Randolph Hearst, media magnate and father of kidnapped heiress, dies

Randolph Apperson Hearst, last surviving son of the newspaper baron, William Randolph Hearst, and father of Patricia Hearst, …

Randolph Apperson Hearst, last surviving son of the newspaper baron, William Randolph Hearst, and father of Patricia Hearst, the kidnapped heiress of the 1970s, died on Monday. He was aged 85. Mr Hearst, who inherited a publishing fortune now worth an estimated $1.8 billion, died in New York Presbyterian Hospital, a Hearst Corp statement said.

"Randolph Hearst shared his father's strong vision and his abiding passion for the publishing business," the Hearst Corp President, Mr Frank Bennack jnr, said. Mr Randolph Hearst began work as a cub reporter on the Hearst-owned Call-Bulletin in San Francisco and eventually rose to become chairman of Hearst Corp from 1973 to 1996.

He made headlines in 1974 when his daughter Patricia was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army, beginning 57 days of captivity that ended with her emergence as a radical in her own right, renouncing her family and adopting the name Tania.

Throughout the ordeal, one of the great media phenomena of the decade, Mr Hearst patiently faced the television cameras and calmly pleaded for his daughter's return. When the kidnappers demanded that he donate millions of dollars worth of free food to help California's poor, he started the People in Need programme, which eventually distributed more than 90,000 bags and cartons of food.

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Ms Patricia Hearst took part in a San Francisco bank robbery and was captured by police in 1975. She was tried and convicted and sentenced to 21 months in prison.

After her arrest, she denounced her captors and eventually married Mr Bernard Shaw, a former San Francisco police officer who had become her bodyguard.

Mr Randolph Hearst graduated from Lawrenceville School in New Jersey and Harvard University and served in the US Army Air Force from 1942 to 1945, attaining the rank of captain. After his discharge, he returned to the San Francisco area and in 1947 rejoined the San Francisco Call-Bulletin, becoming its publisher at the age of 34.

Mr Hearst is survived by his third wife, Veronica de Uribe, his daughter, Patricia Hearst Shaw, four other daughters and four grandchildren.

After a funeral in New York today, his body will be brought to California for burial tomorrow in the family plot south of San Francisco.