Hearst version of killing

Press, 7 December 1981, Page 9

Hearst version of killing

NZPA-Reuter San Francisco Patricia Hearst Shaw says in her new book that she drove a getaway van after a bank robbery in which a woman was killed, helped plan a second hold-up and was involved in several bombings. Mrs Shaw, who lives near San Francisco, was a University of California student when she was abducted on February 4. 1974, by the ragtag revolutionary band that called itself the Symbionese Liberation Army. In the book, “Every Secret Thing." Mrs Shaw also alleges that an S.L.A. member, Emily Harris, killed a customer during the robbery in 1975 of the Crocker National Bank in Carmichael, near Sacramento, California. No-one was ever charged with that killing. Anthony White, chief Deputy District Attorney for Sacramento. County, said:“We wouldn't consider the book in and of itself competent evidence.” But the murder case was still open. Mrs Shaw was promised' that a statement she gave in 1976 would not be used against her in prosecution, but: “I don’t think she can publish it in a book and

still be protected. Her attorneys- would argue to the contrary.” he said. California’s felony murder law allots murder charges to be brought against accomplices. Mrs Shaw said Harris admitted killing Myrna Opsaal. aged 42, pregnant and the mother of several small children. “Who shot her? I asked,” Mrs Shaw wrote. *. “I did, snapped Emily.

Let’s not talk about it. Keep your eye on the road and your mind on the driving.” Mrs Harris and her husband, William, are serving prison terms for kidnapping Mrs Shaw. During her trial on charges of robbing a San Francisco bank branch in 1975, Mrs Shaw refused to testify about any alleged involvement in other bank robberies. . -■ ' In the book, she said she remained silent on the advice- of- the attorney, Lee Bailey, who told her she was to answer no questions that might link her with the Carmichael crime. She wrote that the S.L.A. used money from another robbery to buy weapons and ammunition, and polished their weapons skills in Grass Valley, near Sacramento. Mrs Shaw also wrote that she helped plant a bomb at a San Francisdo police station. The device never went off, but a week later, using a pipe bomb she had helped make, the S.L.A. blew up a police car in ■ front of the police station at Emeryville, near Oakland. On September 18, 1975, she was arrested with Wendy Yoshimura in San Francisco.

The Harrises were arrested the same day in another part of the city. Although she gave a terrorist power salute and was defiant when arrested, she later said she was. brainwashed into following her captives and was never a willing member of the S.L.A. A Federal jury rejected her story and convicted her of armed bank robbery in 1976. She served less than two years in prison before her sentence was commuted by the then President Carter; Patricia Hearst, the daughter of a newspaper publisher, later married Bernard Shaw, her bodyguard.