June 19, 2013

Crime History: Newspaper heiress captured in shoot-out with LA police

BY: SCOTT MCCABE SEPTEMBER 17, 2012 | 8:00 PM
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On this day, Sept. 18, in 1975, newspaper heiress Patty Hearst was captured by Los Angeles police after a shoot-out and arrested for the armed bank robbery of a bank.

More than a year earlier, Hearst -- the 19-year-old granddaughter of newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst -- was kidnapped in Berkeley, Calif., and held for ransom by the militant group Symbionese Liberation Army.

But in a twist, Hearst declared that she had joined the SLA and was later seen on a surveillance tape holding a machine gun and taking part in a bank robbery with other SLA members.

Hearst later claimed that she had been brainwashed. She was convicted of bank robbery in 1976 and sentenced to seven years.

She served two years before her sentence was commuted. She was pardoned by President Bill Clinton in 2001.

-Scott McCabe

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