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Speaker 2: At ten thirty pm on August twenty eighth, nineteen seventy three,
Speaker 2: radical activist Popeye Jackson was arrested by two plane clothed
Speaker 2: San Francisco police officers for possession and intent to sell
Speaker 2: heroin and possession of marijuana. The officers did not have
Speaker 2: a warrant to search the car that Popeye was driving.
Speaker 2: They would later say that Popeye not only gave them
Speaker 2: permission to search the car, but actually helped with the search.
Speaker 2: People who knew Popeye would dispute this, arguing that there
Speaker 2: was no way he would have permitted the search. In fact,
Speaker 2: he frequently advised people to never let the police search
Speaker 2: their car unless they had a warrant, whether the search
Speaker 2: was legal or illegal. The cops discovered seven balloons containing
Speaker 2: heroin and depending on the source, either two or five
Speaker 2: joints hidden in a sneaker. Jackson was on parole after
Speaker 2: a stint for burglary and robbery convictions. This was potentially
Speaker 2: a catastrophic incident Popeye claimed the arrest was a setup
Speaker 2: why it had been stopped in the first place. The
Speaker 2: police claimed that the previous night, the twenty seventh, they
Speaker 2: had arrested a woman named Sandy Parma for prostitution. According
Speaker 2: to the police, Parma gave them the tip that Popeye
Speaker 2: would have drugs with him. When the defense lawyers contacted Parma, however,
Speaker 2: she denied that she had done so. Then she disappeared
Speaker 2: and never resurfaced. On September tenth, two weeks after the arrest,
Speaker 2: a twenty two year old woman named Jessica Vodquin held
Speaker 2: a press conference organized by a radical group called Fenceramos,
Speaker 2: using the alias Jessica Marie Gilman. Vodquin had worked part
Speaker 2: time for Popeye's organization, the United Prisoners Union or UPU,
Speaker 2: but Vodquin said she had actually been an informer for
Speaker 2: the San Francisco Police Department and the FBI. She had
Speaker 2: been paid to find information about Fenceamos and the UPU.
Speaker 2: She said that she had been informing on Popeye for
Speaker 2: the last nine months. She'd once borrowed his car and
Speaker 2: driven to police headquarters where it was illegally searched. She'd
Speaker 2: stolen keys, to the UPU office so that she could
Speaker 2: access documents, including the list of former prisoners involved in
Speaker 2: the UPU and Popeye's address book. She said that she
Speaker 2: knew that Pope's arrest was a frame up, and that
Speaker 2: the police had illegally recorded conversations that Popeye had with
Speaker 2: his lawyer in a room specifically created for confidential conversations
Speaker 2: between attorneys and clients. Police told her. She said that
Speaker 2: Popeye was their number one target and that he'd been
Speaker 2: under twenty four hour surveillance. This was a bombshell. Lending
Speaker 2: credence to her story was the officer who served as
Speaker 2: her contact with the San Francisco Police, Alexander Jason. Just
Speaker 2: six months before, the head of the San Francisco State
Speaker 2: University journalism department protested to the police department that Jason had,
Speaker 2: for eighteen months pretended to be a student reporter for
Speaker 2: a couple of different school publications in order to get
Speaker 2: information about A. Vanceramo's study group on campus. He had
Speaker 2: eventually been sniffed out by Venceramo's members and his cover
Speaker 2: was blown. Now months later, the informant that he had
Speaker 2: inside the UPU was accusing him of breaking the law
Speaker 2: to try to convict Popeye. Popeye demanded that he'd be
Speaker 2: given a lie detector test to clear himself of the charges.
Speaker 2: The States said that red tape prevented this from happening.
Speaker 2: The police did admit that they performed the search of
Speaker 2: the car that Jessica Vadquin had brought them, and that
Speaker 2: they taped the conversations at the jail, and then Jessica
Speaker 2: Vodquin recanted. While under protective detention by the police, she
Speaker 2: released a public statement that she had been threatened at
Speaker 2: knife point by UPU members, demanding that she lie for Popeye.
