Patty Hearst
Patty Hearst was the woman of 1974. She was all over every paper and no one could get enough of the tragic story of the American Heiress. Patty Hearst is the granddaughter of William Randolph Hearst and she was just 19 years old when she was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army. The world waited to see if the young heiress would be rescued but then the story took a strange turn. It was soon after that Patty Hearst herself announced that she had joined the SLA and began working within their criminal operation.
She began robbing banks and extorting money for the group, including about $2 million from her own father. In 1975, she was captured by the FBI. She had spent more than 19 months with the SLA and was party to numerous crimes. Her family insisted that she had been beaten and brainwashed by the organization and therefore she should not be held liable for her actions. Hearst would later say that she had been kept blindfolded in a closet for weeks and threatened with death. Eventually, she was given the choice to die or join them, so she accommodated her thoughts to coincide with theirs.
The efforts of her family and her own testimony about being forced or threatened to join the SLA were not enough to save her at trial. Hearst stated that her captors had told her that she had to look enthusiastic during her robberies or she would be killed. There was also evidence that she had suffered brain damage at the hands of her captors and that she was now drinking and smoking heavily. She was convicted of bank robbery and using a firearm during a felony. She was sentenced to 35 years in prison but at her final sentence hearing, it was reduced to seven years.
President Jimmy Carter commuted her sentence to 22 months and she was released 8 months before she would have had her first parole hearing. She was put under stringent conditions and put on probation. President Ronald Regan later gave consideration to giving Hearst a full pardon but never did so. It was President Bill Clinton in 2001 who pardoned Patty Hearst on his very last day in office. After her release from prison Patty Hearst married and had two children, she became active with several charities and was involved with a foundation that helped children with AIDS.