When Patty Hearst became a bank robber,
On Feb. 4, 1974, in one of the most high-profile FBI cases, Patty Hearst — teenage granddaughter of media tycoon William Randolph Hearst — was kidnapped from her San Francisco apartment by the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), a radical group that wanted
This moment at the beginning of April was a high point for the SLA. The comrades had forced [Patty’s father] Randy Hearst to spend millions to feed the poor, and his daughter had astonished the world by announcing her preference for them over him.
Of course, the group still had no long-term goals or plans, but at this time its tactical proficiency trumped its strategic ineptitude. The SLA always planned individual actions with skill and care. So it was with the kidnapping of Patricia on Feb. 4, and so it was with the robbery of the Hibernia Bank on April 15.
Patricia acted like a full-fledged comrade after her communiqué became public on April 3, and her captors treated her as if her conversion were sincere and total. Bill Harris taught her how to lace bullets with cyanide. [Donald] DeFreeze showed her how to assemble a pipe bomb — a frightening undertaking in any circumstance, but especially in a small apartment and with the general field marshal’s unsteady hand. The group conducted daily drills in the apartment, including calisthenics and weapons training with their unloaded guns. (DeFreeze thought the loud clicking of inserting ammunition clips might arouse the suspicions of neighbours.)
For a target, Bill Harris and Angela [Atwood] settled on the Hibernia branch in the sleepy Sunset district of the city. Wedged between Golden Gate Park and the Pacific Ocean, Sunset in those days consisted mostly of single-family homes populated by Irish and Italian families. (Joe Remiro, the only SLA member from San Francisco, grew up in Sunset.) The business district along Noriega St. was lightly travelled, especially compared with busier parts of the city, and the Hibernia Bank at Noriega and 22nd Ave. had security cameras.
Later, much was made of the fact that the president of Hibernia was a local aristocrat named Michael Henry de Young Tobin, whose daughter Trish was Patricia’s best friend in Hillsborough. But there is no evidence that Patricia volunteered this information to the comrades, so this particular coincidence was unintentional.
The robbery had enormous stakes for the SLA, not least because the preparations consumed the last of their funds. Between April 11 and 13, Camilla Hall and Emily Harris used an identification card in the name of Janet Cooper to rent the four cars to be used in the operation. On the night of the 14th, DeFreeze ordered a final splurge for dinner — steak and potatoes for everyone. He did so, he announced, because the SLA coffers would soon be refreshed.
The primary objective for the robbery was money, but the propaganda value was nearly as important. In casing the bank, Bill had studied the location of the security cameras. The plan was for Patricia to stand the entire time in full view of the lenses. DeFreeze ordered her to wear a brown wig that looked like her hair at the time of the kidnapping. He didn’t want anyone to doubt that it was actually Patricia Hearst inside the bank. What’s more, DeFreeze wanted to make sure everyone knew Patricia’s weapon was loaded; her assignment was to fire a round into the ceiling and shout, “This is Tania!” Even the date of the operation — April 15, tax day — had symbolic significance for what the SLA called an expropriation, not a robbery.
DeFreeze designated two teams — an inside team, which would conduct the actual robbery, and an outside team, which would act as lookouts, detain the police, if necessary, and supervise the getaway. The inside team was the SLA core — DeFreeze, Mizmoon [Patricia Soltysik] and Nancy Ling — joined by their prized recruit, Patricia Hearst. Camilla Hall also went just inside the bank door. On the outside were Bill and Emily Harris, Angela Atwood and Willy Wolfe. For communication during the robbery, DeFreeze gave each comrade a code number, from one (himself ) to nine (Hearst). The plan was to arrive shortly after the bank opened, make their score, display Patricia, and leave. They didn’t want to get caught, so they knew they had to work fast. The goal was to be in and out of the bank in 90 seconds.
