Fiery End for Five of Patty's Captors

Like some macabre fulfillment of McLuhanism, the bloodiest and most suspenseful act in the tragedy of Patricia Campbell Hearst became a public event. Millions of Americans watched last week as television carried live the Shootout in a Los Angeles residential neighborhood between lawmen and members of the Symbionese Liberation Army, which had kidnaped--and claimed to have converted to radical terrorism--the 20-year-old publishing heiress. The TV images seemed plucked from old Viet Nam film clips: street fighting in Danang perhaps, the helicopters wheeling overhead, the hissing tear-gas canisters, finally the flames of the enemy's hideout leaping into the suddenly hushed twilight. But the reality was that Patty Hearst might well be in the flames, and the most stricken of all the electronic witnesses was the Hearst family, watching 350 miles away in a suburb of San Francisco.

So charred were the five bodies brought out of the ruins of the house that it was almost a full day before the family's agony was, in a measure, eased.

Patty Hearst was not among them, and so might still be alive. But the five included the leaders of the S.L.A. believed to be her constant captor-companions, raising the fear that she might have been killed earlier as the dragnet was closing in on the S.L.A. The dead:

>Donald David DeFreeze, 30, nominal leader of the S.L.A., a black who called himself General Field Marshal Cinque and whose belligerent voice threatened and denigrated the Hearst family on the tapes that the S.L.A. periodically released. An escaped convict and a reputed onetime police informer, DeFreeze took part at the California Medical Facility at Vacaville in the activities of the Black Cultural Association, an organization that attracted a few embittered whites and eventually was to help spawn the S.L.A.

>Nancy Ling Perry, 27, considered perhaps the most important spiritual and doctrinal leader of the group. An English literature major at the University of California at Berkeley, she wrote long S.L.A. diatribes that were heavily tinged with Maoist cant and attacked American society. She took part with other S.L.A. members in the robbery of a San Francisco bank on April 15, when Patty appeared to be an accomplice.

>Patricia ("Mizmoon") Soltysik, 24, also studied at Berkeley, where she became involved in radical feminist activities. Mizmoon is the name she was given by her lover, Camilla Christine Hall, another S.L.A. member and the daughter of a Lutheran minister.

>William Wolfe, 22, was once enrolled at Berkeley and attended meetings of the Black Cultural Association.

Known as "Willie the Wolf to his friends, he was the son of a Pennsylvania anesthesiologist.

>Angela Atwood, 25, a former student teacher in Indianapolis, where she is remembered as a rebel who opposed codes of conduct for students.

The drama began Friday afternoon in the unlikely setting of an auto-towing-company yard in a black district that stretches across south central Los Angeles. FBI agents, Los Angeles policemen and deputy sheriffs converged on the spot, which was turned into an impromptu central command and briefing post. They were joined by squads of newsmen who had picked up the same tip: the S.L.A. was hiding in the area.

The scene around 1466 East 54th St., a yellow frame and stucco building, quickly took on a surrealistic air. While sweating TV camera crews toted their equipment into place, 18 heavily armed members of the Los Angeles police department's special weapons and tactics unit (known as SWAT) got ready for battle. Wearing bulky flak jackets, they closed in on the house and gently clicked off the safeties on their semiautomatic weapons. Curious neighbors wandered over, largely unimpeded, to see what was happening. Knots of people stood in their backyards, waiting for some Friday-night entertainment. Minutes later, a Los Angeles police sergeant flipped on his bullhorn and broadcast: "Come out with your hands up! The house is surrounded."

There was no reply, no movement.

Five minutes later, he repeated the order. When again there was no response, an officer crept behind a wall near the house and threw a sizzling tear-gas canister through the tattered window curtains. A mangy, dun-colored dog scurried off the porch.

The gunfire began immediately, the two sides firing almost simultaneously. Bullets cut swaths through the walls of the house. Blue smoke belched through the windows as those inside replied with automatic fire of their own. For nearly an hour the firefight went on, one of the most furious gun battles ever waged in a U.S. city, with at least 1,000 rounds of ammunition expended by both sides.

It was an incongruous blend of circus and bloodbath. The number of lawmen on the scene swelled to 350. Miraculously, no civilians or officers were seriously wounded. Neighborhood dogs kept up a howling chorus that could be heard over the most intense firing. In a park on the corner, kids climbed to the tops of slides for a better--but hazardous --look.

Staring Witness. At 6:35 p.m., as the first trace of smoke began to curl up from the dwelling, a black woman staggered out, her face puffed and cracked by the tear gas and a smear of blood showing on the back of her white blouse.

She was Christine Johnson, who had been living in the house. Trembling with fear, she stammered: "They held me!

They held me!" She said there were five persons still inside--three white women and one white man and one black man.

