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In jail, Patty's parents got some special privileges. On their first visit, they were not searched. But when William Harris' mother, Betty Bunnell, and her husband Jerry Bunnell came to call, they were frisked. At one point, the two middle-aged couples rode in the same elevator; they did not speak to each other or even exchange a glance.
After three brief visits to the jail, Harris' mother admitted that she knew no more about the last few months of her son's life than she had before. "We were dying to ask and dying to know," she said, but they had not inquired because "we felt that it was inappropriate." She added: "He looked good—so much better than the pictures of him—really fine. I said, 'I missed you,' and he said, 'I missed you too, Mom.' "
On Wednesday night, the Harrises were flown to Los Angeles to be indicted on 18 state felony counts, ranging from kidnaping to assault to commit murder. A sulky sun was beginning to rise over the smogbound city when husband and wife arrived at court in separate, four-vehicle caravans. Their hands on their guns, plainclothesmen backed up an escort of heavily armed policemen. As Harris listened to the charges being read out against him, flickers of contemptuous amusement moved across his face.
This week the Hearsts will meet their daughter again in court, and the hearings on Patty's mental competence will bring together some fascinating and contrasting personalities. Judge Carter, 64, a sharp-featured, talkative man, has known the Hearsts for years. "Heavens," he says, "you can't be around California and not know Randy." The judge remembers Patty as a little girl running through the family's former 15-room mansion in the wealthy suburb of Hillsborough. He is not overwhelmed by the Hearsts or intimidated by his job. Says he: "All of their money and power falls off me like water off a duck's back."
The Hallinans, father and son, make a striking and effective legal pair. Long one of the most successful defenders of radicals and outcasts on the West Coast, Vincent Hallinan says: "I'm a pretty lusty 78." He made Ripley's Believe It Or Not by playing half a game of rugby at 73.
Terence Hallinan, 38, has been interested in civil rights causes. During the '60s, it took a call from Robert Kennedy to spring him from a Mississippi jail. His nickname is "K.O."—a reference to his skill and ferocity as a boxer—and he comes on as though the courtroom were a ring. Eyes glinting through his spectacles, muscles bulging beneath his flashy suits, K.O. Hallinan is the antagonist of the team, the one who has seemed the most abrasive figure in the pretrial proceedings.
To bolster the Hallinans, Randolph Hearst last week hired F. Lee Bailey, one of the nation's most colorful and successful criminal lawyers. Said Bailey: "I think this is a very important case with many new questions that present a lot of challenges. An apparently normal woman was kidnaped and something happened to her."