 Hello, and thank you for joining us here at the Mechanics Institute. I'm Lauren Sheffard, Director of Events, and we're very pleased to welcome you to our program with author Roger Rappapour for his new book, Searching for Patty Hearst, a novel. If you're new to the Mechanics Institute, of course we were founded in 1854 and were one of San Francisco's most vital literary and cultural centers in the heart of the city. We feature our General Interest Library, our International Chess Club, and ongoing author and literary programs, and I'm sure that Friday night are a cinema with film series. After our talk tonight, we'll have a Q&A with you, our audience, and also have bookselling and some signing with Roger Rappapour. So I'd like to introduce our special guest. Roger and I go back a long way because he also was a resident and native of Berkeley where my cousin's bookstore, Easygoing Travel Shop, and bookstore hosted many author events and with Roger's background in writing and publishing and journalism, we were very pleased to have him as a guest speaker at many times. So it's great to have you here at San Francisco at Mechanics Institute. And I'd like to introduce a little more about Roger. Roger Rappapour is an award-winning author, filmmaker, and playwright. His work appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Wired, The Atlantic, Esquire, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and other outlets. His films have been shown at festivals around the world. That includes Coming Up for Air, which won 30 festival awards, including Seven for Best Feature Film, and Pilot Error, which took four Best Feature Awards. Rappapour's books include The Great American Baugh Machine, Hillsdale, Greek Tragedy in the American Heartland, Is the Library Burning, The Big Player, and also Into the Sunlight, Light, After the Iron Curtain, and several other titles. He was a publisher of the San Francisco Bay Area's RDR books from 1993 to 2010. And as a travel writer, he published multiple guides and was editor of The Very Successful, I Should Have Stayed Home, which was also presented at our Easygoing Travel Book Store. Roger was on the ground covering the Patty Hearst saga as it was told in, and he gained insider access to the elite and secretive world of the Hearst family, and many of the key behind-the-scenes players. Searching for Patty Hearst is his first novel and draws heavily on his in-depth reporting of the case. And tonight, he's here to share his experiences and how he got to write this novel searching for Patty Hearst. Roger. Good to be back again. With a cover story. I've seen this cover, but what you haven't seen is the cover that you could make the cover. Thanks to AI, we're going to show them to you right now. I think about it. I've been here for a while. So I decided? I had to give it a try. I was a child adult. It was a very simple problem. Patty Hearst was a Roman goddess. That's it. And so what did we do about it? Will it work? Steady. Steady. And it does see kind of fun if we have it. Some of the images are going to look like Patty. Some of them did. I'd like to see the deeper down the rabbit hole. I tried different styles. Fish. The penis to mirror. The bird to penis. That came up with a really peculiar idea. The different ages in painful willow walls to see weed. You seem to have some kind of relation to what I would put in. Then I thought it was a sort of romance genre. This for a while seemed to be quite productive. This was going to be one of the covers. And I decided that was the story. I had to get it back. Patty. I had to get it back. We'll get it to the panel. Bond the moving of her to test. What's the problem with the idea? Then I realised that the action here is that we were searching for Patty. Who had what. And then the idea came from the prompt of the photo. Searching for Patty. And that was to do this. As soon as I saw this. Here is a new plot from somewhere. The news print. The idea is so much. It's about media. About her and the media. Over the years. We're searching for Patty today. We're searching for the meaning. Today. Of what I think. One strange little thing. One quote about AI. We're about to impress. What colour Patty's eyes. Turns out they're brown. Not what they ever thought. Which was the look. Couple of minutes in Photoshop. And then brown. And so we made up with this 1970s viewer. A comic image. Of Patricia. As an actor and designer. I am. Kind of worried. About where this is going to go. But for now. For this. To see the perfect solution. A novel about Patty. A fictional cover. Composite. From 50 years of images. Out there. As a TV show. As a webcast. 50 years. With this early story. That has evaded everyone's grasp. And the unrollable rate. AI is just acting. On vast data. Like it. It has no words to be. It's doing what it's told. Maybe I'm beginning. To fall in love with my character. And maybe this cover. Is the first example. Of AI. See how hard it is. To be a cover designer. I'm going to. For the touristy people. We don't know the whole story. The rest of you bear with me. We're going to do a. The short answer is. Had he didn't listen to her mother. If she'd gone to Stanford. She went to her. So. Here's what happened. 