The Opperman Report‪'‬ The Opperman Report

Mark R. Elsis : Who Authorized The Assassination Of John Lennon

John Lennon Was Assassinated 35 Years Ago Today

John Lennon was the greatest singer songwriter and the most influential political artist of the 20th century. He was assassinated on Monday, December 8, 1980. I am writing a new article this is filled with questions (to get people to think) about his assassination. When finished, it will be published on: December81980.com

"I am going into an unknown future, but I'm still all here, and still while there's life, there's hope."
John Lennon, December 8, 1980

In mid November of 1980, I told all my close friends John Lennon was about to be assassinated. I said the powers that be were going to blame a lone deranged crazy fan, and that this person would never have a trial. I don't know how I knew all of this.

I was driving my taxi in Manhattan on that beautifully warm evening of December 8, 1980. I was listening to Vin Scelsa on WNEW 102.7 FM, when just before 11 pm he announced that John Lennon had been shot, and then a few minutes later, crying, he announced the death of John Lennon.

When this horrible news broke, I was with a passenger in my taxi. I drove her home and immediately went to the Dakota. I stayed there for the next nine hours. These nine hours changed my life. I swore on John Lennon's blood that I would do everything I possibly could to enlighten humanity and make our world better for future generations.

...And everyday for the last thirty-five years, I have been doing this.

Mark R. Elsis

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Roger Rapoport - Searching for Patty Hearst: A True Crime Novel

November 27

Roger Rapoport joins Ed Opperman to discuss one of the most controversial kidnapping cases of the twentieth century; Patty Hearst.

On the night that Patty Hearst was kidnapped in 1974, journalist Roger D. Rapoport, was a short drive away in his El Cerrito home. He quickly became one of the primary reporters covering the saga as it unfolded in real time. His reporting gave local and national readers a window into one of the most bizarre and polarizing crimes in U.S. history. Now, fifty years later, he has written a novel, Searching for Patty Hearst, that draws heavily from that time. In this compelling new book, he explores alternative theories of the crime and delves into the complex psychology of many of the key actors in a drama that kept the country riveted. Using the techniques of fiction, Rapoport gives voice to much of the story that fell outside of the bounds of journalistic coverage. "I wrote this novel because I believed the American public deserved nothing but the truth," he says. With a wry sensibility and insider knowledge that Rapoport is one of the few people to possess, Searching for Patty Hearst, goes beyond the tabloid headlines to tell the story in all its depth. Rapoport takes on such questions as: Why did Patty participate in the kidnapping of a high school student hours before six of the SLA kidnappers were killed in a firefight with the Los Angeles police department? Did celebrity coroner Thomas Noguchi, whom Rapoport interviewed, mishandle the autopsies of six SLA victims? Why did Patty's lawyers dump her fiancée Steve Weed as a key witness at her trial at the last minute? It's often said that fiction can offer insights into the truth that reporting can't. If that is the case, the story of Patty Hearst, the SLA, and the kidnapping that carved them into the American psyche just may be told for the first time with Searching for Patty Hearst.

Book

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Brad Schreiber: Revolution's End: The Patty Hearst Kidnapping, Mind Control, and the Secret History of Donald DeFreeze and the SLA
Forty years after the Patty Hearst "trial of the century," the true story of the events, including the beginning of police militarization in America.

Revolution's End fully explains the most famous kidnapping in US history, detailing Patty Hearst's relationship with Donald DeFreeze, known as Cinque, head of the Symbionese Liberation Army. Not only did the heiress have a sexual relationship with DeFreeze while he was imprisoned; she didn't know he was an informant and a victim of prison behavior modification.

Neither Hearst nor the white radicals who followed DeFreeze realized that he was molded by a CIA officer and allowed to escape, thanks to collusion with the California Department of Corrections. DeFreeze's secret mission: infiltrate and discredit Bay Area anti-war radicals and the Black Panther Party, the nexus of seventies activism. When the murder of the first black Oakland schools superintendent failed to create an insurrection, DeFreeze was alienated from his controllers and decided to become a revolutionary, since his life was in jeopardy.

Revolution's End finally elucidates the complex relationship of Hearst and DeFreeze and proves that one of the largest shootouts in US history, which killed six members of the SLA in South Central Los Angeles, ended when the LAPD set fire to the house and incinerated those six radicals on live television, nationwide, as a warning to American leftists.

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