Transcript of The Kidnapping Of Patty Hearst (Part 4)

Hey, weirdos. I'm Ash.

And I'm Elaina.

And this is Morbid.

For a second time recording the same episode.

Oh, you guys.

Nothing's worse.

Nothing's worse.

We had- Nothing in the whole world, the whole galaxy ever.

So many things are a lot worse.

But we recorded started the entire episode. Yeah. Right after we said, That was a good episode. And then we said, Oh, no. Or nor. My mic was unplugged.

Yeah. It was a collective pod lab mistake. Because we were all cleaning the pod lab and your microphone got unplugged and none of us replugged it in. None of us.

A bunch of buffoons. So it was all three of our faults.

Yeah.

And here we are.

Let's go. All right. Well, before we got into the case, we We do have some Bid Nasty at the top of the show, honey.

Bid Nasty.

We got Bid Nasty. Tickets go on sale at noon today if you're listening on Monday.

If you're nasty.

If you're nasty. Yeah. Tickets for our live show, the second show that we added, which will be Sunday, September 28th at the Will Bar. Those tickets are on sale at noon today, Monday, September eighth.

Yep.

eighth. Eighth. Eighth. That's exciting.

It's going to be the Same show as the show on the 26th. Just so you know. So you don't think it's going to be a different show. It's not. It'll be the same one, but we can't wait to see you there.

I'm so excited. We're going to meet. It's going to be fun as hell. A lot of you that weekend. I can't wait.

It's going to be exciting.

Also, our bonus episode is coming out this Friday, September... Twelfth? Twelfth. Twelfth. September 12th. And we're going to be talking about Unkown Number: The High School Catfish. I have now watched that documentary. Everybody, do yourself a fucking favor. Sit down, get comfortable, and get ready for your jaw to be on the motherfucking ground. I knew going into it, the twist. And still, I was somehow like, is it that person?

Or is it that person? I almost said this is shock. I said, this is shock. This is shock and all. Yeah, it's going to be exciting to talk about. It's going to be a little crazy to talk about. But we thought it deserved its own bonus episode. We were going to do it along with the Amy Bradley documentary, like doing a little twofer in the bonus episode.

But honestly, they're going to get their own. Yeah, there's a lot to talk about with both because the Amy Bradley documentary, we were talking about it after we said we were going to do that. And then I was like, well, the Amy Bradley documentary is like three episodes.

Very in-depth and there's a lot of theories, and there's just a lot of stuff to talk about. So we didn't want to cram it into a bonus episode.

And same thing with a No-No high School Catfish. So get ready for Friday. Go watch that. We'll be talking about it.

And remember, bonus episodes are once a month, and they are in addition to the regular episodes. They are not taking up one of the episodes in the week. You will get three episodes in one week once a month.

Aren't you so lucky? Yeah. Okay, so let's get into the episode again.

This is a great episode. Yeah, now you know. I can say that right off the bat. Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Right off the bat.

I appreciate it.

From the jump, this is a wild episode.

It is. It's not as wild as part three, but it's pretty wild.

But wild in a different way.

Yeah. And I think I said this at some point in part three, the way I split them, I feel like I had to because so many different events take place. Yeah. So I was like, let me just...

It makes perfect sense the way it's split because they are really grouping of events that happened.

They are?

Differently and independently.

On different days. On different days. So last time we talked, basically the destruction of the SLA had occurred with that house fire and the standoff between- Where Grandma Chrissy was so lit, she slept through. Grandma Chrissy. Don't forget about Grandpa Joe.

Grandpa Tom.

I was thinking about grandpa Joe from Willy Wanda because I made a reference about that this morning. To my mom, which sounds terrible, but it was really funny.

She thought it was hilarious.

We're from Boston. We have a good sense of humor.

That's how we love each other.

She's in her little bed and I said, Ma, do you feel like grandpa Joe? She said, Yeah. I do. She thinks I'm hilarious. So, Grandma Tom, who they had kidnapped. Patty had the chance to leave multiple times at this point, but stayed and doubled down after that house fire because she was so upset. And now the SLA, the remaining members and the new people they were scooping up, claimed that they were a part of this overarching organization, which was the New World Liberation Front, which it That's a lot of words. So I'm just going to call it the NWLF. Yeah.

I feel like it's never a good thing when a smaller company gets eaten up by a bigger one.

No, it never is.

I feel like that's the kiss of death.

It is the kiss of death.

Anyway. I mean, we've seen it happen. Yeah. You've seen it happen. You've seen it happen. You've seen it happen.

Everyone's seen it happen. Throughout the summer of 1974, Bill, Emily, and Patty managed to add, like I was just saying, a handful of new members to the SLA. But it was with Bill leading, and it turned out that he was a far less effective leader than Donald DeFries had been.

I could see that. Yeah.

Like I said, at the end of three, part three, the future of the SLA definitely seemed way more uncertain than it ever had. Now, with pretty much anybody being able to operate in the name of the NWLF, so many awful, violent occurrences were going down all over the United States. There was bombings, assassination attempts.

And they're all yelling, In the name of...

Yeah, even if it's not Even if these acts are committed by individuals who are not part of the NWLF, it's giving them a worse name than they already had.

It's collateral damage.

They also didn't have a good name to begin with. No. Really is similar to so many things we know about. Anyway. So Fully aware of their disadvantaged position, Bill, Emily, and Patty decided to go on the run again. Because remember, they're wanted as fuck. Run. You know? Run so far away. Over the course of the summer and fall, they traveled all around the United States. They stayed with other activists or people who knew them and sympathized in New York, Pennsylvania, plenty of places across the US where they were less likely to be recognized than they were in California. They told themselves it was all part of the effort to regroup and develop a new strategy. Yeah, man. But in all reality, they had absolutely no idea what to do next or how to bounce back from... I mean, what was a devastating loss to them of losing six core SLA members, including the leader.

Yeah, no matter what, those were their friends, I suppose.