1973. A comic came down in the previous. And several other. People including. Joe. For the SOA. There was another guy. Who claimed to be part of this. One of the ones. Held up in California. And they had a very kind of. They. Basically. Mission statement. You can see. They were very. Broadened the focus. The freeze. Static themselves as a general feel. Marshall. And then they. Gradually decided to figure out. How they were going to. Get some of that. Because they only had. Ten. There's one of them. Black. Students. After this. And. And. And. And. The group. Gradually. And. Reborn. Organization. Cultural Association. Visiting. So. They decided they needed to. Get going. In Oakland. And. Initiated. For. No. Of what. And. And. So. Much. This. This. Disaster. The state. And. You. For. To. Basically. Provocative. And. They were making us look bad. And. So. Now they were in the safe house. The one we just saw in Congress. And. Were arrested. For. Charging the murder. And. They left a lot of. Which they tried to burn down. And I would get this. In the safe house. At least. Recovered. Corporate executives. One of their targets. Was the director of the department. Corrections. They're. Well. Turned out they decided. Do something. Less. So they decided. To. Get. It. You. And. To. You. You. You. You. You. You. You. You. You. They were very in June and that wedding engagement announcement caught the eye of the SLA department. Using money and lots of publicity and nobody gets it, right? There were now 10 members of the SLA and probably one of the smallest revolutionaries in the Netherlands. The kidnapping left weed very badly beaten. Catty was in a closet in a city where they placed her title for more than 50 days. But gradually they kind of warmed her up and she kind of competed in a re-education process. She got very close to one of the kidnappers. Catty was the only member of the SLA who had sort of a privileged background. Catty was a successful physician in Connecticut so he grew up fairly well. The rest of them were pretty much no class from the last community. So as part of the band zone, I initiated the food program. I helped them get very badly. People would be packed, they would be out of food. The SLA was very happy with the way it went. Governor Reagan had probably written some old policies entitled where he said publicly that he hoped these poor people were picking up the food and coming down with potions. It wasn't that hurt. He was part of the group that felt very strongly that they should not ransom patty ours. And remember, patty hers was from a family that had multiple buildings. So they were talking about four, six, maybe eight million. This is patty cash. But as Randy explained it, it wasn't his money, it was the company's money. And he couldn't ransom her. And the family was against it. The constitutional consultants were against it. Of course the MPI and the attorney general were covered. The fear was that if she was ransomed, who would be next? And I know they'd start attacking her as far bracing. I'd cross a few hundred street and then it could be terrible. They might even bomb San Simi, even though it was now a state park. The Hearst still had a cottage there. They wouldn't visit them. They could attack the Hearst in the middle of the night. So patty was very disillusioned because she knew where patty was. And she announced, I'm going to show you the whole thing. People first thought it was a joke. But she decided to stay in the park with the estate. Well, everybody thought this was crazy. Nobody, a woman like her, would want to be part of this revolution. By this time they'd given her a gun. And they'd also told her she could leave. But she didn't really want to leave because she got the fear in the back of her mind that maybe if she tried to turn herself in, it wouldn't go so well. She was some sort of happy cop. She was an iron man. Obviously had to be an iron man because he knows who was out there. So she began to show me this very article a few days that showed up on another page of the Department of History. And they put all these theorists around all these theories that she was really just a pawn pretending to be a revolutionary. She went on camera during a gang robbery at the San Francisco Bank owned by the father of a child of her. They did pretty well. They did $10,000. But by this point she was now a wanted criminal. And there was her wanted poster. So she was no longer a kidnap victim. This had never happened before. This was a unique event. There's never been a kidnap victim who turned into a bandwagon. You can imagine. She also announced that she'd fallen in love with her at all. And the wedding was off. Even we, her fiance, was toast. And she could accuse her family of being trying to protect them. They had no interest in her, you know, saving one of their own. They'd do everything they could to protect the corporation. Of course Randy, on public side, was trying to work with people who knew the SLA, particularly comics, who had something to get hold of the SLA leaders. She was a mother to reach out to the SLA and said, mother, go over there, go. But she was afraid of that. She had this big fear that something bad was going to happen. Now she's a big mother to the SLA. Not just the SLA. Well, there's Willie and Steve. He's