Speaker 2: This retraction was viewed suspiciously. Still, even without her testimony,
Speaker 2: there seemed to be enough questions surrounding the arrest to
Speaker 2: make a guilty verdict unlikely. Popeye testified that he did
Speaker 2: not use heroin and had strong feelings about it because
Speaker 2: his wife, pat Singer, had been addicted and his son
Speaker 2: had been born with withdrawal symptoms. He also testified that
Speaker 2: he had recently been subject to police harassment, being stopped
Speaker 2: at least twenty five times in the two weeks leading
Speaker 2: up to his arrest. In the end, the jury deliberated
Speaker 2: for five hours and found Popeye not guilty, but this
Speaker 2: did not end his legal peril. In California, there was
Speaker 2: a panel of eight political appointees that could revoke a
Speaker 2: person's parole for any reason. For Popeye, this could mean
Speaker 2: returning to prison indefinitely. The radical newspaper The Berkeley Barb
Speaker 2: wrote this about the situation.
Speaker 1: This panel of flat foot lifers with jute mill manager mentalities,
Speaker 1: who've probably spent more time around the joint than most cons,
Speaker 1: will be particularly vicious with Popeye Jackson because, perhaps more
Speaker 1: than any other man in the state of California, Popeye
Speaker 1: has worked to bring their activities to public attention. So
Speaker 1: even though Popeye has committed no crime, broken no rule,
Speaker 1: they can jerk his parole and send him back for life.
Speaker 2: A hearing on his parole revocation was set for the
Speaker 2: following April. It was with this threat hanging over him
Speaker 2: that Popeye Jackson established himself as a leader at the
Speaker 2: People in Need program and met Sarah Jane Moore. I'm
Speaker 2: Toby Ball.
Speaker 3: And I'm Mary Catherine Garrison, and this is rip current.
Speaker 4: Greeting to the people. This is Tanya. On April fifteenth,
Speaker 4: my comrades and I expropriated ten thousand, six hundred and
Speaker 4: sixty dollars and two cents from the Sunset branch the
Speaker 4: Hibernia Bank.
Speaker 3: Episode eight, Popeye Jackson.
Speaker 2: Why would the police be after Popeye Jackson? He was
Speaker 2: forty three years old and had spent nineteen of those
Speaker 2: years in the California Correctional system on a robbery charge
Speaker 2: reportedly stemming from ten missing dollars. He'd emerged from prison
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy as the founder and president of the UPU,
Speaker 2: one of several radical groups with a presence both inside
Speaker 2: and outside prison walls. Once released, Jackson quickly became a
Speaker 2: presence in the Bay Area. He was a member of
Speaker 2: the Western Edition Project Alliance, a youth director for Seven Steps,
Speaker 2: a drug counselor with Reality House West, and the founder
Speaker 2: of the Drug Research Program. He was also an original
Speaker 2: member of the Board of Directors of the San Francisco
Speaker 2: Council on Drug Abuse. He gave talks and community centers
Speaker 2: and schools on issues from the dangers of drugs to
Speaker 2: what could be done about racism in Boston. While this
Speaker 2: work might seem admirable today as well as to many
Speaker 2: people at the time, at the height of the Cold War,
Speaker 2: many of these efforts were seen as influenced, if not
Speaker 2: directly the result of communism. This marked Popeye and other
Speaker 2: radical activists as in the eyes of Middle America anti American.
Speaker 2: Popeye had come to activism while a prisoner in the
Speaker 2: California penal system. He was in prison during a particularly
Speaker 2: fertile time for radical thought, led by individuals like George
Speaker 2: Jackson and organizations like the Black Gorilla Family. Jackson, the BGF,
Speaker 2: and many other prison radicals were openly Marxist, which of
Speaker 2: course alarmed authorities. For a more in depth look at
Speaker 2: prison radicalism, listen to the Prison Radicalism Bonus episodes. They
Speaker 2: are available now for iHeart True Crime Plus listeners and
Speaker 2: will be available on all podcast apps at the end
Speaker 2: of this season. But in short, radicals saw the penal
Speaker 2: system as an extreme microcosm of society at large, dominated
Speaker 2: by racist systems of control. This is civil rights leader
Speaker 2: Angela Davis talking about systemic racism in a nineteen seventy
Speaker 2: two interview.