Yeah. Not iconic people.

Yeah, for what they were doing.

Not great people. But yeah. So they were broke. They were tired. And at this point, they were pretty much driven only by the will to survive.

Which, aren't we all?

I'm driven by the will to survive. Humans, you know. So by January 1975, they decided to go back to California, which I was like, why?

I can tell them that's probably the wrong move.

Not only California, but they settled back in San Francisco where everything had started, like where they had kidnapped Patty almost a year earlier.

Bold move. Let's see if it works out for them.

One of the boldest. Yeah, let's see. So in the course of their travels, they picked up a couple new members, including Mike Borton, James Kilgore, Steve Salaya, and Kathleen Salaya, also known as Cathy.

Kf.

Kf. The SLA and the stories about Patty Hearst had stopped taking up the front pages of the newspaper, and radio stations were talking about it less and less. And that was pissing Bill off because he's the new leader of the SLA. He wants the SLA known. So he decided that it was time for the group to reassert themselves and make their presence known.

Or you could just go about your lives.

Or you could just like, yeah, exactly.

Stop trying to make a name for this random thing you made up. Yeah. It's okay. You can move on.

I'm sure somebody was like, I'm tired of this, grandpa. Tired of this, grandpa. And Bill was like, Too damn bad.

Then Bill said, Too damn bad. Well, that's too damn bad.

Well, that's That's the thing. He said, That's too damn bad. And he said, We need some money for guns and suppliers. So on February 25th, 1975, Michael Borton and James Kilgore entered the guild bank in San Francisco, armed with shotguns and revolvers, because they did have guns. They just wanted more.

Of course. We always want more of everything.

Well, remember, they had a pile of guns in part three, but they lost those. Then also they lost a ton in the big house fire. Oh, yeah.

That grandma Christie slept through. Yeah.

Our queen Christie. Pour one out. Definitely pour it out. Pour it out. Yeah, don't.

So Bill- Drink some water, man. Yeah.

Hydrate. Get a liquid ID. Not even sponsored, but we love them. So Bill spent weeks planning this robbery, and they all agreed that they wanted to use the same method that they had used in the Hibernia robbery the year before.

I mean, it worked.

It worked, yeah. So they figured, let's be out in 90 seconds. We don't want to hurt anybody. That's not our intention. And they said, hopefully we'll make out with enough to fund ourselves for the foreseeable future.

I wonder.

Well, the plan did work relatively well. They moved in the... Also, you don't wonder because you heard this. That's why. You couldn't even say it earnestly. I couldn't. You said, I wonder. I wonder. Well, in case for those of you out there who don't know- Who are wondering. The plan worked well. They moved in the allotted amount of time, that 90 seconds.

Yeah. It was 90 seconds.

That's less than two minutes.

You were correct. A minute and a half.

Then you were correct less than two minutes. That's crazy. That is. That just hit me how crazy that is. So they moved in that time. But the problem was the guild bank was not nearly as large or as busy as the Hibernia bank, so they only came away with about $3,000.

Which is not a lot for your trouble.

Yeah, it really wasn't. A lot of trouble. They still considered the operation a success. I mean, they were $3,000 richer. I'm not going to complain about that. And no one got hurt. And it proved, if nothing else to Bill and the others, that even without Donald DeFreeze and the original SLA members, they were still capable of pulling off a robbery and doing it pretty well.

And it's like, okay, I mean, not great. We don't want to rob.

That's not in my 2026 goals.

No, I don't think that's not how you lock in. You know, like you don't just start robbing. But it was little. Maybe that's your sweet spot. Maybe, you know? Probably. But I feel like they went too hard.

They do. But I don't know. Well, you do. Because energized and encouraged by the success of the robbery at the guild bank, Elaine is foreshadowing a little bit. The group immediately started planning their next operation with eyes on a larger bank and a larger haul.

See, because no one can ever just be happy with a little bit.

Just take what you got.

Which sometimes it's good to want more and be charging forward for more and want to be better and all that. Totally. In most circumstances. Yeah. Just not this one.

And this one, not bank robberies.

I'm going to encourage you to rest on your laurels here.

There's a time and a place for everything. Yeah. And this is the time and place to rest on your laurels.

Yeah, for laurels.

So throughout the first few weeks of April, Patty and Emily, they were helping out by scoping out a new location for the robbery. There was the Bank of America in Marysville, a small town about 40 miles outside of Sacramento. Patty scoped that out, and she actually drew a fucking map from memory, like a floor plan.

Which damn, put a pin in that skill and maybe use it for better.

Maybe use it for taking tests.

Yeah, because that's pretty great.

Yeah. And then there was also the Crocker National Bank in Carmichael, and that was also another suburb just outside of Sacramento. So after weighing their options, they decided, let's go with Crocker Bank because it was busier. And as far as they could tell, it didn't look like they had security cameras.

And I bet they weren't hiding them. Yeah.

No, don't ever do that.

Yeah, never.

I'm like, obviously, they're going to do that, especially like this time period. Yeah.

Put them in places that you're not going to immediately recognize.

Yeah. Well, this is like the mid '70s when California, I think, was like the bank. We talked about it in a recent case, that crazy robbery that I covered. Yeah.

It's like the bank robbery capital of the world.

Yeah, or at least like the US. Yeah. But anyway, they didn't think they had security cameras, so that was pretty stupid. But with their choices made, Bill started devising a strategy for what they all expected would be a big step up in terms of reward. So on the morning of April 21st, 42-year-old Myrna Opsal drove to her church to pick up the collection money, and then she took it over to Crocker Bank like she had done countless times before. As she walked into the bank, she had a small adding machine in one hand in the deposit and not the other. And so a young man, later identified as Mike Borton, held open the door for her, and she said, Thank you. And she stepped inside.

You know what would have been nice of Mike Borton to do?

To tell her not to come in?

Hey, girly, you shouldn't come in here right now. Yup. Just like, turn her away. You got 90 seconds. Get it done, get out. And this nice lady doesn't have to be part of this.

