Bill Harris, Patty Hearst Kidnapper, Dies at 81 After Heart Attack
Updated
Updated · The New York Times · Oct 7
Bill Harris, Patty Hearst Kidnapper, Dies at 81 After Heart Attack
1 articles · Updated · The New York Times · Oct 7
Summary
Sept. 10 marked the death of Bill Harris in a San Francisco hospital; his wife, Rebecca Young, said the 81-year-old died of a heart attack.
Harris was a top lieutenant in the Symbionese Liberation Army and one of the main kidnappers who seized 19-year-old Patty Hearst from her Berkeley apartment on Feb. 4, 1974.
He later said Hearst was chosen as a symbolic target because her family controlled a media empire the group viewed as U.S. government propaganda.
That abduction helped ignite one of the defining crime and political dramas of the 1970s, triggering a huge FBI manhunt and Harris's later prison sentences.