Ronald William Howard is a director, producer, screenwriter, and actor. He first came to prominence as a child actor, guest-starring in several television series, including an episode of The Twilight Zone.
On March 1, 1932, in a crime that captured the attention of the entire nation, Charles Lindbergh, Jr., the 20-month-old son of aviation hero Charles Lindbergh, was kidnapped from the family’s new mansion in Hopewell, New Jersey. Lindbergh, who becamean international celebrity when he flew the first solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean in 1927, and his wife Anne discovered a ransom note demanding $50,000 in their son’s empty room.
The Lindberghs were inundated by offers of assistance and false clues. Even Al Capone offered his help from prison. For threedays, investigators found nothing and there was no further word from the kidnappers. Then, a new letter showed up, this time demanding $70,000.
Soon after an exhaustive search, the baby’s lifeless body was discovered near the Lindbergh mansion. He had been killed the night of the kidnapping and was found less than a mile from home. The Lindberghs ended up donating the mansion tocharity and moved away.
The kidnapper used a ladder (above) to climb up to the open second-floor window and left muddy footprints in the room.
Patty Hearst was sentenced to seven years in prison. President Jimmy Carter commuted Hearst’s sentence to time served in February 1979. Hearst gained her release from prison after just twenty-two months. On January 20, 2001, the last full day of his presidency, Bill Clinton granted Patricia Campbell Hearst a full pardon.
On February 4, 1974, Patty Hearst (above), the 19-year-old
granddaughter of newspaper publisher William Randolph
Hearst, was kidnapped from her apartment in Berkeley,
California, by three armed strangers. Her fiancee, Stephen
Weed, was beaten and tied up along with a neighbor who
tried to help.
Three days later, the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA),
a small U.S. leftist group, announced in a letter to a local
radio station that it was holding Hearst as a “prisoner of
war.” Four days later, the SLA demanded that the Hearst
family give $70 in foodstuffs to every needy person from
Santa Rosa to Los Angeles. This done, said the SLA,
negotiation would begin for the return of Patricia Hearst.
In April, however, the situation changed dramatically when
a surveillance camera took a photo of Hearst participating
in an armed robbery of a San Francisco bank (below), and
she was also spotted during a robbery of a Los Angeles
store. She later declared, in a tape sent to the authorities,
that she had joined the SLA of her own free will.
Despite her claim that she had been brainwashed by the SLA, Hearst was arrested on September 18, 1975 and convicted of armed robbery on March 20, 1976. She was sentenced to seven years in prison. She served 21 months before her sentence was commuted by President Carter.
After leaving prison, she returned to a routine existence and later married her bodyguard who died in 2013. She was pardoned by President Clinton in January 2001.