now trying to convince all this, you know, just crazy talk of the SLA. He doesn't believe it. Here they are. This is yet the FDI. It was always a problem. It was late. The FDI had to pull me in. You remember a guy named Jim Mock? Well, they hadn't found him. They were under a lot of heat. That was a big blow to their reputation. But even though they flooded the area, they kept him in. Meanwhile, the SLA knew that they were in trouble. They knew that the SLA wasn't going to work. So they went down to L.A., which is where the trees had a lot of trees. And they divided into three teams. And Patty joined the heiresses. Bill was their kid, and this was my family. And they decided to go shopping. During the shopping, so Bill was tattled by security. Patty lying on the floor in the back seat. I know this is true, because Bill Harris called the editor who came on to talk about this. So he gave me the blow by the way. The story is that Patty was in the back, lying on the floor. She jumped up, grabbed the n-mortem. She was trained on. Her father had trained her how to shoot, which she was not allowed to. And now she's got a n-mortem. And a machine gun, which she never shot. It fired off about 80 rounds. The heiresses escaped with her as a problem. A man was shot. So they had to get rid of it. And so in order to do that, they had a car jack, this young man. And this was Patty's first kidnapping. But she kidnapped Tom Atty's along the heiresses. And what he considered to be kind of a joy run, obviously it wasn't. Patty was graced. He testified in a trial later on after she was arrested. She couldn't have been more sympathetic. He felt there was real empathy because she'd gone through a kidnapping. She told him that she had had a dream before the kidnapping that this was going to happen. And then rub his back and kind of be calm. And then gave him a big kiss. We left to throw us a problem. On that van was a parking ticket. At least now we have it. Imposited by the SLA item. They left. But some of the neighbors headed them out. And in the biggest firefight in American history, on American soil, 9,000 homes, six of the SLA members including the police, Willie Wolfe, and the police, it's called a dodging. And I later interviewed the coroner. The coroner. I was the Gucci, Marilyn Monroe, Ken Stroplin, Bobby Kennedy, and the SLA. And they were burned alive. So it took them a long time, days, to figure out who was who. And of course the families didn't know, and no one in Patty was in that house. So the only police were good. Couldn't imagine bringing them alive and not moving Patty. It was a very big risk. Now, Harris and Patty were at the time of the firefight in a hotel in Anaheim, across the street from Disneyland. So they watched the live television. There was Willie's. There was Willie's. And in a very emotional way, Yulia, she interviewed all of her fallen comrades, including Willie, who she called the sweetest, journalist man. At this point I was covering the story I wrote a piece on Steve Lee's attempt to try to find Patty for a few times a day. So I was forgetting to get deeply involved in the story. Meanwhile, Jack Scott, who had the Institute for Sports and Society in Berkeley, posed as her husband in a big escape cross-country drive with his parents posing as their in-laws. And they stayed in hotels all the way across the street. They remained on these coasts in New York. By this point, the ransom attempts had completely collapsed. Andy just said, I'm not even talking to you anymore. So there was no ransom. Well, they were running out of money, so where else would they go to rob the veins by Sacramento? They robbed too. The first one, they're off-grade. But the second one, was a disaster. One of the customers, Murnachal, who was bringing in a church collection, was killed accidentally when Paris was going to be gone. Now we have to, Patty was being sought in two baby robberies, kidnapping and multi-trugging. Finally, little remerial of the sentence and getting it out of the same client was one of the objectives of kidnapping Patty in the first place. Of course, that didn't work. Meanwhile, Patty was finally caught on September 18 the same day that Phil and Emily, you know, Harris, were caught. She was living with a friend when she married a romantically involved with a new SLA member of C.C. Wyatt. It's important to note that Patty was not living with the SLA members during most of this time. They lived together in Pennsylvania within the time we connected, but they weren't living together. The trial could not have gone worse. It was a disaster. Tom Matthews spoke you know, when Harris was giving an interview, we were pointed out that well, Patty, kind of, that she'd been attacked and so on. Probably well, she interfered at a love token that naturally he was wearing. So here she is, interspersed when she's caught carrying this love token from this guy that she called your sister. That did not go over well with her at all. And she was connected as were the Harris's. Patty got a seven-year sentence served 22 months before she was pardoned. Harris got eight years. I'm sorry, she got commuted by Jenny Carter. There was a very effective interview. And in this AI photo she was later pardoned in his last official act