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A listener note, this episode contains descriptions of violence and references to sexual assault.

It may not be suitable for a younger audience.

It's September 18, 1975, in a jail in Northern California.

Patricia Hearst is curled up in bed in a small concrete cell.

The space is no more than 6 feet wide and 9 feet long.

In one corner is a combined toilet and sink and at the other end are a set of steel bars.

Hearst rolls over, trying to make sense of everything that's happened today.

It was only a few hours ago that FBI agents stormed into her apartment, guns drawn, and placed her under arrest for robbing a bank.

The encounter with armed law enforcement left Hearst feeling shaken.

But the day took an even more surreal turn when Hearst and the agents arrived at the jailhouse and found a crowd of reporters waiting for her.

Hearst greeted them with a raised fist and during her booking she identified herself as Tanya, her adopted name in the Symbianese Liberation Army.

She even gave her occupation as Irvin Guerilla.

All the radical posturing earned a few raised eyebrows.

Apparently people were expecting that after getting arrested, Hearst would stop playing the part of political radical.

But Hearst's allegiance to the SLA is complicated.

She was of course a kidnapping victim and she had been held captive in a dark closet and her life threatened.

But Hearst grew convinced her family had given up on her.

And while living in isolation with the SLA, Hearst publicly gave up on her family.

She made recordings of herself condemning her mother and father for their bourgeois lifestyle and calling out the media and labeling her a victim.

She was fully aware that the FBI was leading a manhunt calling her a criminal and trying to place her under arrest.

So at the same time that it felt like her world was collapsing, that her family had abandoned her.

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