And you would think that less people would make it even easier? Would be even easier? Like you have less people to manage? Exactly. Just tell her, Hold on a second.

Yeah. You could even act as a bank employee and be like, Oh, you can come in in 10 minutes. We're just doing something. Yeah. Make something up. Exactly.

But no, he held open the door for her.

He said, Come on in. That's such a good point. Yeah.

So she, at that point, didn't notice the three other individuals who had slipped in behind her, and it probably really wouldn't have made a difference if she had anyway. Myrna hadn't even made it very far into the lobby of the bank when she heard a man's voice yell, Everybody down on the ground, get the fuck on the floor. I can't imagine the fear that would shoot through your fucking body at that moment.

Fear and anger? Because you'd be like... Because having another, a pure human being be like, Get the fuck on the floor. I'd be like, Fuck you.

Immediately, I just was like, Who the fuck do you think I love that we have such different reactions. I'd piss my pants.

I would piss my pants. Make no mistake. I would shit myself.

But you'd be so mad, too.

But there would be this little and probably later, the anger would really hit where you're like, Fuck you coming in here demanding shit of me.

Like, who are you?

I'm an adult. Like, get out of here.

You can't tell me what to do. Yeah.

Don't piss me off.

Yeah. I'd be terrified and angry and upset and all kinds of things.

All the feelings.

Well, by that time, Borton, Kilgore, Solana, Solaya, Cathy Solaya and Emily Harris had all covered their faces with ski masks, and they were waving their guns in the air. Patty was outside in a getaway car, ready to make their escape as soon as everybody emerged from the bank. And inside, Cathy Solaya moved toward the line of tellers and just started shouting for them to fill the bag she had with cash in the drawers. While at the same time, Borton managed the crowd and James Kilgore guarded the door. Okay. So having unsheathed her shotgun from underneath her large coat, Emily Harris started counting down the time because they want to be out of there in 90 seconds, just as they had done in the previous two robberies. Startled and confused, though, because this is a really fucking jarring experience, Myrna Opsal hesitated when Borton told everybody to get on the ground. And she also was holding an adding machine and the deposit. So she was fumbling with everything. Yeah. And was also probably so scared that she didn't get down fast enough. Yeah.

People freeze sometimes.

Oh, I freeze every time I'm scared It's a thing. So at that moment, Emily Harris raised her gun and pointed it at Myrna, hoping the threat would motivate her to get down. But it didn't. She's terrified. Everything happened so quickly. Without any warning, all sound in the lobby was blocked out as the shotgun rang out.

As Emily Harris pulled the trigger.

Emily Harris pulled the trigger. Like a fucking asshole. Emily Harris pulled the trigger and sent a slug into Myrna Opsal's side, which immediately shot her down to the ground.

So you decided that it was important to shoot this woman who just came from her church who was unarmed and holding an adding machine? Yeah. And was terrified? Yeah. Like, that felt like a threat? That's the thing. Where was the threat, you fucking bitch?

Where's the threat? Because obviously, she She's just scared. She's probably just like a deer in headlights. Yeah. Like, you said, not threatening at all. No. Also, I hate saying anything like this, but you could have just pushed her down. Yeah. Instead of shooting her because your whole goal, allegedly, was to not hurt anyone.

And it doesn't sound like that was the goal. Because if your immediate reaction when a nice lady holding an adding machine in her deposit from her church for the week is terrified in front of you and your first reaction is to shoot her in the side with a fucking shotgun, you did not go in there with the intention of not hurting someone. No. I won't buy that for one second. Not at all. There's nothing that could get me to shoot an innocent person with a shotgun. It just wouldn't happen.

It's also such a convenient story. Like, oh, I didn't want to hurt anybody. It was just a mistake when the whole entire point of this was to get the SLA's name back in the papers. Exactly. And back at the top of the top of news and media.

I love it because We'll get to it, but she loves to disengage from the actual act.

Emily Harris is an asshole. She should know that.

She should know.

In that moment, everybody in the lobby, including the other robbers, the other members of the SLA, seemed stunned by what had happened. But Michael Borton quickly got things under control, and he just started shouting for everybody to get their faces on the floor. With the order restored, then, Kathy resumed going down the teller line while Emily just kept counting down the seconds and on the floor in front of her, Myrna Opsal was slumped in a rapidly expanding pool of blood. Like, she's dying on the floor right now.

Yeah, she's got shot in the stomach with a shotgun.

When they hit 90 seconds, Emily called out the time and everybody abandoned their positions and made a break for it. Outside, Michael Borton jumped into one car and got the hell out of there, and Patty and the others followed close behind in her van. Later, Patty said there was a very odd tension and an odd silence as they drove. You don't say. She said everybody removed their masks and just looked like Freaked out. The silence was finally broken, though, by stupid bitch Emily, who said, Maybe she'll live. And James Kilgore looked at her and said, No, I saw her. She's not going to make it. Back inside, the staff of the bank, who was also traumatized Yeah. They scramble to lock the door and call the police while also going to Myrna's side to help her. Bank teller, Rachael Harp, said later, When we got the towels to put on the wounds, they just went right through her.

Oh, so she was just- She was like, ripped apart.

So the ambulance arrived quickly and transported Myrna to the hospital, American River Hospital, and she was rushed into surgery. And immediately, they recognized her as the wife of one of the emergency doctors on the staff, Dr. Trigva Opsal, and the staff contacted him immediately. That's awful. So he rushed to the hospital and joined in on the effort to save his wife's life.

That is unthinkable.

I can't imagine the absolute, just It's like desperation he must have felt. You're sitting there trying to do these clinical things that are going to save somebody's life. But this isn't just somebody. This is your wife. This is your life partner. Yeah.

I can't even conceive of that. No.

