F.B.I. agents’ big break in Hearst case

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33959, 27 September 1975, Page 15

F.B.I. agents’ big break in Hearst case

(N.Z.PA.-Reuter —Copyright) | NEW YORK. ' In its 19-month-long hunt for Patricia Campbell Hearst, the Federal Bureau of Investigation found that she was like a flying saucer: sighted everywhere, found nowhere.

The F.8.1.’s director, Mr Clarence Kelley, disclosed the frustrations of its agents at a press conference in Kansas City, w'here he recalled: “Everywhere I went, people kept asking, ‘Why can’t you catch Patty Hearst?’.” But now that she has been arrested, a key reason for the long delay in apprehending her has emerged: for all those months of hunting, and all those millions of dollars spent looking for her, the F. 8.1. should have been seeking someone else. They wanted Patty Hearst, i and they found her — by extending their methodical search to Wendy Yoshimura. aged 32, an artist bom in a>

I detention centre for Japanese Americans during the Second World War.

Yoshimura’s fingerprints were found by the F. 8.1. in a farmhouse in South Canaan, Pennsylvania, Hearst’s fingerprints were also there, along with those of her last two associates in the radical Symbionese Liberation Army, William and Emily Harris, a married couple.

Hearst’s father, the newspaper magnate, Mr Randolph Hearst, described the discovery of her prints at the house as “a cold trail”, but the “cold trail” produced a spark. Until Yoshimura’s prints were found there, neither she nor her radical associates had been linked with Patricia Hearst. ' A freelance artist who, her parents said, had always favoured the underdog, Wendy Yoshimura had been on the run longer than Patty Hearst or the Harrises. She I had been a fugitive since (1972, running away from [charges of being connected with a plot to blow up a building at the University of California at Berkeley. Her boy-friend was Wililiam Brandt, who was in

prison in California for his role in the plot.

“This was where the elements of investigation came in,” said one F. 8.1. spokesman, who bristled at the idea that it was only by a fluke that Hearst was found. “You cannot have a good investigation if you don’t consider all the relatives and friends of the person you are looking for. Finding Wendy meant finding Patty as well.”

The discovery of Yoshimura’s involvement led the F. 8.1. to keep her friends and associates under observation. The easiest, of course, was Brandt, because it was known where he was: Solidad Prison, serving a one-to-15-year sentence. It was learned — exactly | how is not yet publicly (known — that one of his (visitors in prison was Kathileen Soliah, an associate of (some of the S.L.A. members killed in a shoot-out with the police and the F. 8.1. at a house in Los Angeles in May of last year.

The F.8.1.’s Sacramento office then undertook an investigation of Soliah’s friends and relatives, in-

eluding her brother, Stephen Soliah, aged 27, a decorator living in San Francisco. The F.B.L learned that Soliah had rented one, and possibly two, flats in San Francisco recently, as well as the one he already lived (in. They also came up with (two San Francisco addresses.

The first flat they put under observation was the temporary home of William and Emily Harris, surviving founder-members of the S.L.A., the radical Leftist group that kidnapped Patty Hearst and, she says, made her a convert.

The Harris couple ■ — she a former schoolteacher, he a Vietnam veteran — were Hearst’s closest associates, (and F. 8.1. agents watched [them for two days as they left their home in jogging clothes for “keep-fit” runs around the block. Then, on Thursday of last week, the F.B.L arrested the couple as they came jogging home. Minutes later, agents and local policemen converged on the other flat, the one rented by Stephen Soliah for “his wife and another girt”

There, surprised policemen! and F.B.L agents found what! the tedious, arduous processes of investigation might have led them to expect — Wendy Yoshimura and Patty Hearst. So ended one of the most [intensive hunts in the F.8.1.’s history. The agency says that it spent $2.6m up (to June, 1975, in the hunt, and the final figure may easily top the s3m mark — on ’top of what local police forces spent. The investigation met with [criticism: a young secretary [in Washington says that her i home was broken into by (agents who thought she was [Hearst; and an F. 8.1. spokesman has spoken of hundreds lof “Patty Hearst look-alikes” i being investigated, and thousands of “bits and pieces” examined.

The big break came with the discovery of that farmhouse in Pennsylvania and [the fingerprints of Wendy [Yoshimura. The F.B.L is believed to (have discovered the farmi house through a tip from (the brother of a radical now [under investigation for what • role, if any, he had in har-

bouring Patty Hearst, whose [capture has given the F. 8.1. a much-needed morale boost. ! The bureau had been i under almost constant criti|cism for its failure to inivestigate the Watergate afIfair and for revelations (about practices under its ifounder-director, J. Edgar (Hoover. In fact, the man who [headed the 591-day hunt for I Hearst was also involved in [the Watergate investigation: [Charles Bates, at one time assistant head of the [bureau’s general investigation unit, supervised the inquiry into the break-in of Democratic Party's headquarters in the Watergate building in Washington. Before that, he had had himself transferred to San Francisco. His friends have said that he was fed up with I political interference over Watergate, and with working under Mr L. Patrick Gray, then President Nixon’s choice as head of the bureau after Mr Hoover died.

To this day, Mr Bates will not talk about the Watergate affair, but he was the man who announced the capture of Patty Hearst.