Baker, Marilyn 1929–2001

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Baker, Marilyn 1929–2001

PERSONAL: Born September 13, 1929, in San Francisco, CA; died November 12, 2001, in Palm Springs, CA; children: Jeff.

CAREER: Journalist and author. Reporter, KQED-TV and KPIX-TV, San Francisco, CA. Humane Society of the Desert, Palm Springs, CA, former executive director and member of board.

AWARDS, HONORS: Emmy awards for local news, 1974, 1975; awards from United Jewish Women's Council, National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, and American Women in Radio and Television.

WRITINGS:

(With Sally Brompton) Exclusive! The Inside Story of Patricia Hearst and the SLA, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1974.

Also author and editor of magazines on business and pets. Creator of pet information Web site.

SIDELIGHTS: Marilyn Baker covered many major stories during her long career in print and broadcast journalism. After beginning her career as a newspaper journalist, she joined KPIX-TV in San Francisco in 1974. She is best known for her award-winning investigation of the kidnapping of newspaper heiress Patty Hearst by the militant group known as the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), and expanded her initial reportage of the case into the book Exclusive! The Inside Story of Patricia Hearst and the SLA.

Hearst, a descendant of newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst, was kidnapped from her Berkeley, California apartment by the SLA in 1974. She alleged that her captors, radical leftists, then brainwashed her and forced her to denounce the capitalist "crimes" of her family. She was also forced, she claimed, to participate in a series of robberies. Hearst traveled across the country with the SLA until September 18, 1975, when she was apprehended by FBI agents in San Francisco. She went on trial and was convicted in March, 1976 of bank robbery and felonious use of firearms. She served three years of a seven-year sentence and was released in February, 1979. Baker, according to an obituary in San Francisco Chronicle, covered the Hearst story "with flair and flamboyance."

Baker was also involved with investigating the controversial Zebra serial murder case, when seventy-one whites in the San Francisco area were killed by black extremists between 1972 and 1974. She developed a reputation as an aggressive journalist who did not shirk controversy. Her stories on guns and on Santa Cruz won local Emmy awards. After her retirement, Baker moved to Palm Springs, California, where she became executive director and board member of the Humane Society of the Desert.