(soft enlightening music)
(tape deck rewinding)
(tape loading into tape deck)
(jazz music)
- [Voiceover] Okay, okay, I'll tell you--
- [Voiceover] I thought maybe to--
- [Voiceover] Ah-di-di-di-di, breathe.
You probably want a bottle, huh?
- The oddest thing about your celebrity was
that you were a celebrity who couldn't be seen.
You were in hiding all the time,
you could not have appeared at all.
Once you appeared you were...
the game was over.
What about the time you were driving with Bill
in Sacramento, the woman says,
"Gee, you look like Patty Hearst."
- [Voiceover] We were walking and she was in a car,
and she pulled up and asked for some directions,
and she just looked and looked and then said,
''You look so much like Patty Hearst."
- Eek.
- [Voiceover] Did you say anything
or were you able to? - [Voiceover] No.
I didn't say anything and Bill Harris just said,
"Yeah, enough, you people say that all the time."
- I really thought that we could have won the case
until final arguments. (sighs)
I mean that's virtually no closing argument,
I think that's where it was finally lost,
was right then, ultimately.
They got to prove,
they've got to prove reasonable doubt,
you know, reasonable doubt.
Is it reasonable to assume that someone
who has been locked in a closet for 57 days
after being kidnapped, brutalized, raped, abused,
then they say, "You're gonna grab a bank now..."
Is that reasonable to assume that that person
had the free will to go out and willingly...
I mean, you’re talking about reasonable doubt?
- [Voiceover] If you could have erased it,
the kidnapping, the birth of Tania,
becoming the most famous fugitive
in the world or in the United States,
the guerrilla skills you learned,
the radicalization, feminization,
living life on the edge, jail, the trial, prison,
would you like to have erased it all?
- [Voiceover] There are some days when I think, ''Ugh."
There's always some days when you wish
things have never happened,
like you've never been born, that sort of thing.
But I'm not the kind of person anyway,
that can just sit around and say,
"Gee, I wish that have never happened."
I don't ever do that, there's no point.
That is a total and complete waste of time.
- [Voiceover] What would be the circumstances
surrounding the times you were hit?
- [Voiceover] Oh, do you know, I made some
sassy remark or didn't move fast enough,
or was disrespectful to my leader.
- Was it a back slap or was it like
a fist punch in your eye? - [Voiceover] it was a punch.
- [Voiceover] Right in the eye.
- [Voiceover] Yeah.
- [Voiceover] Did you have any punch in your face?
- [Voiceover] On my stomach, or in a--
- [Voiceover] I mean you're so fragile,
If I punched you in the eye, I would be afraid
I would crack your whole face.
- [Voiceover] No, I got hit in the face with a gun,
I'm not very fragile at all,
Makes me think, maybe things would be easier,
if I looked terribly frail and fragile somehow.
- [Voiceover] I just want to straighten up a few facts.
You were a willing participant
in the bank robbery at that time?
- [Voiceover] But you can't separate them like that,
you can't say, "We're not talking about your...
''the threats that you were under."
They said if I didn't do it, they'd kill me.
In a sense, I became as much of a believer
as I was capable of becoming.
But you're talking about someone, too,
who really has no free will anymore.
That's when we're getting into that thing
about traumatic neurosis with dissociative features.
- [Voiceover] Who told you about this?
- [Voiceover] Is the technical name for what happened to me,
what everyone calls ''brainwashing",
that is the actual name for it.
- [Voiceover] Wasn't like you were in a fog of it--
- Oh no, it wasn't like I was in a fog
and I didn't know what I was happening,
you know, like, where am I?
I mean, at the same time I mentally and emotionally
I was not fully in control of myself.
- [Voiceover] You made a conscious choice to stay alive
in the SLA and whatever it took to stay alive
you were gonna do it,
even if it meant killing other people,
blowing up police cars,
shooting up Mel’s sporting goods shop.
- [Voiceover] It didn't, it didn't.
It never came up.
- [Voiceover] well, it came close, though.
- [Voiceover] It didn't, when did it come close?
- [Voiceover] At Mel’s it came close.
- [Voiceover] It didn't came close at Mel’s.
- [Voiceover] You shot right above everybody
and below everybody, it came close,
that's close, Patty.
- [Voiceover] There was never a thought of killer be killed.
Never. Not ever.
I don't know that I would ever choose to kill.
- [Voiceover] Did it take guts to join the SLA,
would it have taken more guts not to have joined,
to have resisted and eventually
tried to escape? - [Voiceover] I think
it would have been crazy to not have joined,
because one of them would have just killed me
That doesn't take guts to...
Would you do this or would you rather be dead?
Well, gee, I'd probably be with you.
I mean, I think I suppose it would take much
more guts to say, "Never, I'd rather die."
I'm sorry, I'm a coward, you know,
I didn't want to die.
(drum music)
- [Voiceover] How much of a markswoman are you,
getting on to guns for a minute?
- [Voiceover] Didn’t you tell me you once shot
- [Voiceover] Two turkeys in one shot, I mean that...
- [Voiceover] I like deer and..,
but we eat everything we shoot.
And people who've never gone hunting
have a tendency to look down on hunters
and act like they are out killing Bambi's father.
You have to turn--
- [Voiceover] But isn't it terrible to do?
This poor deer, it’s a beautiful animal,
why not just buy steak?
- [Voiceover] You have to have gone hunting to know
the excitement of seeing someone get their first deer.
It's a thrill for them, it is.
- [Voiceover] What else would you feel
satisfied shooting?
- [Voiceover] oh, maybe you and-- (laughs)
- [Voiceover] That stays in! (laughs)
Subtitles by the Amara.org community