as president in January of 2001. Bill Clinton pardoned her along with his brother. Where is Patty now? In New York. She also has a baby. Alison Charleston. She's a mom and a grandmother. And she is very successful in piano club shows. But she's probably the best in her interest with John Waters. She's also an analyst. And she's a philanthropist particularly involved in women's issues, the B2 movement and also AIDS. So that's more or less the overview of our story. In addition to writing articles about this I wrote a book with Steve Wheat, her fiancée doing his stuff in front of painters actually. He lived in her house during this whole time. You can kill us if you want to. And basically, he told me the whole story of the three years together with the herbs and so on. Then we got close to publication in the premiere publisher. He decided that the book was a little to Frank, things like that. I wish my parents would die in plain crash or cheating on a geometry exam where he gave her the final because she wasn't doing well in the class. He stole it from a geometry teacher. You know, there was a crash he took to say we picked it right. Just a lot of stuff about it was being productive. But the word was get your weed from weed in that space. He felt, in essence, we had a lot of risk in the building. We had a picture of the trust fund. We had first rugs in my house because he needed to have a safe place. And basically the book was if Shayla did come back after this shootout, he figured this book was not going to help his chances. Which makes perfect sense. So he went off and wrote his own book as did Ben. And now, of course, I did Michael's music later. Not his story, but my story of being in touch with many, many people in this case. One of them was Bill Harris who I even interviewed greatly for the Ultimate Tribute. His first real interview got out of jail. And of course, his side of the story and Penny's side of the story are somewhat different. And that's the problem in the coverage of crime. Everybody has a great story. And every day you're even walking into the prison and everybody's talking about why the innocent project should be your power. Because obviously, you didn't do it. We know that. And when you have two people in the same room, you have a problem because a stress affects memory. And why don't they disagree? Now imagine if you have nine people in the same state policy and they were sitting 12 hours for 50s and gays and they all are telling exactly what happened to none of the stories So in my book, we try to give everybody an opportunity to tell their side of the story. And along the way, particularly since the book has come out, I met some of the weathermen and the people who recruited by the SLA. Probably my favorite story of all is San Simian is near San Elizabethan and I did a couple of events there. And my wife and I were staying in a hotel in the Moral Bay and a guy came out and said, my wife and I stayed here and my wife started telling me why are you here that she explained about this. And he said, oh, I worked for the horses. I shoot their horses. I was at the ranch. Did you know that Panney got out of one of the counties at the first ranch? So there's all these kinds of stories flowing in the guy. One of the things I heard was terribly. Some of you have been to the Lord and the Beach which is down in the city. Panney was rescued by Park Ranger in the fire department. And during that time she had a fake ID and so forth. And that story she basically just said to the Ranger in the fire department, hey, I'm Paddy Hurst. Take me home. So the fact that she didn't do that was somewhat damaging to her legal case. Anyway, the Ranger who handled that called me and kind of gave me the story. So there's a lot of local connections to the story. One of the most asked questions about Paddy isn't whether or not she did it, but what kind of a situation was she in at the time she was here. What was her state of mind? You know, was she living a great life and really looking forward to marriage? The answer is, you know, she told Tom Matthews and other people later that the wedding was really giving her a live child which was a great word of thought. She even said to Steve I wish I met you 10 years later because you may have all these girlfriends and experiences and I'm stuck with you I'm not going to go out and date all these interesting people. So, she was having some second thoughts about getting married. Clearly, being kidnaped is something intergambular, anything like that but it is true that when she went into the SLA there were five very strong feminist voices in that group. So when they voted it was now Paddy was not voting it was six women and according to Bill Carols they all had an equal vote. So, she realized a lot of what they were talking about from the voting experiences and their communication in these very particular feminist statements. She also because she was from a privileged family wrote these beautiful essays talking about the 1% half 1% of Vietnam War of course, Watergate was going through this time. So, you know Watergate, her historian not the watergate so she was basically articulating from her perspective a lot of the stuff including the idea that all these large corporations eventually