According to Headley`s research, police records showed that DeFreeze was sentenced to probation between 1967 and 1969 despite a series of unfavorable encounters with police related to charges of illegal possession of weapons and explosives. These included arrests for possession of firearms, kidnapping charges in New Jersey, an attempted bank robbery in Cleveland, and a shootout with Los Angeles police and bank guards. [4] DeFreeze and his co-conspirators then kidnapped heiress Patty Hearst in February 1974 in search of ransom and attention. Police pressure has increased. In a shootout with law enforcement in Los Angeles, DeFreeze shot himself when he and five SLA members took positions in a burning house. A private investigation prior to this latest attack suggested that DeFreeze may have been a police informant and agent provocateur since the days before the SLA was founded. His remains were brought back to Cleveland, where the funeral was arranged at the request of the family by members of the Sunni Orthodox Muslim sect. During his absence from his family in 1964, police arrested DeFreeze while he was hitchhiking on the San Bernardino Highway near West Covina, California. They found him with a tear gas pencil bomb, a sharp butter knife and a sawn rifle in his suitcase.
[4] Edible plants could have been stored as a source of carbohydrates for the winter, but supplies would have declined as the great annual frost continued, scientists suspect. On March 10, 1968, DeFreeze was charged with burglary in Inglewood, California. There was no provision for fees. On August 16, 1968, he was accused of stealing a motorcycle. There was no provision. His probation was amended on December 13, 1968 to prohibit the possession of firearms or bombs. On March 20, 1969, it was picked up in the magazine with a semi-automatic rifle loaded with 9 millimeters with 32 rounds of ammunition. There was no provision. [4] Through this organization, DeFreeze met Willie Wolfe, a white Berkeley student who was taking Westbrook`s course. Wolfe also persuaded his white friends Russ Little and Robyn Steiner to volunteer through the BCA.Wolfe, Little and DeFreeze would have given the group more political radicalism. [2] DeFreeze escaped from Soledad prison on March 5, 1973. He traveled to Oakland, California, where he was hidden by white friends of the Vacaville BCA.[6] He was taken to Patricia “Mizmoon” Soltysik`s house,[5] where he lived for several months. Through Soltysik, DeFreeze met Camilla Hall, a white Berkeley artist and former social worker. The two women had an established lesbian relationship, and DeFreeze eventually had relationships with each of them. Later, he was also sexually associated with ALS member Emily Harris after she and her husband William decided to have an open marriage. [7] I sat there for about fifteen minutes, listening to the Eagles on my little tape recorder, and then wrote, “Donald DeFreeze is a dark man.” He first mentioned it in his book The Stand. [19] Camper Van Beethoven`s song “Tania” from Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart refers to DeFreeze with his fighting name “Field Marshal Cinque” in the lyrics “A Polaroid of you, Cinque/ With a seven-head dragon/In a house in Daly City”.
By the end of the summer, SLA members included Joe Remiro, a Vietnamese veteran and activist who was a friend of Little and Wolfe. As DeFreeze`s left-wing circle of friends grew, he also met Angela Atwood, 25. She and her husband had moved from Indiana to the Bay Area with William and Emily Harris. All had moved from Bloomington, where they knew each other in college. The Atwoods broke up that year and Angela lived with the Harris. [5] On November 17, 1969, DeFreeze was wounded in a shootout with police outside a bank in Los Angeles. He was convicted in 1970 of stealing a $1,000 negotiable cash cheque and sentenced to 6 to 14 years; he was taken to Vacaville prison. The evidence showed that Colston Westbrook, a professor and BCA principal contact at UC Berkeley, had worked closely with the Los Angeles Police Department`s Criminal Conspiracy Section (CCS) and the California State`s Criminal Identification and Investigation (CiI) unit based in Sacramento. [15] This happened at the same time that DeFreeze received unusually mild treatment and prolonged probation from the Los Angeles County criminal justice system. Headley suggested that this implied that DeFreeze was working as an informant. In 1969, DeFreeze and an accomplice were arrested in New Jersey for kidnapping a synagogue janitor.
His accomplice was tried and acquitted. A memorandum from the prosecutor said they had decided to drop the charges against DeFreeze because he was being held in California at the time of the trial. [4] Records showed that DeFreeze ordered the arrest of an employee in a case with a stolen weapon. The Los Angeles Police Department officer in charge of the case became a key intelligence officer who handled informants linked to black activists. [4] They reconciled. After abandoning a few gun attacks, DeFreeze moved with his family from the Northeast to California in 1965, where they settled in Los Angeles. [4] He said the worries of supporting the children enveloped him. He wrote: “I just couldn`t stand it anymore.
I slowly became nothing. [1] Lake Headley also provided evidence of the following: While in custody at Vacaville Prison, DeFreeze joined the Black Cultural Association (BCA), which was intended to prepare prisoners to return to society at large. [4] [2] He became known as a dynamic member. [2] The group was founded in 1968 and began operating in Vacaville in 1969. Colston Westbrook, a graduate student and later professor who taught African American studies at the University of California, Berkeley, helped recruit Berkeley students to go to Vacaville as a volunteer for BCA. They helped to have educational and political discussions. People from outside the university also attended BCA events, especially related cultural programs. Paul Schrader`s film Patty Hearst (1988) starred DeFreeze, played by Ving Rhames. In December 1972, DeFreeze was transferred to Soledad Prison in Soledad, California, for his good leadership. [4] DeFreeze`s body was returned to his family in Cleveland.
They asked members of the Sunni Orthodox Muslim sect to organize and conduct the funeral, which took place in the chapel of a funeral home. About 500 people participated, another 1500 people gathered outside. His younger brother Delano DeFreeze said his brother “lived for the people” and “died for the people.” .
