They also found her guilty of fucking when she was fifteen-years-old--or why else would such information have been admissible as evidence during the trial? They don't allow that kind of testimony in a rape trial, but for a bank robbery it was considered relevant.

Judge Carter sentenced her to 35 years, pending the results of 90 days of psychiatric testing. He announced, "I intend to reduce the sentence. How much I am not now prepared to say."

If you were Patty, would you have answered "true" or "false" to the following statements:

· "My way of doing things is apt to be misunderstood by others."
· "I am always disgusted with the law when a criminal is freed through the arguments of a smart lawyer."
· "I feel that it is certainly best to keep my mouth shut when I'm in trouble."

Those are samples from the MMPI, a psychological test Patty had to take. In order to have her sentence reduced, she was required to undergo a psychiatric debriefing extended to six months. Kidnapped again. While Patty was still being probed by the shrinks, Judge Carter died, and the joke was that his replacement would sentence Patty to working as a teller at the Hibernia Bank for rehabilitative purposes.

(Eventually she faced seven years in prison, but after serving 23 months, her sentence was commuted by President Jimmy Carter.)

Graffiti remained mute testaments to the whole misadventure. With the same passion that some had previously spray-painted Free Squeaky and Gravity Is the 4th Dimension, others left messages like Jail Rocky and Nixon, Not Tania and SLA LIVES, which was long hidden in the enigmatic made-over COLE SLAW LIVES slogan that baffled tourists and convinced one visiting ex-Berkeleyite that a political activist named Cole Slaw was dead because there were graffiti saying he was alive.

Finally, although James Browning had once informed me that the Black Panthers were "an organization which advocates killing people" and that Groucho Marx's "utterance did not constitute a 'true' threat," it had since come out that the FBI itself published pamphlets in the name of the Panthers advocating the killing of cops and that an FBI file on Groucho was indeed begun and he actually was labeled a "national security risk." I called Groucho to tell him the good news.

"I deny everything," he said, "because I lie about everything." He paused, then added, "And everything I deny is a lie."

The views expressed above represent the writer and not necessarily those of The Disinformation Company Ltd.