just going to admit a lot of their employees because guess what? They're bringing in rollouts. This was 1974 part of an automation taking people out of work so, a little ahead of her time but the point is if you go back in these communities that were published on the front page of the father's paper there was a lot that resonated with people. Obviously, the SLA was blown away very quickly and their voice was silenced and little Ramiro were convicted a little got out earlier and Ramiro got out a few years ago but they're blown out now I'd like to open this up to questions if there's anybody here that would like to talk about their own first-hand experiences. We've got people so why should we give them a microphone? We're going to pass around a microphone so if you have a question or a short comment please raise your hand and I'll come around with a mic coming your way. Oh great. What's your name? Bill Rock. One question it was always my impression that F.B. Bailey I couldn't understand his defense except he was throwing in a purpose of it on her parents' behalf as to that person Right. So you work for Memphis Press so you know about book publishing Well, when F.B. Bailey signed a theoranger he gave them a cut cut speed an exchange of documents and it was basically a note from Patty saying that his book was published and after it was out he had to wait 18 months until the paper was out before she could publish it that's how far he had to get because he was going to win but what happened was they were going to talk about Bailey Bailey's and Louie's and of course that contract was canceled why did they lose? Well, I've given you a couple of examples but more than the point Patty was a terrible witness because she had a terrible lawyer was that he I didn't even know he was drunk in that final argument but he made a mistake that every lawyer was in shock basically and her ran out to Harris's in their case gave them a lot of information on Harris's business and got nothing there usually when you ran out you're a material witness you get settings people are going to deal with something he never even mentioned the word Stockholm syndrome or anything brainwashing I think this is our cue here my second question was a decompressed word I never understood what it was it didn't mean anything a lot of people find it they just paint it out of thin literally okay finally came up so I have a friend my name is Hank Manson he's the chairman at UCSF and he wrote this so that I don't have to pretend to be a mental health expert Stockholm syndrome refers to when an individual is captured in that realizing it is what they're about to do Stockholm syndrome involves some of all of the patients in all of this but cannot be treated in our case brainwashing, indoctrination with physical force identification characters, denial and dissociation the most important alternate state of consciousness or pure state in which they have to go through the motions of living while doing the sounds of the light from the outside kind of like a simple object dissociation may protect the person from fear and physical pain in some instances they say themselves that this is the way I'd like to go to the end and I'll go to all of them I heard the singer who was hired by the court to do an interview and I told him this information was never publicly released but in conversation he said that Pat was a normal and complicated girl what some of you may not know is that the term Stockholm syndrome refers to a brain problem in Stockholm in 1973 there was no literature until after Patty was kidnapped in 1975 so baby wasn't reading that into the whole text because it happened kind of late in terms of trial he was a presidential state in which there was a general article about it and it's why he was in the pop site but brainwashing was something he didn't know a lot about people because guess what he was all ready to win and boy did that not work I have a quote here I'm going to read this there was a meeting of people who worked on the case at the legal society David Bancroft was one of the attorneys of the U.S. attorney in the case said there's never been one document instance or coercive persuasion or brainwashing impelled someone to use deadly forest against their own time so she wrote she made history when she died question over here I really like this presentation when I was 50 years ago when I was 22 it was myself and my roommate at the time all went to the trial they all called in sick and they got there at like 5 o'clock in the morning and we my friends made up these little cards like everybody one, two, three he was in charge we went and sit right behind the the paddy and she was brought in we can't remember the name of the matron woman that walked her in all the time oh wait oh she did I thought I read a wall yeah anyway it was really fascinating she had made the whole transition from Tanya back to Paddy first at that time and was dressed to the nines and was really really bratty to her mother who was trying to give her a card for Valentine's Day Paddy just took the card and slant it down and rolled her eyes and her mom was very disappointed so that was my one degree of separation to me why did you think she was so mad at her mom because she was a brat