The Patty Hearst Kidnapping

by Jean Henry Mead

It’s hard to believe that it’s been 35 years since newspaper heiress Patty Hearst was kidnapped from her Berkeley, California, apartment by the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA).

For those too young to remember, the 19-year-old was abducted February 4, 1974 from her apartment after the left-wing guerrlla group assaulted her fiancé Steven Weed. At least four shots were fired at people on the street as the screaming teen was blindfolded by two men and tossed into the trunk of their car.

Patty was reportedly brainwashed by the SLA and came to identify with the group. In April of 1974, she took part in a bank robbery, later claiming that the gun she held was empty, and that her apparent complicity with the group was a ruse to ensure her safety. She was, however, arrested the following year and eventually convicted of the crime. Her seven-year prison sentence was later commuted by President Jimmy Carter and she was fully pardoned by Bill Clinton on his last day in office.

The granddaughter of publishing magnate, William Randolph Hearst and great-granddaughter of millionaire George Hearst, Patricia was the third of five daughters born to Randollph Hearst and Catherine Campbell. She grew up in the wealthy San Francisco suburb of Hillborough and attended girls schools in San Francisco as well as Monterey. Among her friends was Patricia Tobin, whose family founded the Hibernia Bank, a branch which Patty later helped to rob.

The SLA demanded the release of jailed SLA members for Patty’s return. When that failed, they demanded that the Hearst family donate $400 million worth of food for California's less fortunate residents. Randolph Hearst immediately donated $6 million worth of food to the Bay Area poor, but the SLA refused to release his daughter. In a subsequent recording sent to the press, Patty said that her father could have done better. She also said that she had joined the guerrilla group and taken the name of Tania.

Two months later, on April 15, Patty was photographed holding an M1 Carbine during the robbery of the Sunset District branch of the Hibernia Bank in San Francisco. Newspapers later printed alleged reports from “Tania” that she was committed to the SLA goals. Warrants were subsequently issued for her arrest in September of 1975. The folowing year she was arrested in a San Francisco apartment with other members of the group and imprisoned. Listing her occupation as “Urban Guerilla,” she asked her attorney to “Tell everybody that I’m smiling, that I feel free and strong and I send my greetings to all the sisters and brothers out there.”

F. Lee Bailey defended Patty Hearst during her trial, which began on January 15, 1976. Bailey said that his client had been blindfolded and kept in a closet, and that she had been physically and sexually abused. Her defense was that she had been the victim of concerted brainwashing which contributed to the Stockholm syndrome, when hostages sympathize with their captors.

Bailey argued that Patty had been coerced or intimidated into taking part in the bank robbery, but she refused to give evidence against the other captured SLA members, which was seen as complicity by the prosecution. The jury obviously felt the same way for Patty was sentenced to 35 years in prison, later commuted to seven. Legal analysts later said that Bailey had done a poor job defending her because he gave a short, incompetent closing argument, but Patty Hearst served less than two years of her sentence when pardoned by Jimmy Carter on February 1, 1979.

Six Words, a World

By Beth Terrell

I just bought a fascinating little book called Six-Word Memoirs on Love & Heartbreak. Written by "Writers Famous and Obscure" and edited by Smith Magazine, the book is composed of the shortest of short stories: six words each. I was amazed by how much could be told in so few words.

For example, there's this little gem by Joe Hill: I thought we had more time.

There's a world in that brief phrase. Is this the story of a widower realizing that he took his wife for granted? A woman watching her mother slip into dementia? A bridge designer being pressured to meet an unexpected deadline by rushing a design he knows may result in disaster? None of the above?

All of the above?

This book is a treasure trove of ideas for a writer, because each one contains the seeds of many stories.

Here are a few more.

Should have listened to the soothsayer. - Lisa Johnson

They never seemed crazy at first. - Eric Heiman

Found soul mate. Became call mate. - Harlan Stanton

Good men? Like promises, easily broken. - Bill West

And how about this one, by Christopher Moore? Heartbroken, until the bitch finally died.

If that doesn't spur the imagination, I don't know what will. Who is the bitch? Why is the narrator heartbroken? If you gave this line to a hundred authors and directed each one to write a novel about it, you would get a hundred different stories. Maybe the narrator is a henpecked husband whose wealthy wife makes his life a misery. Maybe he's a dutiful son whose overbearing mother comes between him and the woman he loves. Maybe "the bitch" dies of natural causes, after the narrator's years of self-sacrifice, or maybe he is the one who killed her. Six words, but what a wealth of ideas!

