LOS ANGELES—Newspaper heiress Patricia “Patty” Hearst was kidnapped at gunpoint 50 years ago Sunday by the Symbionese Liberation Army, a little-known armed revolutionary group. The 19-year-old college student’s infamous abduction in Berkeley, California, led to Hearst joining forces with her captors for a 1974 bank robbery that earned her a prison sentence.
Hearst, granddaughter of wealthy newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, will turn 70 on Feb. 20. She is now known as Patricia Hearst Shaw after she married a police officer who guarded her when she was out on bail, the late Bernard Shaw. She has been in the news in recent years for her dogs, mostly French bulldogs, that have won prizes in the Westminster Kennel Club dog show.
