There are very few crimes that are as captivating and shocking than the case of Patricia Hearst. Patricia Campbell Hearst was born on February 20th, 1954 to the parents of Catherine and Randolph Hearst. She was the middle child of five daughters, and also the most rambunctious of them all. Her grandfather was William Randolph Hearst who founded the Hearst media empire, making her apart of a wealthy and well-known family (Smith). Throughout her early life she was raised in a catholic setting, and shipped off to a private boarding school when she was just ten years old. Being her rowdy self, she went through five high schools before graduating college (Toobin 4). Patricia ended up attending Berkeley college in California whe. At the time she …show more content…
A small gorilla group called the Symbionese Liberation Army busted through her and Weed’s apartment door, beat up Steve, and kidnapped Hearst. They threw her in the back of a trunk while tied up, blindfolded, and gagged. When SLA arrived to where they were staying, she was thrown into a closet and kept there for fifty seven days. Within that time Patricia was gagged, blindfolded, tied up, and raped (“2001”). Throughout the time she was being held the SLA would release recordings to the press, demanding what they wanted. Three days after she was taken later, they announced in a letter to a Berkeley radio station that Hearst was being held as a “prisoner of war”(History.com Editors). Four days later, the SLA released a statement saying they would only release Patricia if her father distributed food parcels worth $70 to all Californians who were on welfare. This demand was asking for her father to spend several million dollars. Doing anything to get his daughter back, Randolph Hearst went about obeying their demands. Ronald Reagan, the governor of California at the time, was very disgusted with him spending this much money. His efforts were all put to waste when the SLA ended up not releasing his daughter. Instead, Patricia sent out a recording of herself, informing the world that she had joined her tourmenters. Patricia stated that she was apart of the SLA, and changed her name to Tania
Laci Peterson, a 27-year-old wife who was eight months pregnant, disappeared on December 24, 2002. When the body of the California woman and her unborn child were found four months later, her husband, Scott, was charged with two counts of murder. Detective Craig Grogan gave a sworn statement that he had probable cause to believe Mr. Peterson committed two counts of the crime of 187 Penal Code, homicide, on or about December 23, 2002 or December 24, 2002, in the county of Stanislaus. April 17, 2003 at 0658 hours the Judge of the Superior Court in Stanislaus County, California issued a warrant for the arrest of Scott Lee Peterson. The court found that the District Attorney’s office did, in fact, have probable cause to bring Scott Peterson in.
On July 15, 2008, Cindy Anthony, Casey Anthony’s mother called 911 twice. One call was to report Casey had possibly stolen a car and money, the second call to report that her granddaughter Caylee, Casey’s daughter, had been missing for 31 days. Casey claimed that a babysitter had taken her daughter and disappeared. On July 16 2008, Casey was arrested for child neglect when investigators found the apartment where Casey claimed the babysitter lived had been vacant for four months. After a lengthy investigation and the discovery of the body of Caylee Anthony not far from the Anthony home, Casey Anthony was charged with first degree murder, aggravated child abuse, aggravated manslaughter of a child, and four
Betty Marion White was born on January 17, 1922 in Oak Park, Illinois. She is the only child of Horace and Tess White, an electrical engineer and a house wife. At the age of two her and her family moved to Los Angeles. Betty White graduated from Beverly Hills High School California, in 1939 at 17. Betty started modeling they same year she graduated. She first did various radio shows in the 40s. But her first TV show was on Hollywood in Television in 1949. Whites first produced television show was Life with Elizabeth. "I was one of the first women producers in Hollywood."
On July 15th, 2008, Caylee Anthony was reported missing by her grandmother Cindy Anthony. Cindy Anthony in the report stated that she hadn’t seen her grand-daughter Caylee for a month and that she and her husband were suspicious because their daughter Casey’s car reeked of decay, as if a dead body had been stored inside the vehicle for days. Caylee and her mother resided with Casey Anthony’s parents. However, Cindy Anthony claimed that Casey had given different explanations about Caylee's whereabouts before telling Cindy that she hadn’t seen her own daughter for several weeks. When questioned by authorities, Casey told the detectives several lies: stating the child had been kidnapped by her nanny on June 9, and that Casey had been trying to contact the nanny to find her daughter. Preceding this information, Casey Anthony was convicted and charged with first degree murder in 2008, but pleaded not guilty ...
Aileen Wuornos has a lasting history with the system, committing crimes from driving under the influence, providing false identification to police, firing a .22 caliber pistol from a moving vehicle, disorderly conduct, assault, disturbing the peace, resisting arrest, obstruction of justice, grand larceny and robbery (Murderpedia, n.d.). However, it was not until the late 1980’s that she would begin the series of murders that would make her most famous. From 1989 to 1990, Aileen Wuornos killed seven men throughout northern and central Florida during her time as a highway prostitute (Macleod, n.d.).
Aileen Wuornos is one the most famous psychopathic serial killers in the world. Not only is she one of the only female serial killers, her killings are unlike any other there has been. She exhibited psychopathy traits since birth and her abuse as a child didn't help matters. She killed 6 men in the span of year and told police she was the victim in all the cases, not admitting to intentionally killing them to many months later. After getting caught by the police and going through a long, tedious trial she was found guilty of all her charges and was charged with the death penalty. There is a very good chance that Aileen could have experienced a normal life, but the abuse she endured ruined that for her at an early age.