Unfortunately, though, Myrna was almost dead when she arrived at the hospital, and there was nothing they could have done to save her. The damage had already been done. And remember, she was laying on the floor while the rest of this went down. If she was going to be saved, she would have needed attention right away. Right away, yeah. And she was robbed of that. So in the end, Dr. Trigva had to be pulled away from her because he just kept trying to do more things to save her. But they were like, It's not going to work.

Oh, that's so sad.

And they had to move her to the morgue. At that point, the remaining members of the SLA had managed to avoid any direct experiences with that violence. The people who were part of the SLA now weren't there when Marcus Foster was murdered, and none of had been at the house in South Central when the police raided it. And they were all very upset, most of them. James Kilgore blamed it on Emily being nervous and fiddling with the gun. Bill and Emily, on the other hand, though, tried to play it off like it was just the price of revolution. Emily, stupid bitch Emily, literally said, So what if she got shot? Her husband's a doctor. She's a bourgeois pig.

Oh, shut the fuck up.

Get absolutely fucked.

She married someone who went to medical school? She married That makes her like, that justifies her being shot in the side while she's unarmed and doing nothing wrong.

No, it just makes you feel better about yourself. Exactly. She married a doctor who saves an ER doctor who saves people's lives, who if you were in a life-threatening incident or any incident, it would save your life.

You go to him. In fact, if something had happened during the course of that robbery and you were brought to the hospital where he worked, he would actually have an oath to take care of you and save your life.

But But she's supposed to be the asshole here, Myrna.

Mother. A mother who did innocent mother doing nothing wrong, holding an adding machine and terrified.

And holding an adding machine in her church's deposit.

She deserved it. Like, go fuck yourself at the bond. It's just like, come on. But your whole message is just completely gone. Like, any message you guys thought you had with that is like, bye.

Yeah, exactly. Well, they reasoned, Bill and Emily, that if Myrna hadn't been standing there when the gun went off, James would have shot, so he would have been killed. It's like, okay, is that supposed to be like, first of all, Myrna is a sacrifice here?

Cool. So the gun just went off. Yeah, exactly. You had no but like, way to distance yourself from that act. Also, Maybe the gun shouldn't have gone off. Maybe you shouldn't have pulled the trigger to shoot the gun in the first place since you went in there not wanting to hurt anyone, and Myrna did fucking nothing to threaten you.

Maybe you guys all should have gotten a fucking job and stopped robbing banks.

Yeah, stopped being dicks.

Exactly. Well, despite their attempts at being the most nonchalant assholes on the planet, it was clear that the the robbery had been botched and the death of Myrna, the murder, I should say, had shaken everybody. They had all been hoping that the bank job also would get them about $100,000. But in the end, the takeaway was a little over $15,000. Wow.

So they're not even good at research.

They're not good at research, execution, errands. Any of the above.

They're really bad at errands.

You remember from part three?

Yeah, they're wicked bad at errands. Terrible.

In the weeks and months that followed, they started laying low because now they're wanted. They'd all been identified by bank tellers as the remaining members of the SLA, including Patty. They were all wanted for armed robbery and murder. By the summer of 1975, the NWLF was also claiming credit for the murder of Wilbert Popeye Jackson, who was President of the United Prison Union, and actually a one-time associate of the SLA. Oh, wow. But he was killed along with his girlfriend. So the fact that he had been killed, Myrna Opsal had been killed during the robbery of the Crocker Bank, all of that together caused everybody to be like, What the fuck is going on here? You need to put a stop to these people just creating violence, inciting violence everywhere.

And it's like, there's no message here. It's just violence for violence' sake at this point.

Exactly. So everybody was calling for law enforcement to just put an end to this, especially around California. And within a few months, the main players in the NWLF, like the higher-ranking people, started getting arrested one after the other. So it was only a matter of time before they started coming after the SLA. So the members of the SLA spent the summer studying the Anarchist Cookbook and perfecting their bomb-making skills. For that one again. Losers. But aside from a few bombs that they placed under police cars in San Francisco that all failed to go off, by the way, their activities went pretty much unnoticed because they were really bad at everything. When they weren't developing their criminal skills, Patty, Bill, and Emily spent their time working on a Manuscript Manifesto. And there it is.

And they had been writing. That word better show up in one of these.

You know a manifesto is always part of something like this. Always. But in a rather strange turn, events after almost two years of running and hiding, the months after the Crocker robbery were the closest thing to normal life any of them had experienced in a while.

It's like, you can feel this way.

Yeah. If you just stop doing stupid shit. Exactly. It might have been the feeling of normalcy and the stability that was going on that caused them to let their guard down. Or who knows if it was subconsciously because everybody wanted out of this and wanted it to come to an end. But whatever the case, in late August, the relationships within the group were starting to deteriorate, especially the one between Patty and the Harris's. In early September, she decided she was going to leave the safe house that they established, and she wanted to move in with Steve Delia and Wendy Yoshimura. She actually said that she wanted to cut Bill and Emily off entirely. She didn't even want to talk to them anymore. Damn. Yeah. Before that, they had settled into a weird domestic routine. I don't know what the ins and outs of their relationship was, but it sounds like it was a little bit strange. They were all living together.

In like, almost like- Relationships we can't define.

Yeah, exactly. But it also quickly started to resemble the relationship that Patty had with Steve, her old fiance, because it was just mundane and boring. I remember that was not for her at all. No. That's why she wanted to believe. Ironically, though, in the end, their mundane day today proved to be their undoing. Throughout the investigation, FBI agents had identified and located Kathy Salaya, and they identified her as the link between the Crocker bank robbery and the original SLA members, including Patty Hearst. Oh, damn. So once they were able to determine where she was living, they figured it was only a matter of time before Kathy would lead them to the others. So they had agents watching Kathy around the clock. They followed her everywhere she went at all times. Wow. And eventually, that paid off. On the morning of September 18th, FBI agents spotted Bill Harris at a laundermat They followed him back to his apartment.

A long time.

