Radio Rootz' This Day in History

• produced by Kristal Graham
• in

Symbionese Liberation Army member Patricia Hearst was caught on camera wielding an assault rifle while participating in a San Francisco bank robbery along with eight other members of the radical urban-guerilla group the SLA. Patricia Hearst, who was from an extremely wealthy newspaper family, had been kidnapped two months earlier from her home in Berkeley by the SLA for ransom purposes, and shocked the world when she later announced that she had joined the SLA and was committed to its goals. After her arrest one year later, Hearst began to re-identify as the kidnapped daughter of a wealthy family, and argued at her trial that she had been abused, brainwashed and coerced into joining the SLA and robbing the bank.