Speaker 5: In the whole history of the United States, the impact
Speaker 5: of racism had been to attempt to contain Black people,
Speaker 5: has been to attempt to stifle the desires towards liberation
Speaker 5: One of the ways in which this is accomplished is
Speaker 5: by trying to convince those people that they're completely pouloss
Speaker 5: before this huge apparatus, and that the police can just
Speaker 5: come into the community and put someone out kill them.
Speaker 6: As they have done on many many occadence in his house,
Speaker 6: charge them was something they didn't do railroad into physions,
Speaker 6: send them to the gas chamber. This is just one
Speaker 6: of the many ways that the system and it's not
Speaker 6: a contried effort in the sense that it's done consciously
Speaker 6: by a few men up at the top. It's built
Speaker 6: into the system, it's built into our it built into
Speaker 6: the nature the society.
Speaker 5: And getting back to the question of what a revolutionary is,
Speaker 5: a black revolutionary realizes that we cannot begin to combat lycism,
Speaker 5: we cannot begin to effectively destroy racism until we destroyed
Speaker 5: the whole system.
Speaker 2: And again, prison was seen as exemplifying on a small scale,
Speaker 2: the racist system of society as a whole.
Speaker 7: One thing that's really important to understand about California in
Speaker 7: some ways, in particular California at this time period, although
Speaker 7: it's not exclusive to California, it's how much the prison
Speaker 7: system is governing through racism. My name is Dan Berger.
Speaker 7: I'm a professor of Comparative Ethnic Studies at the University
Speaker 7: of Washington, Baffo. So the prison system uses racism as
Speaker 7: a way to keep people apart and to either introduce
Speaker 7: or foster divisions between incarcerated people. And part of that
Speaker 7: is that prisoners outnumber guards. And so one way that
Speaker 7: prisons maintain social order is through cells. Through there's the
Speaker 7: physical infrastructure that they use. There is the presence of guards.
Speaker 7: By guards amplified that by fitting prisoners against each other,
Speaker 7: and race became the way that they did that. Race
Speaker 7: and to some extent, geography, so where in California people
Speaker 7: were from. And so what I think radicals had to
Speaker 7: do when George Jackson did this, I think Popeye tried
Speaker 7: to do this as well, was to bridge those divides,
Speaker 7: to try to get people to work with each other,
Speaker 7: at least around some core issues against the prison system. Right,
Speaker 7: this idea that the prison system was the real enemy,
Speaker 7: whatever differences divide us.
Speaker 2: Popeye Jackson felt as though his prison activism should benefit
Speaker 2: all prisoners. Here's Popeye talking about the prison system strategy
Speaker 2: of division on a KPFA radio documentary about the plight
Speaker 2: of gay men in California prisons.
Speaker 8: But we don't like to isolate the gay people from
Speaker 8: any other convicts in the prison because we understand that
Speaker 8: in order to deal with distant situation, we have to
Speaker 8: work together. We have to help everybody in prison, not
Speaker 8: just gay people or not just some other guy who
Speaker 8: is not a gay person, because everybody at prison is
Speaker 8: subjected to the same subjectivity, because the men are using
Speaker 8: the gaze to play on the convicts and the contracts
Speaker 8: to play on the gaze. So it's the same way
Speaker 8: it divide us, and we can't do that ourselves. We
Speaker 8: can't define ourselves out here. We know the man is
Speaker 8: constantly continually dividing us. If they're not divide us between
Speaker 8: gays and other straight so called great people in prison,
Speaker 8: well with they divide us in racial mantle. They put
Speaker 8: white against black, black against brown, red against yellow. They
Speaker 8: constantly and continue to instigate and agitate racial attacks on
Speaker 8: people in prison.
