LOS ANGELES (AP) — Newspaper heiress Patricia “Patty” Hearst was kidnapped at gunpoint 50 years ago Sunday by the Symbionese Liberation Army, later joining her captors in a 1974 San Francisco bank robbery that earned her a prison sentence.
The abduction and subsequent trial of Hearst, then a 19-year-old college student and the granddaughter of wealthy newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, was one of the most sensational and captivating cases of the 1970s.
Hearst will turn 70 on Feb. 20. She is now known as Patricia Hearst Shaw after she married a police officer who guarded her when she was out on bail, the late Bernard Shaw. She has been in the news in recent years for her dogs, mostly French bulldogs, that have won prizes in the Westminster Kennel Club dog show.
Hearst’s allegiance to the Symbionese Liberation Army raised questions about Stockholm syndrome, a common term deployed to describe the bond that victims of kidnappings or hostage situations sometimes develop with their captors.