Just like I told you, mundane- So normal. Ass life. So they followed him back to his apartment, and they quickly arrested Emily and Bill there. So disappointed but undaunted. Fbi lead agent Charlie Bates scheduled a press conference for later that afternoon, and he started preparing his statement, which probably would have been something like, We're pleased to announce the arrest of Bill and Emily Harris, and we remain committed to finding Patricia Hearst, but we haven't done that yet. Yeah. And it probably would have gone up that way had it not been for two thorough investigators who decided to circle back and check the address that they had for Steve Salaya.

I love when it's good investigative work. Yeah, love that.

Later that afternoon, San Francisco Police Inspector Tim Casey and FBI Special Agent Tom Paddon, along with two additional SFPD officers, drove over to the apartment of 625 Morse Street to take one last look before they headed into that press conference that very afternoon.

I love that.

There was two officers watching the front door, and Casey and Paddon crept around the back porch, where through a dirty window, they could see Wendy just showing some letters to Patty at the kitchen table.

I love it. Just so I had no idea Mundane as fuck.

No idea. Wendy had just got up from the table to go get a glass of water, and the two women heard the sound of breaking glass as Patty broke down the door, burst into the kitchen, pointed his gun at Wendy, and shouted to Patty, freeze or I'll blow her head off.

Wow. Taste of your own medicine. Yeah.

Not so fun being on the other side of that, huh? And of course, in the year before, they had all gone over all these scenarios about how this could end and how they would run away or they would attack the police.

It was going to be so cool, man.

They'd be badass motherfuckers. But now that they were standing in that very moment, neither of them knew what to do.

Yeah, obviously. Standing in the position that they have I did put other people in several times.

Standing in the position that Myrna was put in, and she didn't know what to do.

Did you freeze?

Yeah, maybe. Yeah. So they didn't do anything. No shootouts, no running. They just put their hands up and surrendered. It was all finally over. Wow. Kind of. So after more than a year on the run with bombings, robberies, and now a murder behind them, five members of the SLA, including the last of the original members, were all taken into custody with no incident. Asked for a statement, Katherine Hearst, Patty's mom, told a reporter, They found Patty. Thank God she's all right. But neither she or Randolph cared to really give any additional comment, probably understanding that their daughter was safe, but this was only the beginning of a very long process of trying to figure out what the fuck had happened here.

I mean, this is a this is a complex case.

Yeah. Patty had been gone for almost a year, and they're still wondering, did she want to do all this? Was she forced into doing all this? Yeah, that's the We don't know.

Two things can be true at once.

Yeah. And we'll definitely get into that. Now, even though everybody surrender without a fight, once the cameras were rolling and the recordings were running, Patty and the other members fell right back to their radical activist routine being very performative. Of course. Everybody from local journalists and cops and even the head of the FBI wanted to know the same thing. Who was Patty Hearst now? Was she the same girl who got kidnapped over a year ago and was just carried away in the middle of the night? Or had she really turned her back on where she had come from and joined the SLA? As she stepped out of the car at the LA FBI building, she stood there and held up a raised fist in the air, which indicated that the latter was the truth. I think there's a picture of that, too.

Yeah, I think so.

During their booking, and this is just the most fucking obnoxious shit, all five members of the SLA were characteristically defiant. Patty gave her name as Tanya, and when they asked her what her occupation was, she told them, Urban Guerrilla.

I would have laughed really hard. I would have probably been really fucking annoyed by that.

Urban Guerrilla.

Yeah. You're like, I don't have that.

Why don't you tell me you're an unemployed asshole who runs amok and kills people? Now, unlike the others who had absolutely no money for a lawyer, Randolph Hearst, Patty's father, hired a pack of the nation's best defense attorneys, and he comprised a team that would eventually be led by F. Lee Bailey, who is the- Oh, I heard that name. Yeah, I was going to say a notorious defense attorney. He represented Albert De Salvo, who confessed to being the Boston Strangler. Damn. Sam Shepard, who we've covered before, too. He was accused of murdering his wife in the middle of the night. And obviously, F. Lee Bailey would go on to represent O. J. O. J. Simpson in the '90s.

Yeah.

So that was a big deal. Yeah. And in the days that followed, the investigation mostly focused on Patty. Everybody wanted to know, had she been brainwashed, what had happened here? It was obviously just a matter of curiosity for the public, and we're all just nosy motherfuckers. Of course. But it was also pretty relevant when it came to the question of if she could be held responsible for the crimes that she had participated in while she was part of them or at least living with them. According to sports activist Jack Scott, who had actually spent a lot of time with the group just before the Crocker robbery, he said Patty joined the Simbayanese Liberation Army of her own accord and proved herself in the Hibernia robbery the previous year.

Yeah, I mean, that's true.

But on the other side of the argument was Patty's family and obviously her defense team, who said she was in an incredibly fragile state when she was arrested, and it was clear that she was not acting of her own accord.

And that can also be true. Yeah. I can see both sides of this completely.

We were saying earlier, I think two things can be true at once. But F. Lee Bailey told reporters, her situation is deteriorating swiftly in the San Mateo Jail. It will serve no purpose to have her mental condition deteriorate to the point where she cannot stand trial for this foreseeable future. Ultimately, she was deemed fit to stand trial, so her mental state obviously wasn't deteriorating that badly.

Yeah.

And The judge deemed that her recorded confessions that she had sent to her parents and the press, like all those recordings that had been sent throughout this, were admissible now in this trial. Oh, damn.

Yeah.

In January 1976, she went on trial for the robbery of the Hibernia Bank robbery the previous year, which wasn't so crazy. It was a standard bank robbery. No one was hurt, but nobody was killed, I should say. People were hurt. But she was the only member who could be identified, and she was the only person to be tried for that robbery. Wow. Which, when you think about it, is crazy.

That is crazy.

Arguing in her defense, F. Lee Bailey said that, yes, it was true. She had participated, but she had only done so under extreme duress. He said all of the activities Patty had participated in during her time with the SLA were done out of fear for her life. He said most any other victim would comply with their kidnapper to make sure that they were safe.

