'A Disturbed Young Woman'

It may be beyond the abilities of even the most expert psychiatrists to define exactly the state of mind of Patty Hearst, either during her 19% months as the nation's most hunted fugitive or now that she is confined in the San Mateo County jail. But her own chief defense counsel, F. Lee Bailey, observed last week that "obviously the state of mind of the defendant will play a large part in her trial."

Patty's local attorneys, John Knutson and Terence Hallinan, left no doubt about their own view of the girl. In a declaration filed with Federal Judge Oliver J. Carter, they declared that she was "a mentally and emotionally disturbed young woman, who is either emerging from or about to fall into a nervous breakdown." In their consultations with her, they said, "she appeared disorganized, flat and listless in her accounts, and vacillating in her attitude toward her parents and lawyers involved in the case. She seemed to have no idea of the gravity of her position." They said she often sat staring into space, ignoring questions they put to her, even when they repeated them several times. When they brought up her recent past, she was reduced "to tears and extreme emotional turmoil." They asked that she be removed from her cell in the San Mateo County jail to a private hospital (with the tab for her room and the necessary guards to be picked up by her father, Publisher Randolph Hearst).

To skeptics, this might all appear simply a matter of defense strategy. Judge Carter had already assigned four top experts to report to him on Patty's condition, and so she was taken last week to the Stanford Medical Center in Palo Alto. The test results will be sealed, but Carter has promised to hold a hearing this week and rule on the motions to remove her to the hospital. He may also decide then whether she can stand trial.

She may face more than one trial as a result of police raids on two apartments, one occupied by Patty and her friend Wendy Yoshimura, the other by Fellow Fugitives Bill and Emily Harris. The raids yielded four truckloads of materials that provided a catalogue of a well financed life on the lam. Items:

FIREARMS. In the Hearst-Yoshimura apartment police found two M-1 carbines, a sawed-off shot gun, a Browning 9-mm. pis tol and two .38-cal. Smith & Wesson revolvers. The Harris apartment contained an even bigger arsenal: five .38-cal. revolvers, three M1s, three 12-gauge shotguns, two 9-mm. pistols and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.

BOMB INGREDIENTS. There were five cans of gunpowder, lengths of pipe, lantern-type batteries, copper wire, five alarm clocks and blasting caps.

DOCUMENTS. There were floor plans for several California banks, newspaper clippings on various business firms and three false identity cards.

BOOKS. The fugitives' library of more than 150 volumes ranged from textbooks on explosives to Inside the Third Reich by Albert Speer and Joy of Cooking.

CLOTHES. There were nearly a dozen women's wigs in the apartments, and Mrs. Harris maintained a wardrobe including 34 sweaters, 56 shirts and blouses and three bathing suits.

The most significant find, however, was evidence that police believe may link Patty Hearst to several previously unsolved crimes. In the Hearst-Yoshimura apartment they discovered a red, white and blue ski mask and several scarves similar to those reportedly worn by five bank robbers who took $15,000 from the Crocker National Bank in Carmichael, Calif., on April 21. One bank patron, Myrna Lee Opsahl, wife of a local physician, was shot and killed in the course of the holdup. The police say they have a newly discovered witness who recalls that Patty rented a garage where one of the two getaway cars was cached.

While the Carmichael investigation continued, a Los Angeles County grand jury last week returned an eleven-count indictment against Patty and the Harrises for a series of robberies and assaults in May of 1974. The spree start ed, according to the indictment, when the Harrises tried to shoplift some clothes from Mel's sporting-goods store in Inglewood (the only loot actually taken was one 490 pair of socks). The next day, while the three were running an errand, police laid siege to the S.L.A. head quarters, eventually killing all six occupants. In their effort to get out of the area, the three fugitives allegedly roamed around Los Angeles, seizing two cars at gunpoint, kidnaping their owners and holding one of them for nearly twelve hours.

Go Anywhere. As the authorities intensified their prosecution of Patty Hearst and her friends, the one major figure who still remained free was Jack Scott, the enigmatic sports figure who emerged as the chief source of a long article in Rolling Stone about Patty's months as a fugitive (see THE PRESS).

Much of the story repeated what had been reported as long ago as last spring (TIME, March 24): the flight from California to New York, the hiding out in Pennsylvania, the narrow escapes from capture. But the Rolling Stone account provided large amounts of quotation and intimate detail, usually involving Scott.

The Rolling Stone report showed Scott implicitly offering to take her home to her parents: "I want you to know that I'm willing to drive you anywhere you want to go. You don't have to go to Pennsylvania. I'll take you anywhere." The story then quoted Patty as answering, "I want to go where my friends are going."

Less than two months after her kidnaping, the story said, "Patty asked to join the S.L.A." It added that most mem bers of the terrorist band opposed her be cause of her celebrity and unreliability, but that S.L.A. Chief Donald DeFreeze, who called himself Field Marshal Cinque, "wanted her to become a comrade-in-arms." Thereafter, Patty began to find violence "appealing." She under took training in the use of a rifle and "practiced 'keeping my ass down' while crawling through Cinque's homemade obstacle course, and took part in a bank robbery to prove herself to the S.L.A."

Police authorities generally found the story credible in its outlines, but they also found a number of interesting mistakes, most of them involving Scott. The most obvious was the story's omission of the fact that Scott's parents had accompanied him on the drive east with Patty--and thus could be liable to criminal charges themselves. Indeed, although the Rolling Stone account could prove damaging to Patty Hearst's defense, it could prove even more so to Jack Scott.

Said one Federal Government source:

"We are one inch from indicting him."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.