John Upsall (2:56)

Up to her desk, puts her face in her hands, and with tears, says my name.

Christopher Goffard (3:04)

His mother was at the hospital.

John Upsall (3:08)

The furthest thing from all of our minds was our mom, who was assumedly safe at home, you know, had been injured somehow.

Christopher Goffard (3:22)

Today, the story of Patty Hearst and the violent legacy of the SLA as told by two men at the heart of it from LA Times studios, this is Crimes of the Times. I'm Christopher Goffard. Bill Harris, a Vietnam veteran and Bay Area radical, was working at the post office in late 1973. One day he opened the newspaper and saw an announcement on the society page. Patricia Hearst, heiress of the Hearst media empire, was engaged to be married.

Bill Harris (4:04)

It was a big spread on the front page of that section. And, you know, it was an unusual picture of the attractive young couple who were announcing their engagement. And I'm going, well, that's a big announcement. I always thought these people tried to kind of keep a low profile. So I tore that page off and I folded it up and I took it home, stashed it, put it in a file.

Christopher Goffard (4:33)

Like Harris, the SLA was mostly white and college educated. Their symbol was the seven headed Cobra. They had been in the news for the murder of the Oakland school superintendent, Marcus Foster, whose policies the group had opposed. Foster had been shot with cyanide tipped bullets. Two SLA members were in jail and their comrades wanted to find a way to free them. They also wanted a high publicity assault on symbols of American power.

Bill Harris (5:03)

The media part was the crucial thing because that was the whole purpose. We were critical of the mass media as a propaganda organ of the United States government. There was a treasure trove of targets in the area for us economic, military, police, security institutions, things like that.

Christopher Goffard (5:25)

To them, the Hearst family represented America's ruling class.

Bill Harris (5:30)

It turned out she was the simplest and easiest one to do. After we did a little research, we had to figure out where she lived in Berkeley.

Christopher Goffard (5:38)

Bill Harris walked onto the campus at UC Berkeley and into the administration building. He found a massive ledger with students names in it.

Bill Harris (5:47)

And for some goddamn reason I don't understand, Patricia put her name and address in there. And then we had to start doing surveillance on that address.

Christopher Goffard (5:57)

Patricia Hearst was living with her fiance, Stephen Weed. The SLA began to watch their apartment, which was secluded from the street but had no security.

Bill Harris (6:08)

Shocked.

John Upsall (6:10)

Shocked.

Christopher Goffard (6:10)

So you're surprised that there's not more security at Patty Hearst's place. But why would she have any reason to think that she'd be a possible target for revolutionaries?

Bill Harris (6:21)

I don't see how she would really. I don't know. I mean, nothing like that had happened, Chris.

Christopher Goffard (6:28)

He said they took inspiration from groups like Black September, that's the Palestinian terrorist group that abducted and murdered members of the Israeli olympic team in 1972 in Munich and demanded the release of prisoners. The SLA also emulated the Tupamaros, Uruguayan Marxists who staged Attention grabbing kidnappings. Bill Harris and two other SLA members armed themselves and stormed Patty Hearst's apartment on February 4, 1974. They beat her hapless fiance and tied up Hearst. Harris carried her, bound and gagged and blindfolded to the trunk of a stolen Chevy Impala. For weeks, Hearst was confined to a closet they called a picture People's prison. She was carried between hideouts in a garbage can. She said she was raped by the group's leader, Donald Defries, and by William Wolf, who went by the name Cujoe. The SLA claimed responsibility for the kidnapping and demanded that the Hearst family feed the poor en masse. Hearst's desperate father spent $2 million on a food giveaway and crowds rioted as food was flung from trucks. A disapproving governor Ronald Reagan, wished aloud for an outbreak of botulism. The plan to trade Hearst for the incarcerated SLA comrades did not work, and Harris said he wanted to send her home to talk about her captivity. Good propaganda for the radical group as he saw it. But Hearst was coming to identify with her captors. When her mother accepted Reagan's offer of reappointment to the UC Board of Regents, another symbol of hated establishment power to the sla, Patty Hearst was furious. It meant the possibility of immediate execution by her captors. Hearst came to believe her parents were willing to abandon her. The SLA soon grasped the potential for a publicity bonanza. On April 15, just two months after her kidnapping, Patricia Hearst, now calling herself Tanya, emerged into public view a totally transformed person. A security camera caught her at the Hibernia bank in San Francisco storming the lobby with a military style M1 carbine. Under no apparent coercion, this became one of the century's most famous photos. The heiress with the machine gun. For parents anxious about the Vietnam era counterculture swallowing up their children, this image was the nightmare embodiment of how far rebellion might go. Hearst released a tape justifying the expropriation of $10,660.02 from the bank and describing herself as a good soldier in the people's army. She signed off. Patria o muerte venceremos. Fatherland or death. We will win. She denounced her parents as pigs. Patty Hearst's loyalty to her comrades was underscored a month later. In May 1974, she was on the run in the company of Bill Harris and his wife Emily, also an SLA member. At Mel's Sporting Goods in Inglewood, a clerk suspected Bill Harris of shoplifting and tried to slap handcuffs on him. They struggled on the street. Hearst was waiting in a van nearby. She sprayed the storefront with gunfire, allowing Harris and his wife to escape. The next day, the three fugitives were hiding out at a motel near Disneyland when the LAPD caught up to the rest of the SLA in a house in South Los Angeles. A gun battle raged on live television. The LAPD launched tear gas. The house went up in flames. Six SLA members were killed, including leader Donald DeFreeze. Bill Harris remembers watching the conflagration from the Anaheim motel room. He has no doubt that he and Patty Hearst would have died if they had been with the others. Harris told me that the SLA essentially ended that day, but its remnants remained on the run. And in April 1975, they participated in the robbery of a bank in Carmichael, a Sacramento suburb.

