Patty Hearst Trial: 1976

Two months after her abduction, Patty Hearst announced in a new tape that she had joined the SLA and taken the name "Tania." The message was accompanied by a photograph of Hearst posing with a gun before a poster of the SLA symbol, a seven-headed cobra. Her parents skeptically replied that all the tapes were made under duress.

On April 15, two bystanders were wounded during an armed robbery of the Hibernia Bank in San Francisco. One robber announced to the terrified customers and automatic bank cameras that she was "Tania …Patricia Hearst." In a tape released a week later, she said that she had willingly taken part in the robbery.

The "wanted" poster for Patty Hearst. (Courtesy of the FBI)

Federal arrest warrants were issued for eight SLA members. The FBI chose to seek Hearst's capture only as a "material witness" to the holdup. Yet suspicion that she had indeed joined her captors was voiced by U.S. Attorney General William Saxbe, who declared that Hearst "was not a reluctant participant" in the robbery and was thus "a common criminal."

The Hearst family was outraged by Saxbe's comments, but the transformation of Patty Hearst from victim to outlaw in the public mind had begun. It was bolstered May 16 when she fired an automatic weapon from a van, enabling SLA members Bill and Emily Harris to escape a security guard at Mel's Sporting Goods store in Los Angeles. Teenager Tom Matthews told police that his van was then hijacked by the escaping Harrises and Hearst, who told him openly of her part in the bank holdup.

The next day Los Angeles police surrounded a small house commandeered by SLA members. As viewers watched on live television, the ensuing gun battle turned the cottage into an inferno. Patricia Hearst was not among the six bodies found when the fire expired. Three weeks later, another Hearst tape surfaced in which she spoke of her love for Willie Wolfe, one of the dead SLA members. Nothing more was heard of her for 17 months.