Speaker 2: Guards and officials used a variety of tactics to maintain
Speaker 2: an atmosphere of confrontation among different groups of people in prison,
Speaker 2: largely based on racial identity.
Speaker 9: So they would spread rumors to for example, the white
Speaker 9: population that, oh, the black prisoners are plotting, which would
Speaker 9: not be true. They would just say this because they
Speaker 9: were trying to keep an environment that would prevent them
Speaker 9: from ever having any sort of realization that actually, we're
Speaker 9: all incarcerated and officers are above all of us.
Speaker 2: This is Brittany Friedman, assistant professor of sociology at the
Speaker 2: University of Southern California.
Speaker 9: But the officers kept trying to foster a unity across
Speaker 9: these boundaries to use for their own strategic ends, because
Speaker 9: we know what ends up happening to some of the
Speaker 9: groups that they united with. They were uniting with people
Speaker 9: who ended up founding the Arean Brotherhood. But we know
Speaker 9: that over time the Arian Brotherhood is no longer useful.
Speaker 9: They do end up being locked up in Pelican Bay
Speaker 9: in other super federal facilities actually, but in the early
Speaker 9: stages in the fifties, sixties, seventies, they are very useful
Speaker 9: for the type of control strategies that I'm talking about
Speaker 9: to keep this separation. I like to think of it
Speaker 9: as old school divide and conquered.
Speaker 2: Brittany is describing a situation where for a time, the
Speaker 2: mostly white prison guards allied themselves with the Aryan Brotherhood,
Speaker 2: a white supremacist prison gang, in an attempt to control
Speaker 2: the black prison population. Racial identity Trump the Prisoner Guard
Speaker 2: Divide in a response to a growing number of black prisoners.
Speaker 9: During that time period. In the sixties, you see a
Speaker 9: big influx of black people into California prisons, many of
Speaker 9: whom do self identify as either black militants or having
Speaker 9: a allegiances, affiliations, or affinities for the Black freedom struggle,
Speaker 9: which makes sense, right they're coming in from the outside.
Speaker 9: But also in the sixties you have a very strong
Speaker 9: contingent of white incarcerated people who are also bringing with
Speaker 9: them their own societal allegiances, their own ideas from the
Speaker 9: fifties and sixties about what black freedom would be and
Speaker 9: their prejudices against it. They're also bringing in their experiences
Speaker 9: in different organized groups, so for example, bikers were very
Speaker 9: influential in the founding of the Area and Brotherhood. They're
Speaker 9: bringing in all of these ideologies and cultural frames that
Speaker 9: are very anti black at the time, and so in
Speaker 9: the sixties this is really creating a recipe for potential disaster.
Speaker 9: But what the Department of Corrections does, and in particular,
Speaker 9: officers white officers at the time begin to see the
Speaker 9: white incarcerated parts population, especially the self identified white supremacist population,
Speaker 9: as allies. As allies in a similar fight.