Which is true. Which is true. That is a true statement.

Then the prosecution hired Dr. Harry Kozal to evaluate Patty and determine if she had acted of her own volition or not. But within a few days, Patty and Flee Bailey complained to the court that Dr. Kozal had been aggressive, abusive, and had driven Patty to tears.

Damn.

In a 45-minute interview that halted the trial entirely, Patty told the judge that he, implied she had arranged her own kidnapping, asked if she was proud of having robbed a bank, which I think is a valid question, dwelled upon the skin pigmentation of Donald DeFreeze, which I think That was absolutely ridiculous. And then he called her a little girl, which would piss me off.

That would have pissed me off to the end of the Earth. Same.

So he flatly rejected the claims. And in the end, it really didn't matter because on March 11th, 1976, a jury found her guilty of armed robbery, and Patty Hearst was sentenced to seven years in prison for the crime.

Which that is... I mean, she committed armed robbery. She did. That's just, you know.

Think of how crazy that is, though. She is the heiress to one of the richest families in the entire world. She's serving seven years for armed robbery. For armed robbery. Actually, it's funny. I was talking to Ma about this because Ma was like, 20 in her early 20s when this all happened. I said, Do you remember when this was happening? She did. She was like, Oh, we were all very invested in this. Oh, that's so crazy. Isn't that funny? Yeah. Ma said she had just had kids But her and Papa would watch it on the news. I was like, What did you think? She said she was like, We didn't know what to think if she had been brainwashed or not.

Which I think is the right answer, to be honest, because I wasn't there.

I'm not there and I'm not her.

She did go through a ton of shit in the beginning. It's like there was brainwashing no matter what. I think so, too. Whether she eventually felt like she was doing the right thing or not and was actively involved, there was a level of brainwashing regardless. So, again, Two things can be true. She could have been completely traumatized, which she was. I mean, she was sexually assaulted in the beginning there, too. Held in the dark, blindfolded, treated like a prisoner. And then it's like, so that can be true. That's traumatizing I think that's brainwashing. That's fucked up. All of the above. All of the above. Can't even imagine it. And then she could have also realized I'm into this and decided to actively participate. So they both could have been true.

Agreed.

But again, I think my opinion of it is, I don't know.

Yeah.

I don't know.

I think a lot of people share that opinion, and I think it's actually a pretty valid opinion.

Yeah, like a wise opinion. That's the thing. Why?

Because none of us were there. I wanted to say an intelligent It's a wise opinion, but that didn't sound right. A wise opinion because we weren't there. I don't have any similar experience. No.

I can't draw on my experience.

So I don't know. But it was just interesting to talk to Ma about because I was like, oh, that's weird that you tuned into the news when this was massive news.

I know. That is crazy.

But anyway, if Patty seemed overwhelmed and run down in the lead up to and during this first trial, it was probably because in addition to preparing for that trial, she was also involved in ongoing interrogations by the FBI about the Crocker bank robbery and now the murder of Myrna Opsal. They knew that the SLA was responsible for both of these things, but they hadn't been able to locate specific individuals. So and actually, they couldn't even connect Bill and Emily Harris at all to the crimes. So instead, they focused their attention on Steve Salaya, who they incorrectly believed was the man guarding the door during the robbery. But if you remember, Steve wasn't even He was part of that robbery. He was part of the SLA, but he hadn't been there at Crocker Bank that day. Oh, shit.

During the interrogations, Patty was entirely compliant at this point, and she was very honest.

She insisted and was truthful, saying Steve hadn't been at Crocker Bank that day, and he actually hadn't been involved in any of the other crimes either.

Damn.

But unfortunately, also at that time, she had lost all credibility. Yeah. And they didn't really believe anything she was telling them. So instead, the prosecutor forged ahead with their case against Steve Salaya and based on a witness identification of all things. Oh, no. Kathleen James, who was a bookkeeper for Crocker Bank and was there that day, said, When you go through a robbery like that and look a man in the face, you don't forget. I mean, Which I understand you probably feel that way. For sure. But obviously it's possible because Steve wasn't there that day.

Witness identifications are notoriously shaky. Yeah. Because we're just human.

Yeah.

So it's like it's nobody's fault. It's just...

Well, and also remember, they were all wearing ski masks.

A lot of people, especially at that time with the style and everything, a lot of them probably looked alike.

Yeah, they look similar.

They have similar hairstyles. They have similar facial hair or anything like that. They're dressed the same. Same features. It's easy to do. That's why you got to take it with a grain of salt, though.

And even in a case like that, you're also seeing minimal features at that point because somebody's wearing a fucking ski mask.

Exactly.

But in April of 1976, Steve Salaya ended up going on trial for not only the robbery, but that's where the murder took place. So he was facing murder charges, too.

Wow. And he wasn't even there.

He wasn't even there. Holy shit. And the crazy thing is that this went forward to trial Well, with the prosecutor's best evidence being a grainy photograph and one eyewitness identification, which is nuts. Damn. And also, you're probably not going to be shocked to hear one because you heard this, but if you haven't before, the entire case pretty much fell apart within a week or so because the man in the photograph, believed to be Steve, turned out to be another person entirely who just looked like him. Yeah. Which, like you said, people looked very similar back then, styles and everything.

Yeah, the hair style was like, especially with men. It's like they all had that same bushy hair. Yes, the '70s. The facial hair. Yeah.

So on April 28th, the jury voted unanimously to acquit Steve Salaya, thankfully, of all charges. And the jury's foreman, Joanne Parker, said it was a weak case. The evidence just wasn't there.

Wow.

So embarrassed by how badly they had botched the Salaya case and now lacking any and all evidence to connect the other members to the Crocker bank robbery, the Sacramento district attorney just chose not to pursue any more charges against anyone else. And so they all went free and clear for robbing the Crocker bank and also murdering Myrna Opsal. Holy shit. Which is bullshit.

