CRIME: The Ordeal of a Political Prisoner

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Evidently, that general idea met the S.L.A.'s approval. At week's end, the Hearsts received a second tape recording from Patricia relaying a conciliatory message: her captors would not insist, she said, that Hearst comply to the letter with their original instructions. Quite aside from relieving Patricia's family from an impossible task, the communique was encouraging evidence that the S.L.A. was bargaining seriously and might eventually set terms within reason for her release. "I think I can get out of here as long as they [the FBI] don't come busting in," said Patricia. She also urged her mother to stop wearing black clothes on TV. "It's really depressing to hear people talk about me like I'm dead."

A major reason for the S.L.A.'s backdown on the food issue, however tentative, may well have been the scorn heaped on the original demand by a vast majority of those designated as beneficiaries. Many welfare recipients said that they would refuse to take any food paid for with "blood money." Chavez sent a message to the Hearsts that "my prayers are with you." Leftists from Black Panther Leader Huey Newton to Actress Jane Fonda condemned the S.L.A.'s use of violence as damaging to the radical cause. Some too conveniently forgot the New Left's more-than-occasional condoning of violence a few years ago. Yet most seemed to agree that the S.L.A.'s demand was as illogical as it was cruel. Said Communist Angela Davis: "If you want to build a mass movement against racism, poverty and imperialism, you don't do things that alienate people."

Despite the optimism generated by the week's second S.L.A. message, there lurked the possibility that the kidnapers would yet demand other fantastic "signs of good faith" before releasing their captive—if it ever does. Patricia hinted in her first message that there is "an analogy" between her abduction and the police capture of two suspected S.L.A. members now charged with the murder last November of Dr. Marcus Foster, the black superintendent of schools in Oakland. Authorities expect that Patricia's kidnapers may well ultimately demand their release. Beyond that, some law-enforcement officials despair that, following the skyjacking syndrome, the S.L.A.'s sudden notoriety may already have loosed the seed of example for future senseless terrorism—even if, like kidnapers in the great majority of cases handled by the FBI, this group is caught.