Speaker 2: The prison radicals of the late sixties and seventies had
Speaker 2: experienced the consequences of this two pronged system of repression
Speaker 2: from both prison authorities and racist white prisoners in the
Speaker 2: violent California penal system. The parole board had the authority
Speaker 2: to send Popeye back to this environment that he knew
Speaker 2: all too well. What Popeye couldn't know was that a
Speaker 2: middle aged accountant named Sarah Jane Moore would prove a
Speaker 2: greater danger to him, but there was no sign of
Speaker 2: this when they first met. After the break, with the
Speaker 2: threat of his parole revocation hearing hanging over his head,
Speaker 2: Popeye Jackson went to work at the People in Need program,
Speaker 2: assisting in Randolph Hurst's rushed and chaotic effort to get
Speaker 2: food to the Bay Areas poor. As Sarah Jane noticed,
Speaker 2: he assumed an authority based on his strong personality and
Speaker 2: status within the radical community. This authority showed itself in
Speaker 2: different ways. Patty hurst fiance Stephen Weed, related a story
Speaker 2: in which Popeye was present at a meeting where PIN
Speaker 2: overseer Ludlow Kramer was criticized for the difficulties that dyd
Speaker 2: encountered getting the food trucks to the distribution sites. Kramer
Speaker 2: said they were doing the best they could. In front
Speaker 2: of the assembled organizers, Popeye called into question the effort
Speaker 2: being put forward by the PIN hierarchy. White people, he asserted,
Speaker 2: could make it happen if they were committed. He publicly
Speaker 2: challenged Kramer's commitment. Later, the San Francisco Examiner quoted Governor
Speaker 2: Ronald Reagan as saying about PIN, I just think there's
Speaker 2: a characteristic on the part of people that they like
Speaker 2: something for nothing. As a counterpoint to that statement, the
Speaker 2: paper quoted Popeye is saying, it's terrible that we have
Speaker 2: to stoop to things like the Simonese Liberation Army to
Speaker 2: feed people. The PIN food distributions finished on March twenty fifth,
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy four, less than a month before Popeye's parole
Speaker 2: revocation hearing. But while the distribution was complete, there was
Speaker 2: still work to be done in the warehouse and in
Speaker 2: the accounting for all the incoming and outgoing purchases and donations.
Speaker 2: Sarah Jane and Popeye were among the many people who
Speaker 2: remained to do this work. Sarah Jane found Popeye to
Speaker 2: be both personally and politically impressive. She asked him to
Speaker 2: educate her on the politics of the left. She attended
Speaker 2: United Prisoners Union benefits and events in order to strengthen
Speaker 2: her ties to him. Randolph First was desperate for any
Speaker 2: possible leads to Patty's whereabouts. He, like Sarah Jane, had
Speaker 2: noticed Popeye in the pin warehouse and learned about Popeye's
Speaker 2: connection with the radical world. Pop I met with Hurst
Speaker 2: and came away with the sense that Hurst thought highly
Speaker 2: of him. His wife pat Singer would later say Popeye
Speaker 2: believed Hurst had respect for him as a man and
Speaker 2: that hearst recognized that he was getting fucked over, getting
Speaker 2: fucked over by the State of California through its threat
Speaker 2: to revoke his parole. Popeye suggested to Hurst that he
Speaker 2: could make informal contact with the SLA. Sarah Jane would
Speaker 2: serve as a go between for the two men. Author
Speaker 2: Jerry Spieler, Popeye was very powerful politically, you know, in
Speaker 2: the movement in San Francisco.
Speaker 10: He knew everybody, and everybody knew him, so you know.
Speaker 10: If Randolph Hurst could see that Popeye could help him,
Speaker 10: he certainly, you know, because it wanted to protect him
Speaker 10: from prison and be able to help him get his daughterback,
Speaker 10: because Popeye would have communication available that nobody else would.
Speaker 2: It's hard to know how hopeful Hurst was that Popeye
Speaker 2: could actually follow through on this offer, but he was
Speaker 2: eager to maintain good relations with the radical left, and
Speaker 2: he had something that Popeye needed, the power of the press.
Speaker 2: Hurst owned the San Francisco Examiner, and whether or not
Speaker 2: there was a formal deal, the Examiner put its weight
Speaker 2: behind Popeye. In advance of the parole revocation hearing. On
Speaker 2: April seventh, the paper published an article about the upcoming hearing,
Speaker 2: focusing on Popeye's community and prison reform work. Two days later,
Speaker 2: it ran an editorial titled It's Wrong, opposing revocation of
Speaker 2: Popeye's parole. It read, in part, we.
Speaker 1: Admit to prejudice about Popeye. We've seen him in action
Speaker 1: the United Prisoners Union, which he had acted as an
Speaker 1: observer of the People in Need program set up after
Speaker 1: the Patricia Hurst kidnapping. We've seen him help would help
Speaker 1: was needed.
Speaker 2: This connection with Hurst would later be used against Popeye.
Speaker 3: Sarah Jane facilitated the relationship between Popeye and Randolph Hurst
Speaker 3: at the same time she was contacted by the FBI.
