The trial that divided America.

Was Patty Hearst guilty?

A 90-minute standalone full-cast audiobook.

Releasing: Women’s Equality Day — 26 August 2026Fifty years ago, newspaper heiress Patty Hearst entered a San Francisco courtroom accused of armed bank robbery, two years after her dramatic kidnapping by the radical Symbionese Liberation Army. By then, America had already watched one of the strangest public transformations of the decade unfold: a young woman seized by political extremists who later appeared in bank security photographs carrying a rifle alongside them.

Her trial was an inquisition:

Was she a victim, an accomplice, or something far harder to define?

Praise for Trials of the Century Audiobooks"Just know this is not your typical audiobook. It’s a performance. And because of that, it’s incredibly entertaining""Like listening to a thriller.""Beautifully dramatised using the original courtroom transcripts." The Trial of Patty Hearst revisits one of the most psychologically complex legal dramas of the twentieth century.

Drawn from the original trial transcripts and contemporary reporting, this full-cast production recreates the key courtroom exchanges between prosecution and defence as they wrestle with coercion, ideology, trauma, and personal responsibility. At the centre lies a question that felt startlingly modern even then: what happens when a captive appears to adopt the beliefs of their captors?

Her trial became not merely a criminal proceeding, but a wider cultural argument about free will, influence, privilege, media spectacle, and the ways women are judged under extraordinary pressure.

Published by Classic Crime / www.classic-crime.com / 2026The Trial of Patty Hearst: The Captive Mind is the third title in the Trials of the Century audiobook series, following The Trial of Leopold and Loeb and The Trial of Dr Crippen. The next title in the series is The Trial of Lizzie Borden.