The security camera of the Sunset District branch of Hibernia Bank in San Francisco showed Patricia Hearst holding an assault rifle as members of the Symbionese Liberation Army carried out the midday robbery. Was the rich heiress, kidnaped two months earlier, acting in fear of her life? Was she brainwashed? Or did she participate in the robbery as a loyal soldier in "the revolution"?
It was 9:40 A.M. on the fifteenth day of April in 1974, tax day. Customers were going to the Hibernia Bank in the Sunset district of San Francisco to make their usual transactions. Suddenly four white women and a black man walked in and yelled, "It's a hold-up! Down on the floor! On your faces, you motherfuckers!"
In under four minutes, they robbed the bank of over $10,000, wounded two bystanders, and fled in a getaway car.
When reviewing the videotape afterward, the police were in for a surprise. Among the hold-up gang they saw the face of a nineteen-year-old woman who'd been missing for over two months: Patricia Campbell Hearst. Not only that, she was brandishing a carbine and acting excited, as if she were one of them. It was to be one of the most incongruous events of that period, the truth of which is still under debate.
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