Speaker 3: The FBI had, of course, been involved in the investigation
Speaker 3: of Patty Hurst kidnapping and had been in and out
Speaker 3: of Hearst's office at Penn headquarters. In this environment where
Speaker 3: seemingly everyone was watching everyone else, the agent running the
Speaker 3: investigation noticed Sarah Jane and saw possibilities.
Speaker 10: The FBI and Charlie Bates, who was the agent in charge,
Speaker 10: saw Sarah Jane as somebody who was connecting with many
Speaker 10: different people at Penn and did connect with Popeye Jackson,
Speaker 10: and they saw her as somebody because she didn't look
Speaker 10: like a radical. She still very much dressed like the
Speaker 10: neighbor lady or the housewife in Danville, so she could
Speaker 10: sort of enter into these areas that other people couldn't.
Speaker 3: Charlie Bates approached Sarah Jane and she agreed to a meeting.
Speaker 3: She discussed this meeting at length in a prison interview
Speaker 3: with Playboy in nineteen seventy six. As instructed by Charlie,
Speaker 3: she called a number the next morning during her coffee
Speaker 3: break and was told to stand at a specific street
Speaker 3: corner and wait for someone to come get her. She
Speaker 3: did so and was picked up by a green car
Speaker 3: with an agent named Bert Worthington in the backseat. Worthington
Speaker 3: would become Sarah Jane's control officer. In this meeting, Moore
Speaker 3: says she told the FBI agent that Popeye had offered
Speaker 3: to be the conduit for communications between Hurst and the SLA.
Speaker 3: The FBI was dubious that the SLA would trust Popeye,
Speaker 3: but still it was not out of the question. At
Speaker 3: a later meeting, they asked Sarah Jane if she knew
Speaker 3: a particular person in the radical world. Sarah Jane said
Speaker 3: she'd met him a couple of times. The FBI thought
Speaker 3: that this was the most likely person to be able
Speaker 3: to communicate with the SLA. Sarah Jane has never revealed
Speaker 3: this man's name. She refers to him as Tom, and
Speaker 3: his advice to her plays a critical role in her
Speaker 3: life over the next year and a half. She told Playboy,
Speaker 3: when the FBI agents told me they thought Tom was
Speaker 3: in touch with the SLA, I had you're joking. They
Speaker 3: assured me they were not. I agreed to work with them,
Speaker 3: and Tom became my target, but that didn't mean pulling
Speaker 3: away from Popeye yet.
Speaker 10: I think Sarah Jane, she never said this, but other
Speaker 10: people have thought it, was very attracted to Popeye because
Speaker 10: of his power in the political community. He was just
Speaker 10: a very powerful guy. And she also the FBI wanted
Speaker 10: her to make sure she befriended him because of who
Speaker 10: he was and what he knew. So she asked Popeye
Speaker 10: to sort of mentor her into the radical community. And
Speaker 10: so that was their relationship, and Popeye saw an opportunity
Speaker 10: for somebody to infiltrate things that maybe other people couldn't
Speaker 10: because Sarah Jane did not fit or look like the
Speaker 10: mold of the radical in Berkeley or in San Francisco.
Speaker 10: She just didn't fit that mold. Sarah Jane looked very
Speaker 10: middle class matron, would sort of stand out as somebody
Speaker 10: may be safe. They wouldn't take her seriously because she
Speaker 10: didn't look the part, and in some ways that can
Speaker 10: be an advantage that people may not take you seriously
Speaker 10: and then say things in front of you that they
Speaker 10: don't think you get.
Speaker 3: Six days after, the San Francisco Examiner ran its editorial
Speaker 3: calling for Popeye Jackson's parole to be kept in place.
Speaker 3: The world got its first look at Patty Hurst since
Speaker 3: the kidnapping. She had taken on a new name given
Speaker 3: to her by the Symbionese Liberation Army, Tanya.
Speaker 4: Greeting to the people, This is Tanya. On April fifteenth,
Speaker 4: my comrades and I expropriated ten thousand, six hundred and
Speaker 4: sixty dollars and two cents from the Sunset branch of
Speaker 4: the Hibernia Bank.
