For the latest in their occasional documentary series, “Witness,” MSNBC retells the entire story of media heiress Patty Hearst’s kidnapping in 1974 — from her abduction to her conversion into a radical, machine-gun toting bank robber to her life as an underground fugitive to getting caught and becoming once again a captive, this time, of the police.
And it makes for two hours of riveting TV. Even if you’ve got preconceived notions about Hearst, you may find those notions challenged. I did.
I had always believed that college sophomore Hearst was the victim of a horrible kidnapping, who endured rape and abuse at the hands of her captors, the Simbionese Liberation Army, whichkept her in an 18″-wide closet for 57 days. I thought that she developed Stockholm Syndrome to survive psychologically.
On the other side of the argument — which is equally popular — are those who thought that she was a spoiled, little rich girl who couldn’t wait to defy her parents and become a thoughtless radical who deserved what she got.
After watching the documentary I now see how both sides can meet somewhere closer to the middle.
The special combines actual news footage with current interviews with most of the key players in the saga — from reporters to one of the last surviving SLA members, Mike Bortin, to the prosecuting attorney, Jim Browning and Hearst’s defense attorney, J. Albert Johnson who is adamant that jailing Hearst (she got seven years and served about two) was one of the worst travesties of justice in modern times.
He tells how she was kept in that tiny, unsanitary closet where she was routinely raped, deprived of food and water and all the while was being threatened by SLA leader, “Field Marshall Cinque,” who had a gun to her head.
You will see Hearst when she emerged as a radical a few months later, holding up a bank with her new compatriots and listen to all the recordings she made, as well as see her parents’ press conferences.
Oddly, her father, who was after all a media mogul, didn’t have a clue how to handle the press or the kidnappers.
They show the horror as the house where the members of the radical group were holed up exploded in flames, killing all occupants as the police moved in.
Hearst herself does not appear in the documentary.
But the show ends with photos of her marriage to the police officer who was assigned to guard her — a man, strangely enough, who was from the very office of the prosecutor who had pursued her. Brilliant.