Exclusive!; The Inside Story of Patricia Hearst and the SLA
New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1974. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. ix, [1], 246 pages. Illustrations. Index. DJ has some wear and soiling. Fep has tear and small punctures at bottom. Marilyn Baker (1929-20010 covered many major stories during her long career in print and broadcast journalism. After beginning her career as a newspaper journalist, she joined KPIX-TV in San Francisco in 1974. She is best known for her award-winning investigation of the kidnapping of heiress Patty Hearst by the militant group known as the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), and expanded her initial reportage of the case into the book Exclusive! The Inside Story of Patricia Hearst and the SLA. Hearst, a descendant of newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst, was kidnapped from her Berkeley, California apartment by the SLA in 1974. She alleged that her captors, radical leftists, then brainwashed her and forced her to denounce the capitalist "crimes" of her family. She was also forced, she claimed, to participate in a series of robberies. Hearst traveled across the country with the SLA until September 18, 1975, when she was apprehended by FBI agents in San Francisco. She went on trial and was convicted in March, 1976 of bank robbery and felonious use of firearms. She served three years of a seven-year sentence and was released in February, 1979. Baker was also involved with investigating the controversial Zebra serial murder case, when seventy-one whites in the San Francisco area were killed by black extremists between 1972 and 1974. She had a reputation as an aggressive journalist who did not shirk controversy. Her stories on guns and on Santa Cruz won local Emmy awards. The author was the television journalist whose reports scooped the FBI, police, and other media in the Patty Hearst case. Only Marilyn Baker can tell the entire story. Here are the startling facts from the TV newswoman whose brilliant investigative reports scooped the FBI, the police, and the media on the Hearst case. Among the Baker exclusives: -Uncovered the membership of the SLA; -Reported the names of the two men who abducted Patty--two months before the FBI confirmed her report; -Pinpointed the female leadership of the SLA; -Revealed General Field Marshal Cinque as escaped convict Donald De Freeze, the conspiracy's token black; -Identified Patricia Soltysik (Mizmoon) as the brains behind the Symbionese Liberation Army; -Interviewed Patty's former fiancé, Steven Weed, and Chris Thompson, who originally introduced several SLA members to each other. Ignoring death threats and a foiled bomb plot, Ms. Baker stalked the back alleys and Maoist communes of Berkeley and Oakland, pointing the way for police and other reporters assigned to the story. Now, Ms. Baker tells the story as she couldn't tell it on the air--the twisted story of the seven-headed cobra and the conversion of the mild apolitical heiress into the armed and dangerous Tania. As this story was written, a new threat, a death poster, appeared on buildings in the San Francisco area, demanding the immediate execution of Marilyn Baker--this time from the Black Liberation Army. Patricia Campbell Hearst (born February 20, 1954) first became known for the events following her 1974 kidnapping by the Symbionese Liberation Army. She was found and arrested 19 months after being abducted, by which time she was a fugitive wanted for serious crimes committed with members of the group. At her trial, the prosecution suggested that Hearst had joined the Symbionese Liberation Army of her own volition. However, she testified that she had been raped and threatened with death while held captive. In 1976, she was convicted for the crime of bank robbery and sentenced to 35 years in prison, later reduced to 7 years. Her sentence was commuted by President Jimmy Carter, and she was later pardoned by President Bill Clinton. The United Federated Forces of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) was a small, American far-left organization active between 1973 and 1975; it claimed to be a vanguard movement. The FBI and American law enforcement considered the SLA to be the first terrorist organization to rise from the American left. Six members died in a May 1974 shootout with police in Los Angeles. The three remaining fugitives recruited a few new members, but nearly all of them were apprehended in 1975 and prosecuted. The pursuit and prosecution of SLA members lasted until 2003, when former member Sara Jane Olson, another fugitive, was convicted and sentenced for second-degree murder during the SLA 1975 bank robbery in Carmichael, California. Condition: Good / Good.
Keywords: African-Americans, Donald de Freeze, FBI, Patricia Hearst, Hostages, Kidnapping, Racism, Patricia Soltysik, Terrorism, Symbionese Liberation Army, Bank Robbery, Brainwashing, Steven Weed, Patty Hearst
ISBN: 0025064002
[Book #85220]
Price: $47.50