Yeah, that's wild.

A few months later, though, on September 29th, Bill and Emily, being the only original members of the SLA, pleaded guilty to kidnapping Patty Hearst, and they were sentenced to eight years in prison.

Oh, wow.

So everybody's going downtown.

It's going downtown.

Going downtown, Charlie Brown. So in January of 1979, after two years of lobbying from the extremely powerful and well-connected Hearst family, President Jimmy Carter ended up commuting Patty's sentence after she had served a little over two years.

Here's the thing.

I think that's bullshit.

I think wealth and privilege might have gone into that.

Might have.

Decision.

Wealth and privilege is all you can accredit that to.

That's my feeling, at least.

Can you imagine being the other members and being like, Fuck you, you joined us? Are you kidding me? Come on.

What the hell?

But on February first, 1979, Patty Hearst walked out of federal prison, a completely free woman. Wow. She made a really, in my opinion, ignorant statement to the press. She said, For a young person not quite 25, I've done an awful lot of things, some of them unusual. I've learned an awful lot about people. Let's unpack that.

You just got such a gift. Let's unpack that. You were given such a gift here.

And that's what you choose to- It's like you're bringing on you've been touched by an angel, girl. You've been touched by an angel, girl.

That's what you choose to say?

I've done an awful lot of things.

Some of them unusual?

Unusual. Did you not spend any time in prison looking up fucking synonyms for the word unusual?

You shot an automatic weapon into a sporting goods store without a second thought of who could have been in there.

That's beyond unusual.

That's not unusual. That's fucking reckless and dangerous and violent. Regardless of whether you're brainwashed or not, you are alone in a car with a set of keys, and you chose to shoot into a boarding goods store and possibly kill children in there. Not that anybody's life is worth more than the other, but it's like, you don't know who's in there. No.

And then to say I've learned an awful lot about people. Baby, I want to hear that you've learned about yourself.

That is not good.

And that you've learned about wrong and right and morals.

That would be sick to hear.

Honestly, at that point, just don't even fucking say anything.

I'd be like, you know what?

Say something better or shut the fuck up.

If you can say something nice, don't say anything at all. That was not nice. No. That was just not nice, my friend.

Well, and here's the thing. Obviously, the Hearst family was happy and Patty supporters were overjoyed. But to the family and friends of Myrna Opsal, who had gotten absolutely no justice at all. Yeah, that's a slap in the face. Exactly. It was a slap in the fucking face. In the years after she was released from prison, Patty ended up marrying her former bodyguard, Bernard Shah.

That does not sound real.

I said to Ma, I was like, Yeah. She ended up marrying her bodyguard, and Ma said, I remember that. It was very weird. It was very weird. She was like, It was very strange. Like, weird. She was like, it was just like crazy news. Yeah.

Like, just like, what? It doesn't sound real. Yeah.

They went on to have two kids together. Wow. Okay. Patty eventually did confirm the widely held belief that she had only participated in the SLA activities out of fear for her own safety. And that was a claim she repeated in her memoir, which was called Every Secret Thing and published in 1981. And it was in that same book that Patty revealed for the very first time who it was that had shot Myrna Opsal. Oh. She revealed that it was Emily Harris. Damn. Since then, it seems like she used her inheritance and her time well.

Yeah, it does seem like it.

She turned things around. I will say as annoyed as I was at that statement, at least she did some good.

Hey, that's all you can ask.

Yeah. She supported a lot of causes, including the AIDS crisis. She donated to a lot of children's charities. She also has done acting. I didn't even realize that she's been in John Water's movies.

That's wild. Yeah.

And also just random TV shows. That's real wild. Yeah. I shouldn't even say random TV shows, just TV shows in general. I don't want to sound like an asshole. I'm sure she's been on good ones. But here's the thing. Back to Myrna Opsal, because the injustice that her family experienced is wild.

Yeah.

But they were undeterred to get justice for their mother. So Go for them. Yeah. John Opsal and his siblings were not content to let their mom just be like a footnote in the Patty Hearst story, like another wealthy American. So instead, they kept pushing law enforcement to keep the case active and continue to pursue whoever was responsible here. But the problem was that those who were actually responsible for the murder and the robbery had disappeared entirely without a trace because nobody was ever, ever brought in. And like, they never pinpointed exact people in this. Exactly. But that was until the story aired on a 1999 episode of America's Most Wanted. They ended up showing mug shots on that program, and they aged them and showed them. Oh. Which I think is so cool when they do that.

Yeah, That's interesting.

And it works a lot of the time, or at least some of the time. After the show aird, somebody from Saint Paul, Minnesota, called the hotline from America's Most Wanted and told the operator they were not totally positive, but they did think that the image of Kathy Salaya looked a lot like their neighbor, Sarah Jane Olson.

Sarah Jane.

So local police paid a visit to one Sarah Jane Olson.

Uh-oh, Sarah Jane.

Who was living with her husband, a well-respected doctor in the area.

This fucking... When we recorded this for the first time, I wish we had my reaction. I know. But my mic was fucking unflopped.

But I lost it at this because I was like, Oh, you mean a bourgeois pig who deserves to die?

And it sounds like you would think that you do because you married one. Wasn't that the logic that you were all working with?

Isn't that the pot calling the kettle black?

Like, Holy shit, Glasshouse, how are you doing? Sarah Jane.

Sarah Jane.

That pissed me off in a way I could not describe. No, it's infuriating.

The hypocrisy is rancid over there. After terrorizing the state of California and being present for the murder of a woman, after talking shit about said woman who you killed, you married a doctor and just settled in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and went on to have children and live a regular life, like a nice life.

Exactly what you were raging against. Isn't that it? Yeah.

Interesting. Wow.

Shocking.

We're so mad because it was confirmed that Sarah Jane Olson, she confessed she was, in fact, Kathy Salaya, a former member of the SLA, which also she had three daughters at that point, teenage daughters. I can't imagine being them.

Yeah, I can't imagine finding that out.