Then she was hurried away in an ambulance.

Christine Johnson got out just in time. The lick of flame was creating an inferno. Dark brown smoke shrouded the structure, then rose high enough to hide a police helicopter hovering over the scene. Sheets of ash the size of magazine pages rose gracefully into the air and floated to earth a half block away.

Soon the guns within fell silent. One officer, making his way to the back of the house, reported spotting two women lying on the floor, one white and one black, both wearing cartridge belts. The heat was so intense that the bullets were exploding. Later, when the flames had died down and the little house had collapsed into 4 ft. of debris, police found three more bodies clustered in what had once been the bathroom. All were wearing tear-gas masks, and in the ruins, police found a formidable arsenal that included six sawed-off shotguns, one automatic rifle and two submachine guns. As the five bodies were removed in brown rubber bags, one of the witnesses who stood by, staring at the smoking rubble, was Steven Weed, whom Patty Hearst had renounced as her fiance. He would only say that he would remain in town until the bodies were identified.

The bodies were so disfigured that at first the Los Angeles coroners could determine only that three were females and one of the males was black and the other white. To help in the identifications, the coroner's office sent for Patty Hearst's dental records. Early Saturday morning, Patty's father, Randolph Hearst, called the coroner's office and asked to be told the results of the study before word was given to the press.

Hearst was assured that he would be the first to know. When they called him with the news that his daughter was not one of the victims, Hearst could only gasp, "Thank God!" His wife burst into tears.

Until the explosive events of last week, FBI and police investigators had admitted that they had no idea where the S.L.A. and Patty Hearst might be, so well hidden were they in the black ghettos of the Bay Area. For weeks the authorities hoped to drive the S.L.A. out of this haven and into a new, unfamiliar area where the members might make some damaging mistakes. To that end, Hearst offered a reward of $50,000 to anyone furnishing information about the kidnapers; FBI agents made house-to-house searches, and a grand jury was called into session to sift evidence.

The strategy worked. The members of the S.L.A. are thought to have left San Francisco for Los Angeles on May 8 or 9. They traveled in three vans--all found in Los Angeles last Friday--that had been bought in San Francisco for $3,500 by a black man who paid cash and gave a fictitious name and address.

The money is believed to have come from the S.L.A.'s robbery of San Francisco's Hibernia Bank that netted nearly $11,000.

Once in the unfamiliar setting of Los Angeles, the S.L.A.--so coolly professional on their own turf--began to make amateurish errors. The day before the Shootout, a couple believed to be William and Emily Harris, both suspected S.L.A. members, bought $31.50 worth of heavy outdoor clothing at a sporting-goods store. As they left, a clerk noticed that the man had stuffed a pair of 490 socks up his sleeve. He followed the pilferer outside, where the two began to struggle. Suddenly, a woman sitting in a Volkswagen van across the street sprayed the store with machine-gun fire.

Having risked everything for some piddling shoplifting, the three then made a disorganized, frantic escape, abandoning the van, stealing and discarding three cars along the way, and briefly kidnaping an 18-year-old boy named Tom Matthews, whom they eventually released unharmed. Matthews later said he thought that one of the women was Emily Harris, but he could not recognize the second from police photographs.

Cocky Gesture. From a parking ticket found in the Volkswagen, police traced the group to a house in a black neighborhood of nearby Culver City.

But when they converged on the hideout on Friday morning, no one was there. Left behind were some clothing, boots, wigs for disguise and two boxes of shotgun shells.

At about the same time, Mrs. Mary Carr, 52, dropped by to visit her daughter, Minnie Lewis, who lived with Christine Johnson at 1466 East 54th St. To her astonishment, Mrs. Carr learned that her daughter had put up a group of strangers the previous night--people who had been willing to pay $100. Mrs. Carr later said that she saw one of the visitors--a white woman who was wearing a pistol belt. The stranger patted her gun and smiled at Mrs. Carr. It was a cocky and senseless gesture of power.

Mrs. Carr told reporters that she quickly tipped off the police. That night, when the Shootout began, Mrs. Carr and Minnie were there to watch.

At week's end the anguished question remained without answer: Where was Patty Hearst? If indeed she is still alive, authorities believe that she may be found soon. The Los Angeles gunfight cost the S.L.A. its muscle, Donald DeFreeze, and its brains, Nancy Ling Perry. Their combined talents enabled the S.L.A. to dodge their pursuers so successfully in San Francisco.

There are reports that Patty was seen with the Harrises before the shoplifting and shooting at the sporting-goods store. Investigators regard the Harrises as bunglers. "If Patty is with them she probably will turn up quickly," said one law enforcement official.

"But if she isn't found, we'll have to face the possibility that she may have been murdered by DeFreeze and his group before they were killed."

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