John Upsall (10:58)

It was a Monday morning and I never left school on my bike, upset with my mom. But that morning I was upset.

Christopher Goffard (11:09)

This is John Upsall again. His mother, Myrna Opsall, was 42 years old and a member of the Seventh Day Adventist Church.

John Upsall (11:20)

I'd woke up about 4 o' clock to do my homework that I neglected over the weekend and I couldn't find a pen in the house that worked. They were all dried up and I just got frustrated with that. And when I left, instead of just saying I love you, my mom just promised that she would get a good supply of pens for me and I just still left in a huff. But my mom was a volunteer for our church as a clerk and I guess she got called last minute because one of the other volunteers were sick and couldn't go. So she joined a couple other older ladies and was taking the weekend collections to the bank on a Monday morning.

Christopher Goffard (12:09)

On the run and desperate for cash to stay ahead of the law, the revolutionaries were ready to carry out another expropriation.

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Christopher Goffard (14:39)

When SLA Radicals robbed the Crocker National bank in Carmichael, California, Myrna Opsall, a mother of four, was there to deposit funds from a church collection. She was killed by a shotgun blast that day. In 1975, her 15 year old son John was taken out of school and brought to the hospital. His dad happened to work there as a surgeon.

John Upsall (15:04)

I saw my dad and it was obvious he had been crying but he, you know, put on a stiff upper lip and all he said was, it's, it's your mom, she's been shot. She's dead. In between those three little phrases, your mind just kind of explodes. It's your mom. Wait a minute. It's my mom, you know. What do you mean it's my mom? She's at home. She's just, you know, taking care of the home.

Christopher Goffard (15:32)

John learned that his father had tried to save her in the er, his.

John Upsall (15:38)

Colleagues there trying to resuscitate her. And he gets in on the action and tries to help resuscitate. And I guess they, you know, one by one, start giving up. You know, 30, 30, 40 minutes into the ordeal. And my dad was the last one to give up, understandably. But it was, you know, obvious that she pled out. I remember the newscasters just saying, there's a bank robbery in Carmichael, Crocker National Bank. One victim taken to the hospital where her husband worked, but his efforts to save her failed. It was just another one of those trauma kind of things. Like what? More, it just seems so unjust to kind of lay blame on my dad after what he had been through. And somewhere along the line, I remember, I think, I don't know how it happened, but we had our lunches from school, our bags of homemade lunches that my mom had made. And so we're at home and it was about lunchtime, and my dad says, you know, we should eat to keep up our strength kind of thing, and last thing we felt like doing. And then he prays, he gives grace over our food and says, bless the hands that prepared it. And then of course, you know, that kind of hit the wrong way. But how do you bless hands that are dead?

