda, the fight against the racist establishment and the harmonious coexistence of people, so the term symbiotic was used. The program was a mixture of the ideology of Maoism, Trotskyism and Black Panthers with elements of environmental philosophy. The group never exceeded 15 people, and there were always more girls in it.
At first, the symbionists had fun giving themselves frilly titles. Defriz became a field marshal general, the rest became generals, they composed manifestos. In November 1973, members of the group shot and killed an African-American educator named Marcus Foster, accusing him of being an accomplice of the ruling class. After that, the police arrested two activists.organization, and then the members of the CAO decided to take a hostage to exchange for the detainees.
First 60 days
Contacting the authorities, the kidnappers demanded the release of their activists arrested for political murder and declared Patty Hearst a "prisoner of war". The original plan failed immediately. Refused, Defries demanded that every poor Californian be given a $70 food package and that campaign literature be published in mass circulation. According to some estimates, it would have cost about $400 million. Patty's father, who had no access to the company's assets, offered to pay $6 million in equal installments. He established a fund to help those in need and contributed the first 2 million, soon volunteers began distributing food on the streets.
The girl spent the first 57 days in a safe house in a small closet 2x0, 63 meters, the first two weeks blindfolded. As Patty Hurst later wrote in the script for the film, the first days she was not allowed to go to the toilet, she was subjected to physical and sexual abuse. However, according to the version of the members of the group themselves, and Patty confirmed this before her arrest, there was no violence, the girl almost immediately became imbued with revolutionary ideas and became a staunch supporter of the leftist movement and voluntarily wanted to join the CAO.
Nicknamed "Tanya"
During the entire time of detention, CAO activists handed over to the press the recorded appeals of the hostage, which became more and morestrange. Until on the 59th day of imprisonment, Patti announced that she voluntarily refused to be released, joins a leftist group and intends to start an armed struggle for the freedom of the oppressed. The film with the recording was accompanied by a photograph of a girl against the background of the symbols of the organization and with a machine gun in her hands. Now her name was Tanya, in honor of Che Guevara's friend Tanya Bunke. This all happened the day before the terrorists promised to release her in exchange for a final payment of $2 million.
In April 1974, two months after the kidnapping, militants of a leftist organization carried out an armed raid on the Hiberia bank branch in San Francisco. On the frames of the videotape that recorded the robbery, Patty Hearst was clearly visible in a black beret and with a rifle in her hands. After that, she participated in several more raids on banks and other gang actions. She would later describe all of these events in the script for the 1988 film Patty Hearst.
Life after
The police and the FBI managed to locate the headquarters of the CAO, during the storming of which most of the activists were killed. Patty herself was arrested six months later. In 1976, she was sentenced to 7 years in prison, of which she served only two thanks to the intervention of US President Jimmy Carter. She received a full presidential pardon 20 years later under Bill Clinton.
After her release, she married her bodyguard, Patti has two daughters. She wrote the script for a film about her revolutionary youth - "PattiHurst "(Patty Hearst, 1988), which received positive reviews from viewers and critics. According to their reviews, this is a beautiful and shocking film at the same time. She herself starred in several small roles in low-budget films.
