SLA Assassinates Marcus Foster

By Patrick Mondout

At approximately 7:00 p.m. on the election night of November 6, 1973, Dr. Marcus Foster, the popular African-American Superintendent of Schools for Oakland, was shot several times and his assistant Robert Blackburn was shot once as they walked from Foster's office to his car. The bullets used to shot Foster were laced with cyanide. Foster apparently died instantly while Blackburn, who was hit with a single shotgun blast, survived but was in serious condition.

Members of the previously unknown group calling itself the Symbionese Liberation Army immediately claimed responsibility in a "communiqué" released to Berkeley radio station KTFA. (The group would continue to taunt the police via such messages over the coming 18 months.) The communiqué claimed Foster had be tried by a "people's court" and ordered executed by cyanide bullets. As that last bit of information was only known to the assailants at the time, officials took it seriously. (At first, the police said they had released this info but the coroner corrected them since he had not yet made that determination.)

The communiqué also announced that it was issuing "shoot on site" orders for other Oakland educators, though it rescinded the order 11 days later when the group claimed that the educators had obeyed their order. The Oakland Tribune published an interview with semanticist and former president of the University of San Francisco Dr. S.I. Hayakawa, who pronounced the communiqués to be the work of, "a high-grade intellect, devoted to revolutionary ideology."

The cyanide, it was later reveal, was stolen by early SLA member Robyn Sue Steiner. Steiner's boyfriend, Russell Little, was later arrested and charged with Foster's murder.

Patty Hearst, who was later abducted by the SLA, later testified that Bill & Emily Harris told her that Nancy Ling Perry and Patricia Soltysik had shot Foster while Donald DeFreeze shot Blackburn. She also claimed that the Harrises told her that Russell Little and Joe Remiro were nearby in a "backup" car.

References/Bibliography

• Shana Alexander, Anyone's Daughter: The Times and Trials of Patricia Hearst,
• Carolyn Anspacher & the San Francisco Chronicle, The Trial of Patty Hearst, Great Fidelity Press, 1976.
• Marilyn Baker, Exclusive!: the inside story of Patricia Hearst and the SLA, Macmillan Publishing, 1974.
• Mary F. Beal, Safe House: A Casebook Study of Revolutionary Feminism in the 1970's, Northwest Matrix, 1976.
• Jerry Belcher & Don West, Patty/Tania, Pyramid Books, 1975
• David Boulton, The Making Of Tania Hearst, Bergenfield, N.J., U.S.A.: New American Library, 1975
• John Bryan, This Soldier Still At War, (on Joe Remiro) Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975
• Patty Hearst with Alvin Moscow, Patty Hearst: Her Own Story, New York: Avon, 1982. This was the title after the movie came out. Original title: Every Secret Thing.
• Sharon D. Hendry, Soliah: The Sara Jane Olson Story, Cable Publishing, 2002.
• Janey Jimenez (U.S. Marshal who escorted Hearst between prison and the court during the trial) with Ted Berkman, My Prisoner, Sheed Andrews and McMeel, 1977.
• Jean Brown Kinney, An American journey: The short life of Willy Wolfe, Simon and Schuster, 1976.
• Vin McLellan, Paul Avery, The voices of guns: The definitive and dramatic story of the twenty-two-month career of the Symbionese Liberation Army, one of the most bizarre chapters in the history of the American Left, Putnam, 1977.
• John Pascal, The Strange Case of Patty Hearst, New American Library, 1974.
• Findley & Craven Payne, Life and Death of the SLA, Ballantine, 1976.
• Robert Brainard Pearsall, Symbionese Liberation Army: Documents and Communications, Rodopi, 1974
• Fred Soltysik, In Search of a Sister 1976.
• Steven Weed, with Scott Swanton. My Search for Patty Hearst, New York: Warner, 1976. Weed was Hearst's boyfriend at the time of the kidnapping. That was the end of their relationship.
• Video: Patty Hearst, based on Every Secret Thing, directed by Paul Schrader, 1988.
• Video: The Ordeal of Patty Hearst (1979) (TV)
• Video: Patty Hearst: The E! True Hollywood Story (2000) (TV)
• Video: Neverland: The Rise and Fall of the Symbionese Liberation Army aka Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst, Directed by Robert Stone, 2004, documentary.

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