As snippets of commentary about the human heart, the book is thought-provoking. As a collection of story starters, it's invaluable. Story stuck? Skim this book (or its companion Not Quite What I Was Planning), and you're sure to come across something that sparks an idea.

But it works the other way, too. I tried it with my first novel (Met wrong woman. Framed for murder.), my most recent book (Loved nephew like son. Wasn't enough.), and my current work in progress (Tried network marketing. Upline murdered. Oops.). It's harder than it might seem to distill an 80,000-word novel to a mere six words.

How about you? Can you come up with a six-word distillation of your book, or, like the authors of Six-Word Memoirs, a six-word story of life, love, and heartbreak?

Speed Writing

By Mark W. Danielson

It’s been a while since I’ve written about writing, so today I’ll introduce my method that I call “speed writing”. Of course, this isn’t a novel concept, but rather two words that describe how I create my stories.

Before I ever sit down to the computer, I’ve spent months or years thinking about what I intend to write. I’ve also completed my research, walked the settings, and even photographed many of the scenes to engage my mind where it needs to be. In other words, what makes speed writing possible is I’ve thought out every aspect of the story, thus the subsequent writing becomes effortless. Now, all that’s missing are my characters, but letting them evolve is the best part of writing.

I wrote my next story in thirty days; half of which I completed in four. How is that possible? Simple – I was in Kazakhstan, couldn’t sleep, and had nothing better to do. In situations like that, I either produce or wither. But does speed writing work for others? Beats me. I do know that Dean Koontz spends sixty to ninety hours per week writing, and when you have that much uninterrupted time, you can churn out stories pretty fast.

Unlike many authors, I don’t spend much time outlining. However, I do jot notes as I go along, primarily so I can remember details. For example, I need to know my characters; where they live, what they do, what they look like, but these notes never give direction.

I’ve often linked writing to painting, and speed writing is no exception. In painting, you can only do so many brush strokes before the paint dries, and you only get so many versions before you’ve ruined the canvas. And so it goes for writing; too much thought and revisions will ruin a story. Thus my logic becomes, if I’m struggling with a thought, then it probably wasn’t a great one, so I should drop it and move on.

Bear in mind that speed writing doesn’t carry over to editing. Editing is like exiting the freeway into a school zone. It has to be slow and methodical to check for logic and inconsistencies, so enjoy the freeway for as long as you can.

The most important thing about writing is to get the story from my head into a workable document. I never stop until my first draft is complete. For me, writing fiction is no different than telling a story around a camp fire. So, when you think about writing in those terms, you’ll see why I believe anyone can write.

How To Write a Novel

By Chester Campbell

First you sit down with a pencil and a piece of paper. A pencil? In this day of PCs and laptops and Alphasmarts? A pencil can’t get you on Twitter or Facebook or Blogger.com. Maybe not, but it can jot down all those notes you gather to get started.

John Steinbeck used as many as sixty cedar pencils a day in his writing, and Ernest Hemingway was a major pencil user. I don’t advocate writing your mystery in pencil, but the marvelous little device is a must during the creative process. Look at this neat display of penciled notes on my desk. Okay, neatness isn’t my specialty.



There’s a website called Pencils.com that has all kinds of info on the wooden widget. It notes that the pencil is the only portable, lightweight invention that can draw a line 35 miles long, average 45,000 words and correct its own mistakes.

If you thought it was a latter-day invention, you’re way off the mark. Scribes in ancient Rome wrote on papyrus with metal styluses that left their mark on the forerunner of paper. Some early styluses were made of lead. This led (a little humor there) to calling the legible part of the pencil "lead," although it’s made of graphite.

The first lead stick pencils were wrapped in string. Sort of like those peel-off China markers that will write on most anything. During later times, the lead (or graphite) was inserted in a hollow wooden stick.

Pencils first came into popular use when mass produced in Germany in 1662. The first U.S. pencils were fashioned by a cabinet maker in Concord, Massachusetts after they became unavailable from England because of the War of 1812. Incidentally, Leonardo da Vinci did a lot of pencil sketching. Don’t know how much penciling Dan Brown did while writing Leonardo’s Code.

Meriwether Lewis, the famed explorer of the Lewis & Clark Expedition, carried “1 Set of Small Slates & pencils” on his historic adventure. Which brings us back to mystery writing. My character Sid Chance in The Surest Poison (due out in April) was the former police chief of Lewisville, Tennessee, a fictional small town near the Natchez Trace where Meriwether Lewis died in 1809.