You did what? Excuse me? Your name is... You just lied to me my whole fucking life.

Yeah, I feel for them.

You don't even know your mom's real name.

That's a whole mess of stuff you're going to have to work through.

Yeah, and that's shitty and awful to do with somebody. In the summer of 1999 now, Cathy/Cara was charged with conspiracy to commit murder for placing those bombs underneath police cars in San Francisco. Yikes. She was also charged with attempting to ignite an explosive with intent to murder. She was literally going to murder a bunch of police officers. Now, given how much time had passed, the prosecutor was skeptical that they were going to get any conviction. So Kathy Sara was offered in. That's all I can think to call her, to It's a little bit less confusing. She was offered and she accepted a plea deal where she pleaded guilty to two counts of possessing explosives with intent to murder, and they dropped the other charges. That plea carried a sentence of around three years in prison. Three years. Let me just quickly remind you what she accepted the plea deal to. Two counts of possessing explosives with intent to murder.

Holy shit. Three years? That's shocking. Hello?

Yeah. Is this thing on? However, almost immediately after accepting her deal, Cathy Sarah started claiming publicly that she was innocent, and she only accepted the deal to protect everybody else from back then. So a few months later, she petitioned the court to allow her to withdraw her plea, and in the fall of 2001, she went on trial now. So she completely removed her plea.

What a shitty dice to roll.

Yeah, it was.

Like, I even... Again, I wish we had our first recording because even not knowing how it turned out. I was like, Oh, that's not going to go well. It sure didn't. I just don't. Bad dice roll.

It went the worst that it possibly could have to because her trial judge was the same judge who had signed off on her plea deal. That's pretty poetic. Pretty poetic. He I was pretty fucking frustrated and disappointed that she'd been lying to his face on several occasions. Yeah. So, yeah, the gamble on a trial did not pay off. No. In January of 2002, Kathy Sara was sentenced to 10 years to life. That's different She could have just served three years in prison for something she had done many, many years ago.

Ten years to life.

Instead, she decided to be a fucking asshole. Like, holy shit. And so she got what she deserved, in my opinion.

Like, damn.

Now, it's safe to assume that Kathy Sarah was pretty disappointed with the outcome of all that, but it turned out that that was just the beginning of her problems. The arrest of a one-time SLA member, Kathy Sarah, was exactly what investigators needed to take another look at Myrna Opsal's murder case. Fortunately, and somewhat surprisingly, the FBI located a trove of evidence that the Sacramento district Attorney's office had previously claimed they didn't have. Interesting. Back when they were trying Steve for all of this. Among that evidence was money taken from the Crocker bank robbery, a large number of guns, including the shotgun and the pellets that were used to kill Myrna, and a significant amount of fingerprint evidence that linked Cathy/Cara, Mike Borton, James Kilgore, Bill Harris, and Emily Harris to the robbery and the murder.

Interesting that that was just like, Oh, we just found this. Hello?

Yeah. Where was that all?

What was going on there?

It was like, you guys really wanted to pin that on Steve, huh? Allegedly. Allegedly. In February of 2003, Bill Harris, Emily Harris, Mike Borton, and Cathy/Cara pleaded guilty to the robbery of Crocker Bank and for the murder of Myrna Opsal, and they each received between six and eight years in prison. They finally, in court, accepted responsibility for their actions, and they did apologize to the Opsal family, but obviously, that didn't bring their mother or their wife or their sister or their friend back.

No.

And James Kilgore was eventually found in Cape Town, South Africa. Later that year, he was extradited to the US, and he also pleaded guilty to the charges. But he served his time. He served six years and was released on parole. Damn. But every single person ended up facing actual consequences.

I never saw that come.

Whether it took years or not, they all ended up serving prison time. Yeah, that's. Which is politic justice.

That really is. Because any... You just wanted some consequences here.

Yeah, even Patty serving two years, I don't think it's necessarily fair that she got her sentence commuted. But I think that's also really complicated when you get into the brainwashing of it all. Exactly. So I'll leave that where it is. But just the fact that everybody else did end up serving time.

At least have to serve some time for it. It's like you did commit crimes. You know what I mean?

You do the crime, you do the time.

People died as a result. It's not like these were petty crimes that didn't end up with people being hurt.

No, people got hurt and a woman ended up killed. Yeah. I'm glad that her family got the justice they deserved. And good for them for never giving up. Yeah. Because like we say, a cold case is never cold.

It's true. It's never cold. You can always warm it up in the microwave. True.

They did that. They did. You just keep going.

You just keep going. Just don't leave it in the microwave. You take it out.

Yeah. Wow.

So that's it. That's Patty Hearst. What an interesting story.

It really is because I never knew. Obviously, I knew who Patty Hearst was and everything, but I did not know all the nitty-gritty.

Same.

And I didn't know even just the weird things, not weird, but just random things that she married her bodyguard.

Yeah, I didn't know any of that stuff.

I thought it was iconic that she outed Emily in the book. Yeah, that was wild. She's already in prison.

Well, and the truth is the truth.

The truth is the truth.

It just is what it is. Yeah.

Fascinating case for sure.

And Myrna Opsell's family deserve to know who pulled the trigger.

Absolutely. They did. And America's Most Wanted Forever. Yeah, truly. Come on.

Damn.

And it was also just really cool to talk to Ma. Yeah, about being like, Hey, do you remember this? And she was like, Hell, yeah, I do. Hell, yeah. I remember Patty. Yeah.

Yeah. At least she's, seems to be trying to repent.

Yeah, she definitely did. Helping her life crisis and children's charities and everything.

Really all you can ask is growth.

That's all you can do.

That's literally all you can do.

All you can do is grow. Yeah. And we'll keep growing because that's all we can do.

And you guys too.

Yeah, keep growing as an audience. And we hope you keep listening. And we hope you... Keep it weird. But not so weird that you record a podcast for eight years and you forget to plug your fucking microphone in. Oh.