American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst

by Jeffrey Toobin,
The Minneapolis Star Tribune, August 5, 2016

On Feb. 4, 1974, eight revolutionaries who called themselves the Symbionese Liberation Army kidnapped 19-year-old Patricia Hearst, granddaughter of fabled newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst. In response to the kidnappers’ demands, Patricia’s parents announced a multimillion-dollar initiative to provide free food to poor people in Oakland and San Francisco. In April, the SLA released a videotape in which Patricia Hearst pledged allegiance to the SLA. Before long, the woman who now called herself Tania was photographed wielding a machine gun during a bank robbery.