Bill Harris, the SLA Member Who Kidnapped Patty Hearst From Her Berkeley Apartment, Dies at 81

William "Bill" Harris, one of the Symbionese Liberation Army members behind the 1974 kidnapping of newspaper heiress Patty Hearst in Berkeley, has died at 81. Harris died Sept. 10 at a San Francisco hospital, and his wife, Rebecca Young, told The New York Times the cause was a heart attack. His death was not widely reported until this week.

The night in Berkeley

On the evening of Feb. 4, 1974, Harris and two other SLA members forced their way into the Berkeley apartment Hearst, then a 19-year-old University of California sophomore, shared with her fiancé, Steven Weed. After a struggle, Harris put her in the trunk of a car and drove off, according to accounts in the Times and the San Francisco Chronicle cited by Cox Media Group.

Harris later said the group saw Hearst as a "symbolic target" because her family controlled a media empire. The SLA first called her a "prisoner of war" and later demanded the family fund a large food giveaway for poor Californians.

The case grew stranger that April, when the group released a photo of Hearst holding a gun and a tape in which she called herself "Tania." She then took part in the robbery of a Hibernia Bank branch in San Francisco. Hearst later said she had been coerced and feared being killed; Harris disputed that account for decades.

Prison, then a second life in San Francisco

Harris and his then-wife, Emily, served about eight years in prison after convictions tied to the group's crimes and a plea deal in the kidnapping case, and were released in 1983. Harris went on to work for San Francisco attorney Stuart Hanlon, rising from receptionist to private investigator. He married Young in 1988 and they had two sons.

Decades later he was prosecuted over a 1975 SLA robbery of a bank near Sacramento in which Myrna Opsahl, a mother of four, was killed. Newser, summarizing the Chronicle's obituary, reported that he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and served four more years.

Hearst was convicted of bank robbery in 1976. President Jimmy Carter commuted her sentence in 1979, and President Bill Clinton pardoned her in 2001.