"Thirty years from now I can hear myself telling my grandchildren, 'Trials, you say? Let me tell you about a trial.' " The grandfather-to-be is San Francisco Bureau Chief Joseph Boyce, 38, who, since Patty Hearst's trial began on Jan. 27, has been spending 4 1/2 hours a day on the hard wooden benches in Judge Oliver Carter's courtroom and filing at least 50 pages a week to New York on what he saw and heard. Boyce, who first learned of Patty's kidnaping from a radio report while driving back from an interview in Berkeley, has been on the case ever since, reporting each bizarre twist of the puzzling story. Says Boyce: "I've felt as though I've been walking through the pages of a psychological suspense thriller right up to the judge's final instructions to the jury."

Boyce is no rookie in the courtroom. As a patrolman and sometimes arresting officer in Chicago, where he served on the police force for nearly five years, he has addressed courts from the witness stand. He left his beat to become an evidence technician, hoping to solve crimes by spotting leads at the scene--from fingerprints, dropped clothing or strands of hair loosened in a scuffle. Later he taught criminal law at the police academy days, while studying law at John Marshall by night. Boyce has covered other trials as a reporter, "but none where security was so tight and none that generated so much interest in the principals. There were Patty groupies, Bailey groupies and even groupies for some of the reporters." Except for our cover story on Defense Attorney F. Lee Bailey (TIME, Feb. 16), which was written by the editor of our law section, Jose Ferrer, the saga of the Hearst case has been unfolded week by week by Associate Editor James Atwater, with the help of Reporter-Researcher Gaye Mclntosh. Says Atwater: "When I started writing the Patty stories after she was kidnaped, I had no idea that this would turn into a minicareer. There's been a very strong plot line and a whole series of climaxes." Was she guilty? "I've been baffled," says Atwater. Boyce and Mclntosh too were glad to leave the decision to the jury.

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