her default was even you know what I mean we used to call it post teenage adolescence that kind of thing anyway a great time great story that I've talked about for 50 years one of the things that Paddy wrote in her book you know why she didn't leave the SLA with the armed jury she was becoming a lot better they knew they were going to get the money they had this huge and they knew as long as they had heard they were just going to listen to her but she didn't want to go and she said one of the things she said was where would I go going home would be pretty tricky because her mom and dad did get divorced of course her mom was completely furious over the fact that they didn't ransom her she could not understand it and I want to jump to this point it will pay as well if tonight she got one call she said I want $400 or you're going to see her grandmother I mean she's right it would be done before the she went off the phone and that's what I'm trying to say a mom in this situation couldn't understand and there's a line in the book where she moves out and Calvary was just furious I mean they got, Steve Wayne she hated living there you know she just she moves out and her came talking about how she can't take it anymore and she says well as usual the men are calling all the shots and I hope one of them doesn't get paid but that was her attitude that the guys just taken over other family members and by the way the sphere of possibly retaliation but if a man's daddy, oh my god, who's next right they did buy St. Simi not the SLA but the Neural Liberation Fund they bombed one of the guest colleges at St. Simi during her tribe but they bombed the wrong one it wasn't the cottage and the family stayed they got the wrong one they had the right to give them the wrong cottage and if you go on there's a million dollars damage if you go on to St. Simi to it so you know what's in this room and we're here pardon? put the guys a little so give me that go ahead what happened to Wendy Ushimura was she charged did she spend time with you? no she was not by the way she's an artist she's not talking but she's living in Berkeley and she was not by the way the heiresses and and sister Kathy was one of the fugitives in this case was opposed to Sarah J. Wilson and was arrested in 1990 she was an actress she was a doctor and suddenly she was arrested so five of them didn't arrest her for that terrible big one Patty was not she was involved in the pain she'd actually taken some of the money and guns after the robbery she was never prosecuted in those cases and actually she was a matured witness in the one where the woman died and there was a civil threat of a suit by the family who were not actual after this suit everybody go ahead what was Wendy Ushimura not charged with anything? I think because she had not been involved in any of the criminal actions she was harboring a huge amount but that wasn't enough for her to be prosecuted but just to continue the thought so Maggie was never charged in using those pain relics and there was a settlement on this threat and civil action by the woman the family of a woman who died and it was settled on a court and the grand jury didn't write a check and that was a substantial check on some of the other people who were threatened with the suit to settle on a court question back here oh I have a comment people who wave away the situation or just say oh why didn't she just leave she did a certain juncture she was on her own I think it's important to underline the time period and as an example which you mentioned her comrades were burnt alive like no one said hey let's negotiate they just fire bombed the place and they didn't know if Maggie was in there she could have been there and they didn't know I mean Black Panthers were being shot in the back and you know just at the time like there were no questions asked if you were on the list then you know well one of the reasons they kidnapped her was that little in the mirror were being held for the murder of Marius Foster they were very worried about him and so to make sure that they were safe in jail they put them in the hole in St. Quentin just while they were being held it was usually you know you have to be convicted to go to St. Quentin but that was very unusual and that was part of my adding was that they were even talking about prisoners question here alright thanks a lot when I chatted briefly before and I have little personal connection I was basically intent to be recruited and I'm here to tell the story but I'm curious about the fictionalized nature of this book I don't understand because I haven't read it can you explain the intersection of fiction and the history well I've read all the books and people aren't asking questions about some of them it was one that says that she was actually having an affair with Donald DeFries under an assumed name in prison and conjugal housing there's all these different theories about the Davids and all sorts of stuff there's her book there's many different accounts so the point of it is we don't actually know we'll never really know all of it so I wanted to give everybody a chance to represent their point of view and the idea is for younger people this idea that you just take one side of the story or one person version