Speaker 11: Eye witnesses say that as bank robberies go, this one
Speaker 11: was extremely well planned. FBI agents say the girl identified
Speaker 11: as Patty Hurst stood right about here, her right hand
Speaker 11: either on the trigger of the gun or near her pocket,
Speaker 11: and she was apparently aiming at between five and eight
Speaker 11: bank employees and customers who were ordered face down behind
Speaker 11: these counters.
Speaker 4: I was positioned so that I could hold customers and
Speaker 4: bank personnel who were on the floor. My gun was loaded,
Speaker 4: and at no time did any of my comrades intentionally
Speaker 4: point their guns at me.
Speaker 11: Another one of the SLA women in her gun stood
Speaker 11: about here. Now she had a great view of all
Speaker 11: the tellers and all the other people in the banks.
Speaker 4: I am a soldier and the People's Army Patria on Wednesday, sensormos.
Speaker 8: A fascius in sick place upon the life of the people.
Speaker 3: For seventy one days, the nation had fretted about Patty's
Speaker 3: fate at the hands of the SLA. Now she had
Speaker 3: appeared as a gun toting comrade of her abductors and
Speaker 3: a violent bank robbery. Two men were wounded by gunshots
Speaker 3: when one unknowingly entered the bank during the robbery. A
Speaker 3: jarring photo of Patty aka Tanya, wielding a semi automatic
Speaker 3: weapon in the bank ran in newspapers around the world.
Speaker 3: On April twenty fourth, a new communicate taking credit for
Speaker 3: the bank robbery appeared, some of which you just heard.
Speaker 3: Public opinion changed. Patty Hurst had gone from victim suddenly
Speaker 3: to radical terrorists. It's hard to overstate how shocking this was.
Speaker 3: Popeye's parole revocation hearing was set to be held at
Speaker 3: San Quentin State Penitentiary on April twenty third, nineteen seventy four.
Speaker 3: On the evening of the twenty first, six days after
Speaker 3: the Hibernia bank robbery, an indoor rally of about one
Speaker 3: hundred people was held at a community center in the
Speaker 3: Mission District of San Francisco, to show support for Popeye.
Speaker 3: Stephen Weed was there and wrote about what happened at
Speaker 3: the end in his book. The story he laid out
Speaker 3: was corroborated by press accounts. Weed says that he left
Speaker 3: the building and ran into a radio reporter he knew,
Speaker 3: along with a female friend. Weed stopped and talked with
Speaker 3: them on the sidewalk. A police cruiser pulled up to
Speaker 3: them and asked for identification. Weed and the reporter showed theirs,
Speaker 3: but the woman said she didn't have hers. This was
Speaker 3: a problem because the police thought that she looked like
Speaker 3: Nancy Lee Perry, who was a wonted member of the
Speaker 3: Symbionese Liberation Army. The woman's name was actually Christine Mummy.
Speaker 3: The police said she'd have to come to the station
Speaker 3: with them. Christine Mummy appear currently owed thirteen dollars in
Speaker 3: parking tickets. A crowd was leaving the community center and
Speaker 3: emerged to find Christine arguing with the police. The situation
Speaker 3: turned tents. Two more squad cars arrived, lights on. A
Speaker 3: large crowd gathered around, yelling at the officers. The officers
Speaker 3: yelled back, telling the crowd to back up. Popeye stepped
Speaker 3: out from the crowd demanding to know why they were
Speaker 3: taking Christine in. A sergeant named Louis Calabro yelled at
Speaker 3: Popeye to get back on the curb. Popeye stood his
Speaker 3: ground and the sergeant got in his face, and the
Speaker 3: two men yelled at each other, not touching, but within inches.
