On the 50th anniversary of the Patty Hearst kidnapping Roger Rapoport offers an inside look at the unanswered questions surrounding this world famous abduction of William Randolph Hearst’s granddaughter from her Berkeley apartment.

In 1974, Rapoport, a contributor to publications like the Atlantic, Esquire and Rolling Stone, went to work for New Times covering the kidnapping of Patty Hearst, a few blocks from his Berkeley home. His exclusive reporting focused on the life and times of Steve Weed , the fiance the Symbionese Liberation Army left behind as these revolutionaries stuffed the love of Weed’s life into a Chevy trunk and sped off into the night.

Weed moved into Rapoport’s house where they wrote a big advance book together on the case. Shortly before completion the former Princeton marijuana dealer who began an affair with Patty when she was a 16 year old student at the high school where he taught, sued to block publication of the book. The following year one of Rapoport’s relatives, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Mark Brandler (best known for the Onion Field Murders trial), presided over a key trial that included Patty Hearst as a defendant with two of the SLA members.

After covering the San Francisco Hearst bank robbery trial in 1975 he went on, thirteen years later, to score an exclusive Oakland Tribune with Bill Harris, the man who actually kidnapped Patty Hearst and wound up fleeing cross country with her and his wife Emily Harris.

While others let the story rest he interviewed Dr. Thomas Noguchi the coroner to Marilyn Monroe, Janis Joplin and Robert F. Kennedy as well as six of Hearst’s fallen Symbionese Liberation Army comrades. Year after year Rapoport continued to pursue people who refused to go public and ultimately became convinced that nonfiction accounts of the kidnapping, including Patty Hearst’s own account of her life on the run with her kidnappers, fell short. His novel Searching for Patty Hearst offers a new look at this fascinating story. More details are at pattyhearst.com