except that if I thought your point was really well taken you have to have a more nuance and there is this trend toward one authoritative source of believing the government or believing one news channel or one lot or whatever and I'm encouraging other people to do their own research and the hope is that the book will persuade people to go out and do their own research and come to their own conclusions about all of it about all of the answers even though I probably spent as much time as any other important work I mean I've even done books which is I think just a small example of how difficult this story was and I do want to say something about that just very quickly her life since this happened has been really hard to handle which is of course very controversial has a lot of good reporting and it's more than a whole lot but even if you really agree with what she's saying it is interesting that we're doing the same thing compared to who you believe when you're disagreeing so the novel gives equal time to all bandit points and obviously we can't all be there in support of the dialogue out of necessity as we do this on the back here it's a question about can you hold on until the microphone gets to you so we can all hear what you're going to ask I'll come back to you in a minute I just thought I'd ask you about the question back to the flyer about Karnaguchi in the autoxies six SRA victims right here who were the victims of the SRA they killed well they killed Donald the Frieze while they wove and then four of them and said we're buried you know in the firefight, yeah there's no patrician sultans again they died but they burn the bodies alive and nobody knew and if this was in there or not they couldn't just wait until they flat and tell them what was her relationship what was her relationship like with her parents before she was kidnapped was she like a misfit or a rebel she had some problems with catholic sports she not dealt with none they asked her to leave, that was one there she committed various catholic sports that day to her guys her mother went to do it every time coming out of the shoot so there was a lot of friction over Steve Weed and getting married and the idea that he was a teacher so there were different kinds of issues but I think in the larger context she really just wanted to get out of the family remember they were supporting her in school so financially she was very secure but she didn't really hold onto her so Steve she didn't see herself again oddly enough Steve Weed he was a person he was he brought over rods in our work as I said he really enjoyed this name to her that was who she wanted to be I'm sorry I wasn't sure what you said earlier about Steve Weed did she meet him when she was in high school? yeah and she was his student? yes she was a computer and they began to appear and a lot of people have released eyebrows about a predator thing and all that in today's world obviously things would turn out a lot differently but the real question about her relationship with her parents is why didn't it take them so long to understand what's happening people in the school that some of the other teachers do but why were they able to do it by the way he also taught one for sisters and one for men and at this time I lived in England we were in Massachusetts Vermont we actually come together we had a very very remote farm and a intellectual that I had known for years New Jack, Big Scott Jack Scott came to me and asked me how did I get a person and I thought I had a farm in New England and I was very I would not be able to somebody you knew I knew him well and why did you say no that's your limitations I don't know the stats why did you say no because she was with the SOA people and her owner I was really kind of committed that by that point people thought it was a burning and it would have been possible to say no by the way the game visited the farm what state were you in it was in Massachusetts right maybe so they were in New York at this point there was he was a native he started over he was a teacher he was famous he lived in New York he told me what was Jack Scott's name without your money basically I asked him she was a woman they said no I wasn't going to be because they were just yeah that's the ending thank you Randy offered Jack Scott Jack he thought it was crazy ridiculous but he ended up sewing Patty over her book because he didn't like the way she was portraying after all the help he had given obviously posting as her husband I don't know because I'm not sure I assumed he'd settled it go ahead did you see the theatrical movie version of the Patty first story and if so what did you think of it in San Francisco opening night with Bill Harris wrote about it in the Oakland Tribune and of course you can imagine his review because of course the whole legal defense of Bailey basically Bailey's defense was these monsters that came out captivity there and in a lot of sense except it didn't convince the jury so it was a very tough moving one of the things believe it or not they changed the ending of her book they fictionalized the ending a scene with her father that never happened and Patty was quite upset and told the director why are you doing this and he said well your ending doesn't work and