On the morning of the15th, Camilla Hall, who was driving the inside team, took a meandering route that traversed Golden Gate Park. Patricia had not been outdoors (except inside a garbage can) in more than two months, and the sight of grass and trees was so beautiful to her that she almost wept. Fear, too, played a part. She was both terrified and electrified.
The outside team parked across Noriega from the bank, and Hall stopped around the corner with the inside team. Camilla Hall began the action by opening the door to the bank, and then DeFreeze, Hearst, Ling and Mizmoon filed inside. As she was walking through the front door, Ling accidentally dropped her ammunition clip in a great clatter and stooped to collect the bullets. DeFreeze stepped over her and shouted to the 18 employees and six customers, “This is a holdup! The first motherf---er who don’t lay down on the floor gets shot in the head!”
On the second floor of the bank, in a break room, Jim Smith, the branch manager, heard the commotion. At 9:51 a.m., he punched a silent alarm, which triggered two high-speed cameras with wide-angle lenses to begin shooting four pictures per second. (Spliced together, these photographs can resemble a jerky motion picture; in all, each security camera took about 400 pictures of the robbery.)
DeFreeze kept to his assigned role of standing by the front door. Ling gathered her ammunition and controlled the customers and employees, yelling, “SLA! SLA! SLA! Get down on the floor!” With balletic grace, Mizmoon vaulted over the partition that separated the customer area from the tellers. She stepped over the employees, who were prone on the floor, and started removing cash from the drawers. While Mizmoon extracted cash, DeFreeze found the bank security guard and removed the .38-calibre revolver from his holster. (One passerby thought the entire event was a scene from The Streets of San Francisco, which was actually shooting an episode nearby.)
Everything was going perfectly — until Nancy Ling panicked. This was her pattern. In November, she had fired wildly at Marcus Foster and succeeded only in grazing him [though the Oakland school superintendent would be killed in the SLA attack]. In February, she had taken needless potshots at the students next door to Patricia’s apartment on Benvenue and missed again.
This time, while Mizmoon was collecting the money and the employees and customers lay motionless, two new customers walked in the door. When Pete Markoff, a liquor store owner, and Gene Brennan, a pensioner, stepped inside, Nancy Ling started to blast her machinegun. Fortunately, her aim again proved less than lethal. She hit Markoff in the buttocks and Brennan in the hand, and they retreated, bleeding, to the sidewalk. (Both survived.)
Inside the bank, Patricia’s fear translated into adrenalin. She took her place, as planned, in direct view of the security camera and tried to absorb the chaotic scene unfolding around her.
She then remembered her assignment and tried to cock her carbine to shoot at the ceiling. But the bolt jammed as she pulled it back. (It seems that in tampering with the bullets to apply the cyanide, she had changed their shape, which blocked the gun’s proper functioning.) Panicking and worrying about disappointing her comrades, she blurted out, “This is Tania . . . Patricia Hearst.”
Then, recovering her equilibrium, she joined the others in ordering the customers and employees not to move. “First person puts up his head,” Hearst said, “I’ll blow his motherf---ing head off!”
The robbery took just about as long as planned, and the SLA group inside the bank stepped over the bleeding body of Pete Markoff and got into the getaway car, still driven by Camilla Hall. The SLA’s two vehicles raced about10 blocks away, where the comrades had earlier stashed the other two rental cars.
The group made the change into the switch cars and drove carefully, well within the speed limit, back to the apartment on Golden Gate. Seven comrades raced up to the thirdfloor apartment to count the loot, while Mizmoon and Emily Harris drove the two cars to a parking garage on the other side of town, where they left them.
Inside the apartment, a raucous celebration began. Angela dumped the bag of money on top of a blanket spread out on the floor. As she began to gather the cash into a heap, Angela stuffed a $20 bill in her mouth and said, “It looks so good I could eat it!” Once Mizmoon and Emily returned, the group began the count. The total was $10,660.
Someone thought to turn on the radio, to check on the coverage of their triumph, but they found only music: the O’Jays’ hit “For the Love of Money.”