Christopher Goffard (17:17)

When the FBI caught Patricia Hearst in September 1975, she clung to her revolutionary Persona. At first describing her occupation as urban guerrilla. She was charged with the Hibernia bank robbery, the one in San Francisco where she made her debut. Her Tanya Persona soon vanished. Her defense was that she had been brainwashed by the sla, a victim of coercive persuasion. Government prosecutors challenged her claim that she had been raped in captivity. And a prosecution psychiatrist portrayed Hearst as a bored, amoral rich kid who lacked a sense of meaning and found a warped kind of liberation. As an SLA soldier, Hearst took the fifth 42 times to avoid questions about her so called lost year, 1975, which included the Carmichael robbery. The jury convicted her. She was more unpopular than the Boston Strangler, said her attorney, Effley Bailey. She got seven years, but served only two. Her sentence was commuted by President Carter after intense lobbying from the Hearsts. Soon after, Hearst married her bodyguard and started a family. She got roles in John Waters movies and raised prize winning French bulldogs. Patricia Hearst is in her early 70s now. I could not reach her for comment. Her transformation from a kidnap victim into a fervent SLM member is a long standing psychological puzzle. It has never yielded tidy answers. But in her 1982 memoir, Every Secret thing, she portrayed it as a matter of survival. It was join or die. Locked in a closet for two months, she was losing her mind with loneliness and fear. Early in her captivity, she smelled the scent of almonds and learned it was cyanide, which her captors were adding to bullets with specially drilled holes. She wrote that later, when she joined the sla, Bill Harris taught her how to do it and seemed to take pride in his craftsmanship. She described Harris, who went by the name General Tico, as the most militaristic of the bunch. At one point, she said Harris pressured her into having sex with him. On the basis of my being a good SLA comrade. I served the cause, she wrote. Nevertheless, sex did not endear General Tycho to me at all. He was a vain, brash, volatile little man, alone among the SLA members. The leader, Donald DeFreeze, was African American, and by Hearst's account, when Harris listened to him speak, he would pound the floor and mutter, oh, I wish I were black. This characterization is reflected in the 1988 film adaptation of her memoir, directed by Paul Schrader. As played by William Forsyth, Bill Harris comes across as an almost comical villain, militant, malevolent and buffoonishly self loathing. The film's center of gravity is Natasha Richardson's portrayal of Patty Hearst. For a long time, the debate about Hearst has been was she a willful rebel or a mental captive? The performance suggests they're both true. At the same time, she's been stripped of all autonomy and is desperately trying to assert it. I talked to Nick Kazan, who wrote the screenplay. He told me he imagined her thinking, I'm here in this closet and you have kidnapped me and you think you can control me, but actually I am the master of my own fate. Bill Harris is not a fan of the film. What did you think about that movie that Paul Schrader did where William Forsyth.

Bill Harris (21:17)

Plays you that was such a piece of trash.

Christopher Goffard (21:20)

What did Schrader's portrayal of you get wrong about you?

John Upsall (21:27)

I don't know. What do you think? You've been talking to me?

Christopher Goffard (21:30)

I didn't know you then. I didn't know you when you were carrying a carbine. For SLA related crimes, Harris served about eight years. He remarried, raised two boys and coached youth soccer. He worked as a private investigator for defense attorneys in the Bay Area. But for years he escaped justice for the Carmichael bank robbery that left Myrna Opsalt dead, as did the other members of the sla, including his wife Emily, who had participated in the robbery. Hearst gives a chilling account of the robbery. In her memoir, she writes that Emily Harris admitted to shooting Upsal, claiming her shotgun had gone off accidentally, and treated the death with airy indifference. Hearst remembered Emily Harris saying, quote, she's dead, but it doesn't really matter. She was a bourgeois pig anyway. Her husband is a doctor. Hearst wrote that she loathed the Harrises, calling them violent, evil, unpredictable, incompetent people. The Sacramento District Attorney's office had ample evidence to prosecute SLA members for the Carmichael case. But for decades, they ignored it.

John Upsall (22:46)

No one seemed to be looking for the killers. They all actually knew who the killers were. The bank robbers.

Christopher Goffard (22:53)

John Upsall wanted to see them brought to justice for his mother's murder.

John Upsall (22:57)

It was a thorn in the side, just kind of. There was a quote in Patty Hearst's book that Emily Harris said when they got back to the safe house and. And people were upset that someone had gotten shot and killed during the bank robbery. And Emily Harris, in her defense, said, well, her death doesn't matter anyways. She was a bourgeois pig. And the Sacramento da, in my opinion, was agreeing with the SLA sentiments. Her death doesn't matter. We're not going to prosecute or, you know, just. Yeah, you expect thugs to be thugs, but you don't expect the people put in a position to maintain law and order just to let the thugs get away with what thugs do.

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John Upsall (25:12)

I joined the justice for Homicide Victims association and we held some rallies there at the Capitol. Footsteps and it was an election year. We ran a campaign justice for Myrna.

