Patty Hearst's Kidnapper Bill Harris Dies, Where Is The Newspaper Heiress Now After 1974 Abduction?
Will Harris, who kidnapped heiress and actress Patty Hearst in 1974, is now dead. Amid this, let's take a look at where she is now.
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Add BollywoodShaadis on GooglePatty Hearst's kidnapping remains one of the most chilling cases from the 1970s. The Hearst heiress was kidnapped at gunpoint over five decades ago by the Symbionese Liberation Army. However, now she is back in the limelight as one of her kidnappers, Bill Harris, has died. As the case returns to the spotlight, let's take a look at where Patty is now.
What happened to Patty Hearst after the 1974 kidnapping?
For those who are unfamiliar with the case, Newspaper heiress Patricia "Patty" Hearst was kidnapped at gunpoint by the Symbionese Liberation Army. However, what shocked everyone was the fact that she later joined her captors in a 1974 San Francisco bank robbery that earned her a prison sentence. While many called it Stockholm Syndrome, others were simply left speechless.
Patty Hearst's kidnapping was one of the most sensational and captivating cases of the 1970s. The then-19-year-old was not just a normal college student but also the granddaughter of wealthy newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, which made the world even more interested in what happened to her.
Bill Harris' death has once again brought the case into the limelight. According to The New York Post, he passed away on September 10, 2026. However, the news was only made public on October 6, 2026. Harris became a well-known name back in 1974, after the kidnapping took place. He was a top lieutenant of the Symbionese Liberation Army, a radical left-wing group that kidnapped Patty Hearst from her Berkeley, CA apartment.
However, they didn't just hold her for ransom. Bill Harris and his crew forced Patty Hearst to record a message denouncing her family. Kept locked away from her world, Patty eventually embraced the SLA's ideology and ultimately participated in the group's robbery of a San Francisco bank.
Patty Hearst's allegiance to the Symbionese Liberation Army raised questions about Stockholm Syndrome, a common term deployed to describe the bond that victims of kidnappings or hostage situations sometimes develop with their captors. For the uninitiated, the syndrome got its name from an August 1973 failed bank robbery in Sweden's capital, where the hostages were kept locked for six days.
Rather than a diagnosis of a disorder, experts describe it as a psychological coping mechanism used by some hostages to endure being held captive and abused. While many believed that was the case with Patty Hearst, the incident still left everyone shaken.
What happened to Patty Hearst after her arrest, and where is she now?
Patty Hearst had adopted the name "Tania" soon after she joined the group. The self-styled radicals viewed aspects of U.S. society as racist and oppressive. SLA was the same group that was accused of killing a California school superintendent. According to the FBI, given that Patty was from an extremely powerful family, she had caught the Symbionese Liberation Army's attention.
The group demanded food and money donations for the poor in exchange for her release, though she remained a captive even after her family met the ransom through a USD 2 million food distribution program. However, things took a turn soon after her kidnapping. Patty had joined the crew to rob the bank and was arrested in 1975.
The robbery took place on April 15, 1974, and Patty was seen on surveillance cameras wielding an assault rifle during the crime. She was arrested in September 1975. The prosecutor played a jail cell recording of Hearst talking to a friend in which she was confident, cursing, and fully aware of her role with the Symbionese Liberation Army. She was later convicted of bank robbery and sentenced to seven years in prison.
She served about two years before President Jimmy Carter commuted what remained of her sentence. President Bill Clinton later granted Patty a full pardon in 2001. Today, she is known as Patricia Hearst Shaw. She married police officer Bernard Shaw, who guarded her after her release. In recent years, she has been in the news for her dogs, mostly French bulldogs, that have won prizes at the Westminster Kennel Club dog show.
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PC: Bettmann Archive, PatriciaHearst/IG, ForgottenHistory/YT
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