One other note regarding the noted explorer, a small town not far off the Trace named for him, Lewisburg, is home to one of several pencil manufacturers in southern Middle Tennessee. Nearby Shelbyville, better known now for its Walking Horse Celebration, was once called Pencil City. Tennessee became noted for pencil making because of its abundant supply of eastern red cedar, the best wood for writing instruments.

The Shelbyville Pencil Company, which started in 1933, gives their pencils four-to-seven coats of paint and can turn out 400,000 a day. But no doubt the yellow variety called No. 2 is the No. 1 choice of writers.

Now you know how to write a novel. The next question is what do you put in it? Words, of course. And where do you get them? Can you spell t-h-e-s-a-u-r-u-s?

Pre-order The Surest Poison online at Barnes & Noble.

Location, Location

by Ben Small



Part and parcel of a good story is the location chosen. I especially enjoy mysteries set in locations that offer historical, cultural or topographical oddities or curiosities, or those which will add interesting aspects to my plotting.

And I've found a gem this time, right in my own back yard. My next book, title as yet undetermined, will be set in the historic areas south of Tucson, the San Pedro and Santa Cruz rivers, the valleys they support and the Santa Rita Mountain Range which splits them. It was here that the first Spanish settlements arose during the 1500s, and it was along the San Pedro where Wyatt Earp carried out his vendetta against the Cowboys. In fact, close to the place where I took the lead shot for this article, Wyatt Earp shot dead the famous outlaw Curly Bill Brocius, leader of the rustling Cowboys, in a hail of gunfire. Back then, the term "Cowboy" was an insult; intended to refer to the murdering rustlers who invaded ranches in Mexico and the Arizona/New Mexico territories, murdered the residents, and stole their cattle or horses. There was no law and order back in those days, no jurisdictional respect or order between federal, county and local law enforcement agencies. County law enforcement was aligned with the rustlers, while the Earps were town and deputy U.S. marshals. Two U.S. presidents tried to remedy the outlaw culture, and the Government of Mexico threatened war, but it took Wyatt Earp and his brothers, not the most pleasant or legitimate characters themselves considering their gambling and prostitution interests, to clean up the mess. And at root, politics was behind much of the conflict, for the rustlers were Democrats, and the gamblers and pimps were Republicans.

How's that for consistency?

Despite the time difference between then and now, the 1880s mentality still remains. This is harsh country, and solutions to problems are sometimes direct and brutal. As was stated in the movie, Casino, there are many holes in the desert. I happened on one grave (Curly Bill?) where someone was kind enough to mount a cross. But many graves are unmarked, if remains are buried at all. Many bodies were and are left to the coyotes, mountain lions and the ever-present turkey vultures.


Back in the 1880s, this area was the Wild West.

Now it's just wild.

The San Pedro and Santa Cruz river beds, valleys, highways, and the mountains in between them are known as Smuggler's Alley, where trafficking in drugs, weapons and humans is most keen. Residents report finding live and spent 7.62 X 39 shells -- the kind shot by AK-47s, the smugglers' weapon of choice -- in their backyards. They hear gunshots and see people running.

The Border Patrol snatches over 800 illegals per day here.

Drive through this area during daylight, and you will see Border Patrol vehicles, lots of them, all shapes, sizes and types of them, and you'll pass through Border Patrol Inspections, both permanent and temporary. You'll see helicopters flying over, and you'll see people on mountaintops, watching, much like Cochise and Geronimo and their bands did here in the mid-to-late 19th Century. At night, you'll see flares, Kleig lights and flashlights. You may see flashing signals in the mountains. The Border Patrol will fly over, spreading their floods on hilltops or fields. You may hear shouts or shots, perhaps both.

The winds blow often, sometimes fierce and gusting; they carry strange sounds, conversations and activity from some distance away. But from where..? Tension grows as dusk falls. It builds...

At night, the desert comes alive. You hear rustling, the baying of coyotes, and sudden rushed movements, a struggle. A scream on the wind. Laughter? Terror? The air stills like it was snuffed, and you hear another rustle in a bushy mesquite nearby. You hear a shot, or was it a door slam maybe at the ranch next door? You analyze what you heard, decide there was a clang to it. Must be a door that took a breeze badly.

Be careful when you're between the valleys.

Here's a daylight shot from my car window, not far from the Santa Cruz.

If you look carefully, you'll see two people watching me from on top of a foothill five hundred yards away. I departed quickly, after I saw one of them raise a rifle through my zoom lens. I called the Border Patrol and gave them the GPS coordinates.

This is beautiful country along these two rivers, even when the rivers and streams are not running. Mountains, washes and game abound. The San Pedro valley is noted as one of the world's best bird sites.