Christopher Goffard (25:26)

APSOL and the District Attorney's office in Sacramento had strong evidence that members of the Symbionese Liberation army had carried out the April 1975 bank robbery that left John Upsall's mother dead. Patty Hearst gave a detailed account of it in her memoir. But for decades, Sacramento prosecutors maintained there was not enough to bring charges. Why do you think the Sacramento DA was so reluctant to bring a case?

John Upsall (25:56)

Or maybe they just wanted to avoid the circus, you know, the high profile trial and being overly scrutinized on how they would handle that. And if they failed, it would look bad.

Christopher Goffard (26:09)

The turning point came when the Los Angeles District Attorney's office began re examining the SLAs campaign of terror against cops in LA, which included the attempted bombings of police cars. That led them to re examine the evidence of the Carmichael robbery. Upsall remembers being called into the office of LA County District Attorney Steve Cooley.

John Upsall (26:32)

And he apologized over and over again, just shaking his head. Just couldn't imagine why Sacramento didn't take this case.

Christopher Goffard (26:41)

In 1999, the TV show America's Most Wanted ran a segment on fugitive former SLA member Kathleen Salaya, who had participated in the robbery. She was soon arrested in St. Paul, Minnesota, where she was married to a doctor and had three kids and was going by the name Sarah Jane Olson.

John Upsall (27:01)

And evidently that did help the LA County District Attorney's Office find Kathleen Celaya, who had actually resumed the life of my mom, the life that she pursued, participated in taking. She was the wife of a doctor, had a few kids, was a volunteer at her church.

Christopher Goffard (27:22)

Sacramento prosecutors did not file a case against Bill Harris, Emily Harris and three other SLA members until the early 2000s. Patty Hearst, who admitted she was one of the getaway drivers, was promised immunity if she testified. The defendants cut deals for rank relatively light time.

John Upsall (27:45)

Yeah, at the time of their crimes they were just some foolish rebels, wannabe terrorists, you know, somewhat effective terrorists, but with nothing to lose. And yet 25 years later when they got indicted for the charges, they had developed a life like my dad's and mom's life with a lot to lose. And so I think in a way justice was served in a more equal way than if they had been caught, charged and sentenced back in the 70s. They wouldn't have known maybe the impact that has on people's lives in that phase of their life.

Christopher Goffard (28:33)

Bill Harris also admitted to being a getaway driver. He pleaded guilty to second degree murder and served nearly four years. He believes prosecutors did not insist on a trial because Patty Hearst would have had to take the stand. He said he was prepared to act as his own lawyer so he could cross examine her in minute detail. He would go into every day of the 19 months she had spent with the SLA. He told me he believed the Hearst family wanted to, quote, preserve the narrative that she didn't do any of this on her own free will. He told me, I knew they would find some way to make us an offer we couldn't refuse. Bill Harris is now 80, retired and living in San Francisco. He told me, it's a city where you can be an ex terrorist and be rehabilitated. I wondered if he felt remorseful about his years as a militant. A woman named Myrna Apsal got killed because.

Bill Harris (29:32)

You don't have to remind me. You don't have to remind me. You can't control some of these things, you know, and it happens, and then you're responsible. Your intentions mean little at that point. You know, you're stuck with the consequence. It's over 50 years. There's so many things I wish that didn't have to be that way, that I could make them do them over, make them happen different. But, you know, that's just silly. You can't do that, you know, and just because you wish it, who gives a shit? You know, if it was my mom or my wife or. I would not be feeling the way that I feel. But I understand that, and I have to live with that. There's no way to make it right. There's no way to justify it. It wasn't part of the plan. It was a mistake. So what? As much as you try to avoid it, these things still happen. And we made choices to move ahead. So I own that. But I feel horrible about Myrna Apsal. You know, I took responsibility for what I did. I did the time. I didn't claim I didn't do it. I fought against being buried under the prison and had the key thrown away because that was my right.

Christopher Goffard (31:03)

Harris said his angry militancy was driven by what he'd seen in Vietnam, by the Nixon administration's policies, and by events like the killing of four students by the National Guard at the Kent state protest in 1970.

Bill Harris (31:17)

I appreciate if people understood history and context of how history happens. It's now a simple story about an heiress who's kidnapped by terrorists who ends up joining up with the terrorists and then eventually abandons them and is tried, convicted, and then gets herself out of prison because she's rich. Times were drastic.

John Upsall (31:39)

Ms.