Patty Hearst was held captive from February until April. Then after the voice message saying that she had joined the SLA and changed her name to Tania, she was believed to be a willing participant in the terrorist acts the group had committed. The first act she was a part of was robbing the Hibernia bank in San Francisco. That is when the mystery and controversy began. Was she a willing participant or was she being held at gun point? Was it Stockholm syndrome, which is described as feelings of trust or affection that occur in certain kidnapping situations? Was her gun really loaded and did she have a choice in what she was doing? Will America ever know the truth?
Throughout the past, there have been many heroes and heroines. Although they don’t all wear a cape, mask, and have superpowers; they all did something and they all have a story. Martha Washington is one of the many that stood out to me, and her story started June 22, 1731. Frances and John Dandridge were thrilled to welcome their first born child that summer day in New Kent County, Virginia. Martha was a very intelligent young lady, and one of the few women in her time who learned to read and write.
Robert F Kennedy had gone to Marilyn's home that day, they had gotten into an argument and sometime after that he left with a partner of Ginancana named Johnny Roselli. He visited her around 10pm, purposely leaving the front door unlocked, letting five hit men enter her house. One crept up behind her and slipped a chloroform-soaked washcloth over her face and gave her an enema of barbiturates and took her to her bathroom. Departing the house when they hear Marilyn's housekeeper come into the house” said Darwin Potter, biographer and travel writer. Police contact and a man named Peter Lawford arrived and stole Marilyn Monroe's little red diary, which she kept all her sexual affair details in, which all made the scene after a while.
Patty Hearst was a normal 19 year old girl, living in an apartment with her fiance and attending university in Berkeley, California, until one day her life, and the lives of everyone around her changed forever. On the evening of February 4, 1974, some members of the left-wing radical group called the Symbionese Liberation Army barged into Hearst’s home armed with guns, and beat up her fiance before kidnapping Hearst and bringing her to their house where she was kept blindfolded in a closet for 59 days. While locked in the closet, Patty Hearst was verbally and sexually abused and she was denied the use of even a toilet or toothbrush if she didn’t tell them that she agreed with the group’s ideas and beliefs. It is believed that while being locked in the closet like this, Patty was being brainwashed by the SLA and that she may have even developed Stockholm Syndrome, a condition in which a person who was kidnapped starts to empathise with their captor, and even starts defending them. This is how the Symbionese Liberation Army convinced Patty Hearst to join their group. They released an audio tape to the public in which Patty Hearst said she was changing her name to Tania and that she had decided to join the SLA. She then helped the SLA rob a bank and steal an ammunition belt from a sports store. After this, she started travelling around the country with two members of the SLA named John and Emily Harris, to try avoid being captured by the police. During this time, the police found a house where some members of the SLA were hiding out. Attempts to make the SLA members surrender ended up in a massive gunfight, ultimately ending up in the deaths of 6 SLA members. The FBI eventually found and arrested Patty Hearst on September 18, 1975. T...
"Aileen Wuornos: Killer Who Preyed on Truck Drivers." Drifting into Life of Crime — — Crime Library. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Apr. 2014.
In the month of August, a married couple was murdered inside their own house and their own daughter, Lizzie Borden, was accused and trial as if she committed the murder. Lizzie Borden was found innocent even though many found her guilty due to evidence against her. Some might say that justice was done but was it truly done? During the trial, a famous poem about the case was made, “Lizzie Borden took an ax, gave her mother forty whacks. When she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one.”. This poem was written about Lizzie Borden, who was accused of the murder of her father and stepmother on August 4, 1892. Both her father and stepmother were violently murdered within their own home at the fall of an ax. Even though the poem did
Patty Hearst was kidnapped from the University of California at Berkeley by the SLA (Symbionese Liberation Army) when she was 19 years old. When she got kidnapped the SLA told her she had to join them or she gets hurt. She recorded an audiotape that could be heard around the world, saying that she is now part of the SLA. When she joined them, she participated in a criminal activity with the SLA in California. When she did the crime, they said that it was robbery and extortion. She took two million dollars from her father for the SLA so they could take over the world and the people.
Wuornos had killed seven men in the central part of Florida. She argued that the main reason why she had to kill these men was because they had attempted to rape her and she did so defending herself. The trials confirmed that Wuornos had involved herself in highway prostitution and this had been her main job for the most part of her life. This provided a criminal record that was long and full of various crimes which she had committed from her youth life until her arrest in 1991 (Shipley, 2004). At the age of ten years old, she was involved in smoking and shoplifting and this was the beginning of her crime life. According to the police criminal records, she had previously got arrested for theft, drug possession, drug trafficking and car-jacking. With all these records behind her, it was hard for the law enforcers to let her free again. With the kind of life and environment that Aileen Wuornos grew up in, people have come to an understanding of why she actually turned out to be the first female serial killer in the American soil. Her life was filled with abandonment, crime scenes, bad peers, abuse and misleading parenting (Schafer,
TRANSITION: The media’s role in Aileen Wuornos’ case might have been too intruding but it does provide us a little insight on America’s first woman serial killer.