No word about Hearst girl

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33454, 8 February 1974, Page 9

No word about Hearst girl

X.Z. Press Association—Copyright) BERKELEY (California). February 7. San Francisco police admitted last night that they had few clues to the whereabouts of the kidnapped American newspaper heiress. Patricia Hearst.

“For all we know they could be six blocks from here,” the Berkeley police information officer, Mr Richard Berger, said of the white woman and two black men who abducted the 19-year-old Miss Hearst from an apartment on Monday night. “I wish we had some way of knowing where they are.” John Kelley, assistant agent in charge of the San Francisco office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, said: “Quite a number of men” were pursuing unspecified new developments. But he emphasised that there had been “no big break-throughs” in the case. Neither the police nor the Hearst family had received any ransom demand or contact of any kind. Mr Kelley said. Miss Hearst is the granddaughter of the late William Randolph Hearst, founder of the American newspaper and magazine empire that bears his name. Mr Kelley said that a

•'special F. 8.1. artist from 11 Washington was using witijnesses’ descriptions to make ■ composite pictures of the i three kidnappers, all said to i be in their 20s. 1 He also said that agents ’ were circulating photographs ' of “possible suspects,” both : male and female. He declined to comment on published re- : ports that pictures of women i associated with radical ■ groups were being shown to , people on the University of ’ California campus. ■ 1 Meanwhile, Miss Hearst’s I parents met journalists at y their estate in Hillsborough, 'lls miles south of San Fran|cisco, to renew their pleas • for the safe return of their I i daughter. I “At first you are angry, ' and then you go into depres- ' sion,” said her father, Mr 1 Randolph Hearst, president ■ and editor of the “San Frani cisco Examiner,” and chairman of the Hearst Corporation. “Today is the day I’m hopjing we will receive some |word, something real,” said I his wife, Catherine. "It’s ibeen so long.” i Miss Hearst, an art history i student, was kidnapped at I gunpoint by the trio, who beat up her fiance and a [neighbour and dragged her J screaming to a stolen condvertible. They forced her jinto the boot'and drove off toward the Berkeley Hills in l; the convertible and later in a •station waggon, firing several ’ shots to scare away wit--1 nesses. ' Police said that the owner l of the convertible, Peter Benenson, aged 31, a radiai tion laboratory worker, had ; been kidnapped shortly be- ; fore Miss Hearst and was ■I bound and blindfolded in the ; car at the time. Police said II that he “didn’t know what was happening.” Mr Benenson told police that the kidnappers stopped about seven blocks away . from Miss Hearst’s apartment and transferred her to the station waggon, described by witnesses as a white, early I ; 1960, model Chevrolet. Benen- • son’s convertible was aban-l doned and he was released’ i unharmed.