Speaker 3: The sergeant again told Popeye to get back on the curb,
Speaker 3: and Popeye again stood his ground. Then quickly Popeye was
Speaker 3: cuffed and against the squad car, and so less than
Speaker 3: forty eight hours before he was to go in front
Speaker 3: of the parole board, Popeye was arrested for verbally abusing
Speaker 3: police and allegedly pushing the police sergeant. This was trouble,
Speaker 3: especially as Popeye had built up so much goodwill among
Speaker 3: in Floes ruential people, despite his continued advocacy for violent radicalism.
Speaker 12: For me, he was a very likable person and he
Speaker 12: must have struck a lot of people that way, because
Speaker 12: he won a lot of friends, and especially in the
Speaker 12: white community at the time he had started seating.
Speaker 3: This is Jacob Holt, a Danish photographer who documented life
Speaker 3: in impoverished black communities in the US during the early
Speaker 3: nineteen seventies and became a friend of Popeye's.
Speaker 12: Even the conservative San Francisco Examiner had had an editorial
Speaker 12: about how giving Popeye a chance, and Popeye was given
Speaker 12: a lot of credit in the white media and white schools.
Speaker 12: He went out and did talks about being black underclass
Speaker 12: and said and got a lot of support from deeple.
Speaker 3: Popeye surely understood the importance of having support from quote
Speaker 3: unquote respet afected members of the community in facing a
Speaker 3: parole board whose members had all been appointed by Ronald Reagan.
Speaker 3: On April twenty third, Popeye was accompanied to the hearing
Speaker 3: at San Quentin by a radical clergyman named Reverend Cecil
Speaker 3: Williams of Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco.
Speaker 13: I believe that we have to radical eye things to
Speaker 13: get things done very quickly. Social change means rapid social change,
Speaker 13: it seems to me. Also, I believe that Jesus Christ
Speaker 13: was a revolutionary and he was a radical, and you
Speaker 13: got to be out there.
Speaker 3: As Popeye and Reverend Williams approached the prison entrance, they
Speaker 3: passed by a group of about two hundred supporters standing
Speaker 3: in the rain holding free Popeye signs. Popeye had listed
Speaker 3: thirty five witnesses who might appear on his behalf. This
Speaker 3: list included Congressman Ron Dellams, a state assemblyman, a parole officer,
Speaker 3: a television reporter, and several San Francisco policemen. It's not
Speaker 3: clear who exactly showed up to testify. Reverend Williams would
Speaker 3: later say that he testified to Popeye's character and his
Speaker 3: good works assisting other ex convicts and helping at Glide
Speaker 3: Memorial Church. In the end, Popeye's parole was not revoked,
Speaker 3: meaning that he would not face any more prison time,
Speaker 3: but Popeye was furious. He claimed that he had been
Speaker 3: coerced into signing documents that imposed more restrictive parole conditions.
Speaker 3: He was, for instance, prohibited from traveling beyond a fifty
Speaker 3: mile radius of San Francisco without permission from his parole officer.
Speaker 3: He was, however, free to walk out of prison, which
Speaker 3: he did ten hours after entering, but his day was
Speaker 3: not done. The supporting crowd had dwindled to about forty people.
Speaker 3: As Popeye approached them, a male supporter collapsed in an
Speaker 3: epileptic seizure. Popeye rushed over, got on his knees, and
Speaker 3: cradled the man's head for twenty minutes. Until the ambulance arrived.
Speaker 3: Popeye wouldn't be serving more time in prison. With the insular,
Speaker 3: radical world of San Francisco posed its own dangers to
Speaker 3: someone with his public notoriety, things would not get easier
Speaker 3: for him or for Sarah Jane next time on Rip Current.
Speaker 1: Rip Current was created and written by Toby Ball and
Speaker 1: developed with Alexander Williams. Hosted by Toby Ball with Mary
Speaker 1: Catherine Garrison. Original music by Jeff Sanoff, Show art by
Speaker 1: Jeff Niya's Goda and Charles Rudder. Producers Jesse funk, Rema
Speaker 1: O'Kelly and Noms Griffin. Supervising producer Trevor Young. Executive producers
Speaker 1: Alexander Williams and Matt Frederick.
Speaker 11: Hear.
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