that's believable so the answer to your fiction question believability is really one of the problems with this story to the standpoint of the story you just told me it's pretty believable here we are great story we have some other people who are being recruited by the SLA and they told me some amazing stories they talked to one of the weathermen in Berkeley and he was there at the time when they were hiding out in L.A. and he was just driving around trying to find them to tell them to get rid of Patty because they the weathermen felt the SLA was making them look bad question right here why do you think the jury wasn't convinced was there a resentment of her class or her behavior in court or what factors do you think may have been noticed well this will really happen so you know when a jury is selected it's an open court not in this case so in this case they selected the jury in private session close court and in the room not just Patty's parents but her family and they were kind of involved on the jury panel sizing people up so obviously the jury they kept and not doing what they wanted so I think they may have guess for one of the jury I mean it couldn't get down to just that the jury selection by Biff was very, very important you know he was a true celebrity boy Lawson Strangler he worked on the OJ case he was flying to Las Vegas in the afternoon he had court in morning with Patty he applied his older jet to Las Vegas on another case he had a big drinking problem maybe that was another problem Any other questions? Yes I've read several books nonfiction books including Patty Herz including Jeff Cuban's book American Address which I found fascinating but my question is about your book I haven't read it yet I plan to I understand probably historic fiction but my question is about your book how did you pick the dialogue and the storyline and I know Jeff Cuban based it on fact but how did you come about your writing style and coming up with this book I'm curious Well the short answer is that I had lived with Steve Weed actually longer than he lived with Patty's family so I knew him really well and I also interviewed Bill Harris as I explained and I spent a lot of time with him so that part was pretty easy to read and then there were communication a lot of factual information and that was very easy to access of course I read the book you were referring to and Patty's own book and other books and a lot of the journalism but in writing it I tried to imagine what was going on in the situations where people weren't there to come up with a plausible explanation and things turned out the way they did as far as the two or three people who were actually interested in the writing process I'll give that about a minute I asked an editor friend about several ideas something I knew quite well about the book and she said oh well the book I read was a fabulous book so I said okay and I sent her a few early chapters and I said okay well I'll write the last chapter first and if that's okay then I'll go in and write the book so that was how the story developed since the book has come out I've just been a piece of the Washington Post and I'll continue to cover the case it turns out a lot of the things that people are telling me including one of the people here today kind of outstrip anything that I could have ever come up with that's what's so interesting about this case can you imagine one of the most famous Hollywood directors telling Patty that her book doesn't work and she's got a fictionalized ending couldn't make that up could you talk about the relationship I'm going to give you a microphone could you talk about your relationship with Waters and if you know if she saw female trouble how did she thought I think what you're referring to was the content of the Waters films they met in Cannes when her film came out the film based on her book and he recruited her they were tested she wasn't going to be troubled until he won it wouldn't be a problem as you point out some of these films are difficult to watch in that respect but one of the points this is the hardest to act about hardest part of the film crew her daughter is an actress and she was recently on a mainstream film playing so it's second generation playing these very difficult female roles and one of the general actors from the Rizekid so it gets very close to the the core of the story but obviously it didn't hit her there are no more questions to thank Roger Rappaport for his wonderful insights into his novel searching for Patty Hearst and please come and buy a book also we do like more information from Roger he's got a little sign and then Hector books sign tonight and please join us for another program I have two more things the reason for being on this is we're not going to sell it you know it's mainly because I'm writing articles um you're actually not for me a lot of what I'm learning people who couldn't talk are called criminal stuff kind of pretty mad two more things the author tour continues a book passage on Super Bowl Sunday I'm sorry about that Green Act Pool well I had a lot of information I had a lot of information and then Tuesday Green Act Pool and finally books and of course this is important so people listed will be that opportunity thank you thank you