But beware, around the next corner may lurk danger. If you're off the main roads, you may want to be armed.









Other risks affect folks in this area, too. Water, for instance. Green Valley and Tucson pull most of their water from the Santa Cruz watershed. The water table, which varies from several hundred feet from the surface to just a few feet close to the river, is declining, and groundwater and stream flow are showing increased levels of contaminates. The Santa Cruz originates in Mexico and flows north. Nogales, Sonora is a major industrial center, and it's pumping TCE laced water into the riverbed.

But there's more... This area, up from Mexico to Tucson, sees some of the most intense mining operations in the world. Gold, silver, copper, molybdenum, uranium and other minerals are mined and processed here, and these processes use sulfuric acid, arsenic and other heavy metals and poisonous substances. The chemical tanks, piping, seals and acid ponds sometimes leak. Tailings from these mines dot the countryside, creating huge toxic mounds saturated with these chemicals -- and radioactive to boot. This is open pit stuff, most of it, so the mountains are being scarred. And where tunnel mining prevails, there are problems with subsistence (sudden collapse of mine shafts). A collapsing mine channel may unpredictably divert rushing floodwaters during summer monsoons. You're in the mountains, and there's no soil to absorb rainfall. The ground is hard-pack. It, too, is mined, for Portland Cement and Cemex, the Mexican concrete giant.

The chemical runoff from these mining operations is contaminating the groundwater at ever increasing rates. And the areas close to the river, where the water table is closest to the surface, are prime farming areas. Take for instance, this pecan farm, where I'm placing Denton Wright's ex-wife in the new book, a horse rancher and pecan farmer. The farm is less than a mile from the Santa Cruz, so the water table is close to the ground.

As I was scouting this area, I came upon a copper mine just a few miles from this pecan farm. (Indeed, another one was across the street from it, an abandoned mine, but with the tailings pile still intact.) A big 'un, with enormous sulfuric acid tanks and holding ponds and a pile of tailings climbing to the sky. Huge ore trucks pass by, throwing up clouds of dust. The trucks are timed, so the dust doesn't become a fog, but when the wind is blowing, good luck.


Here is the tailings pile. You'll also note the hanging dust cloud from an ore truck that passed by some minutes before. The roads are paved with crushed tailings here, so you're traveling on radioactive roads through radioactive clouds dusted with sulfuric acid and arsenic.

Good times, huh?

Adding more fuel to the area's growing flames of discontent and concern, there's the proposal of a Canadian company to put a new silver, copper and moly open pit mine just south of Tucson, close to Vail, an incorporated suburb. The waters from this location feed both the San Pedro and Santa Cruz rivers. The Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management are currently conducting investigations that will lead to an environmental impact statement, but an 1872 federal law gives mining a preference over any other land development, and local residents feel bitterly that environmental concerns are once again taking a back seat to mining development. It's irony that this battleground is proceeding despite a severe downturn in materials prices, a decline that's laying off copper miners and closing many mines.

A lot of property for sale here...

So Denton's ex-wife is in the midst of this mess, trying to save her pecan farm and horse ranch, while dealing with the pressures of guarding against illegal trafficking across her lands. She lives north, in horse ranch territory, just west of the old McCartney Ranch, where Linda McCartney died. She lives two blocks from Tucson's only oasis, Aqua Caliente Park, where Wyatt Earp and Doc Holiday met the territorial U.S. Marshall, who informed them Frank Stillwell and Ike Clanton were waiting at the Tucson train station to murder the entire Earp clan. The shooting of Frank Stillwell thereafter, for which Doc Holliday was charged, was the beginning of Wyatt's famous vendetta. The Cowboys were destroyed.

The problems are great, the challenges greater, and the risks are real and apparent. Still, nestled at the foot of the Santa Catalina range, in an area twenty miles away from her farm and horse ranch, Denton's ex-wife's residence looks scenic and tranquil. Desert plants, especially saguaro abound underneath the concrete-like hard-pac. It's a desert jungle, thick with mesquite, chollas, barrel cacti, acacia, ocotillo, hopbush, paloverde, mexican jumping bean, chuparosa, canyon ragweed, Parry's penstemon and creasote. Sandwiched between two mountain ranges, the northeast side of Tucson, where she lives, sees double the rainfall of metro-Tucson. The mountains squeeze the water out of clouds passing through their slot like a wet chamois twisted in strong hands.








But looks can be deceiving...

