William ‘Bill’ Harris reveals new details about Patty Hearst kidnapping

Patty Hearst, the 19-year-old heiress to the Hearst newspaper empire, was kidnapped in 1974 by members of the radical left-wing group, the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA). 

Fifty years later, William "Bill" Harris, one of the key figures involved in the abduction, has shared new details about the crime in an interview with the Los Angeles Times.

At the time of her kidnapping, Hearst was an art history student at UC Berkeley. Two armed SLA members stormed her apartment, beat her fiancé, and forced Hearst into the trunk of a car. Harris, who carried out the physical abduction, recently revealed that the SLA had no intention of keeping Hearst indefinitely. 

“We never planned on holding her forever. She was a symbolic target, an heiress,” Harris said, explaining that her family's media empire made her an ideal figure for the group's agenda.

In a surprising twist, Harris shared that Hearst was meant to be released after serving as a "propaganda tool" for the group. He stated, “She was supposed to go home and explain her captivity as a People's Prison setup,” which would have helped promote the SLA's message. 

However, this plan fell apart when Hearst began to identify with the group, denouncing her family and taking on the alias “Tania.”

Harris also disclosed that Hearst’s personal animosity towards her family, particularly her mother, may have influenced her decision to stay with the group. “She hated her mother... she didn’t want to go home,” Harris said.

The new revelations further complicate the narrative surrounding Hearst’s loyalty to the SLA, which culminated in her involvement in a bank robbery. 

Despite Hearst’s later claims of being brainwashed, Harris remains skeptical, saying, “We all made choices to do something that we knew full well was likely to get us killed.”

Now 70, Hearst served time in prison before her sentence was commuted by President Jimmy Carter.