stockholm syndrome takes you about one-eighth of the way. stock holm syndrome is, i m here, you ve got me, i m a captive, i ve got to make the best of this. that s fundamentally different than saying, you know what, i really dig what you re doing. by the way, it would have been a real achievement. it would be the first time ever to succeed. and the sla had no training in this, never pretended to have training in this. some have said that the sla had no expertise in brainwashing, and particularly donald defreeze, the leader. that is nonsense. he had studied the north korean methodology. he knew enough to abuse her to the point where she would do most anything she was told to do. we weren t brainwashers. we weren t trained in the techniques similar to ones used on me and my fellow marines in boot camp.
willie wolff was an upper middle class kid, a physician s son from new milford, connecticut, who went to berkeley to try to be an archaeologist. but in short order he became radicalized and he became part of this group that spent its time going to vacaville prison, and he became friends with donald defreeze, joe remiro, and russ little. defreeze had a plan. back then all the jobs in the prison were done by a convict. defreeze knew enough from talking to the prisoners that manning the boilers is a job outside the fence. the first time they sent him to his job, he stayed there for a couple hours and he was gone. i m not certain who picked him up. i always thought it was willie. when defreeze escaped, that was the beginning of the sla.
walking from the school board building to his car. they waited for the end of a school board meeting. and as he walked into the parking lot, they shot marcus foster dead at point-blank range. the theory was that defreeze, nancy ling perry and mizmoon soltysik were the shooters and joe remiro and russ little were the lookouts. remiro and little had guns with them but they were not involved in the shooting. in a newspaper, the sla took credit for foster s murder. it was the first time anyone had ever heard of the group. they were proud of what they had done and they put out a press release or a statement saying they had done this. the sla was not indiscriminately issuing death warrants for foster, blackburn or anyone else. such an attack was the only
since berkeley was the epicenter of the protest movement, it was a place where radicals wanted to try to spread the gospel to prisons. and the nearest prison was vacaville. and so you had this pipeline where students and ex-students at berkeley would go to vacaville sort of as teachers, but really as political organizers. one prisoner really stood out as the leader of the political group in the prison, and that was donald defreeze. donald defreeze was basically a professional criminal. he had been in and out of prison his whole life, but what landed him there for the last time was when he beat up a prostitute, stole a check from her and tried to cash it. and he got caught.
lowered the garage door, all the windows were closed because it was wintertime. but when they closed the garage door, it cut off the oxygen to the fire and it immediately went out and left everything in perfect condition almost for the feds and the police to go through. the house in which they lived in a quiet san francisco suburb, police found weapons, revolutionary literature and material linking them to the sla. my original decision was to be with some people federated with the sla. okay? there s a distinction in my mind. and ten days later, joe and russ are arrested and that throws everything out the window. the circumstances had made our choice for us, we were going underground immediately. at this point the sla consisted of bill harris, emily harris and angela atwood, donald defreeze, willie wolfe, nangy