Home Is Where Your Story Begins

Blazing sunlight today. I saw my shadow, just like a groundhog emerging from his burrow. I’ve been icebound for a week. Hadn’t been to the mailbox since last Saturday. But, thank God for small favors, we’ve had two days of sunshine. With the help of Ice Melt, my garden hoe and deck broom, I cleared a path to the curb this morning, and took the Senior Center bus to Wal-Mart. Halleluja, I’m a bum!

The week wasn’t all bad. I had a fridge-freezer full of homemade goodies. I had electricity. I had time to sit here at the computer and catch up on news from everywhere. One thing stuck in my memory, a line from a home-and-garden feature at www.sfgate.com.

A Northern California designer bought an abandoned barn in New Jersey, had it hauled to California in pieces on a flatbed truck, and spent about six years turning it into a home. The line that lodged in my mind: “A plaque on Johnsen's wall proclaims, ‘Home is where your story begins.’”

I need a plaque like that for my wall. It applies in spades to my just released, reissued mystery novel. Line editing FULL CIRCLE for its new life as ABSINTHE OF MALICE, I realized it was a like a diary of my life and times while I was writing the original book. Everything in the book came right out of my life in one way or another.

When I promoted FULL CIRCLE up and down the Central San Joaquin Valley I swore to my audiences that the book was entirely fiction, bore no resemblance to anyone I knew, blah, blah, blah. I believed it, too.

You can’t fool readers. Their questions gave me pause. To use an old biblical phrase, the scales fell from my eyes. I began to see certain similarities in my fiction and my real-life observations and experiences.

One scene in particular came from reporting on a famous actor who was in the neighborhood for a cultural promotion. He was accompanied by his wife, who kept getting into the photos I was snapping. A few months later he divorced her.

Somehow, a version of that experience made its way into my book. On Page 117 of ABSINTHE OF MALICE, Penny Mackenzie goes to her newspaper morgue for a file on Editha Kluck, manager of the Chamber of Commerce. Quoting:

***
Editha’s file was thin, a brief on an inside page, and a follow-up photo. The brief announced her hiring, mentioned a previous job in Idaho. The proverbial picture worth a thousand words was taken the day of her arrival in the Chamber office.

Editha smiled brightly. Layton, one arm resting on her shoulders, wore a predatory grin. Merrily stood behind Editha, her face just visible above Layton’s arm. What was her expression? Frustration? Jealousy? Pure hatred? All of the above.

Merrily had shoved her way into the picture. Ignore me at your peril, she seemed to say. Pay attention.
***
I was dumbstruck when I realized where that scene came from. I must say, it fits my book like a fine Italian glove.

A longtime friend has both books. She called last weekend to say she likes it even better the second time around. She said, “I keep laughing. It sounds just like you.”

I like it better the second time around, too. It’s a detailed word picture of a time and place I like to remember. It’s a visit “home.”

High Tech Crime Detection

by Jean Henry Mead

White collar crime is on the rise and made easier through the internet. Few people are now taken in by Nigerian email promising millions of dollars if only you will help them transfer money to the U.S.

But phishing is a relatively new crime that involves criminals who send email requesting the recipient’s passwords and account numbers for various bank accounts and other financial institutions. It may be a fraudulent credit card offer or various merchandise with a legitimate appearing logo implanted in the email. However, the links they provide go directly to the crooks' computers. If the unsuspecting victim provides a credit card number or checking account number, within hours large purchases will no doubt be charged to the account. And the victim will spend years trying to clear his corrupted credit.

Highly trained investigators are taught the laws of search and seizure and are well acquainted with computer fraud. They know how data is stored and how to recover deleted files, examine hard drives, break passwords, detect computer viruses and how to discover devises that can destroy a computer's inner workings, according to Lee Lofland in his book Police Procedure and Investigation.

Cyber criminals have devised ways to prevent investigators from discovering their illegal activities by drilling holes in their hard drives or smashing them with sledge hammers. They’ve also submerged the hard drives in acid, the only effective way to destroy the data. Forensic computers are normally used to scan computers seized in raids on illegal operations and the hardware write blocker or HWD is a necessary tool in high-tech crime detection. The forensic computer operates by extracting information from the criminal’s computer and storing it for future investigation and evidence collection.

Lofland says the ”HWD functions much like the foot valve in a water line that’s connected to a pump and well system. The valve opens when the pump (HWD) pulls water (information) toward a house (forensic computer) but closes tightly when the pumping stops so the leftover water in the lines can’t return to the well (suspect’s computer). The one-way action of the HWD is designed to prevent cross-contamination of evidence."

It also prevents any evidence of the HWD probe in the suspect’s computer, which an attorney could use as defense. Lofland added: “It could be compared to planting evidence, such as a bloody knife or glove at a homicide scene.”