Bill Harris (31:40)

Most people can't imagine being so angry. I'm a very lucky, privileged white male. If I was black, I wouldn't be talking to you. If I was brown, I wouldn't be talking to you. I'd still be buried under a prison.

Christopher Goffard (31:59)

I asked John Upsall whether he thought expressions of remorse from Bill Harris and the others were genuine.

John Upsall (32:06)

Even though they say after the robbery, you know, we didn't mean for anyone to get hurt. They said if we knew someone's going to hurt, we never would have robbed the bank. Well, once there was an injury, potentially fatal injury, they could have stopped the robbery and called 911.

Christopher Goffard (32:23)

Harris and I talked about this in a follow up interview after I found.

Bill Harris (32:27)

Out that Emily had accidentally shot this poor woman in the bank. That became the worst day of my life. Previous worst day was my comrades got killed in la. That was not part of the plan. That was a horrible circumstance. And all these claims of what we said after that, a lot of that is total horseshit. I'll tell you what I felt. I felt crushed, all right? That's how I felt. Now, if you want to deal with the propaganda about what horrible people we were and how callous and formless we were and why we didn't, and help Ms. Absol, who was bleeding to death on the floor, you know, save it, brother. I regret it to this very day. If I could do anything to make it not happen, I would.

John Upsall (33:15)

Well, we had our day in court. I was able to read a four page family victim impact statement and they had their chance to offer up their apologies. And you know, after the fact that they were caught and charged and now looking at sentencing, the apologies are suspect. But, you know, what can they say? I accept their apologies. They serve their time according to the law and so I'm okay with that. They were held accountable and I think they are, over the years more and more remorseful over what happened as they learned about how precious life is.

Christopher Goffard (34:07)

John obsol is now 64 and a retired doctor. He said he and his three siblings all went into medicine.

John Upsall (34:17)

You can mention that all of her kids became doctors. If I give credit to the 15 years that she raised us or my 15 years that she raised us, Obsol.

Christopher Goffard (34:30)

Has been thinking about Patty Hearst for half a century.

John Upsall (34:35)

I've come to understand and truly believe that Patty Hearst is as much a victim of the SLA as myself and my family. She was only 19 years old, I think, a freshman at Berkeley. She gets kidnapped in a violent kidnapping, held in a closet, raped repeatedly over three weeks, threatened with death. And the Stockholm syndrome is real. Survival kicks in. You do what you gotta do, win the confidence of their tormentors, convince them that you're not a threat. And somewhere along the line, yeah, that survival instinct played in and she went along. And even foreign relationships with her captors.

Christopher Goffard (35:32)

Once she was caught and no longer in danger from the sla, he said she came clean with authorities.

John Upsall (35:39)

What she said was complete. I mean, she told every last detail and all of her testimony was proven to be accurate. She didn't lie. And she told most of those things before she was granted immunity. She did come clean. And even after coming clean, I think she served a year and a half or so of her sentence for the bank robbery, which I would think she was forced to do. And her life was forever changed when she was kidnapped. She's had to live with this stain on her reputation and questions all her life and knowing that psychologically she was weak and was brainwashed and did apparently participate in these things voluntarily, so to speak. But I don't think at that point she was fully responsible for her actions.

Christopher Goffard (36:42)

I read Bill Harris a few passages from Patty Hearst's memoir and asked him to react.

Bill Harris (36:49)

Look, I'm not gonna take time to refute her book. Her book was self serving was part of a package deal with the government so that she could possibly get a commutation. Okay, if you think that her book is an accurate description of what went on, you're a fool. That's what I will say. You can put that on your podcast.

Christopher Goffard (37:19)

From LA Times Studios. This is Crimes of the Times. To read more about these cases, check out crimesofthetimesotimes.com we also have a link to our video episodes in the show notes. This episode was written and reported by me, your host, Christopher Gofford. Our showrunner and senior producer is Jacqueline Kim. Producers are Mary Knoff and Jonathan Shifflett. Executive editor is Deborah Anderleu. Production assistant is Jordan Patterson. Production services provided by JTB Studios. Our camera technicians and operators are Jeff Amlott, Julian McCabe, and Jason Newbert, with additional production support from Andrew Gombert, Patrick Stewart and Ann Marie Hauser. Denise Callahan is our studio manager. Ben Church is our production manager. Special thanks to LA Times Studios President, Anna Magzanian. President and chief operating officer of the Los Angeles Times, Chris Argenteri and executive editor of the Los Angeles Times, Terry Tang. Crimes of The Times is executive produced and co created by Darius, Derek Schon and me, Christopher Goffered.