Yesterday, as I do every December 13th, I wrote about the disappearance and death of Betty Van Patter back in 1974.
The 45-year-old Black Panther Party bookkeeper was an idealistic Berkeley mother of three who admired the party and its programs to fight racism and help the poor.
But somebody killed her — perhaps for her ideals or her naiveté, or both — and the mystery of her murder has remained unsolved for 48 years.
Meanwhile, over the course of my half century in journalism, I worked on a lot of big stories. We got some, we didn’t get others. I have some regrets.
The Betty Van Patter case is one of them. The Alameda District Attorney, the Berkeley Police Department, several private investigators, and a number of journalists are among those who have looked into the case and come up empty.
Some of the best work on the case has been done by investigative reporter Kate Coleman, who published one plausible scenario for Betty’s murder in the now defunct magazine Heterodoxy in 1994. Coleman revealed that the well-known private investigator David Fechheimer, who was working for the Panthers at the time of Betty’s murder, told his mentor, the legendary private eye Hal Lipset, who it was inside the Panthers who ordered Betty’s murder and who carried it out.
Lipset was working for Van Patter’s family at the time and he confirmed Coleman’s report to me. Both Lipset and Fechheimer have since passed away.
Nobody has ever been charged in the case.
By now, interest by law enforcement and the media has waned. The problem with the story is obvious. Historians, academics, young activists and old activists alike want to be able to celebrate the positive legacy of the Black Panthers, which includes exposing systematic racism, the harassment and arrest of countless black people, as well as the poverty and oppressive living conditions endured by millions to this day.
But to honestly tell the story of what happened to Betty Van Patter may seem to run counter to that narrative, because it brings up the Panthers’ internal corruption, violence, sexism, prostitution, drugs, shakedowns, weaponry and justification of gratuitous violence.
Any honest appraisal of the group’s place in history would be capable of holding both sides of the truth in one hand, both the good and the bad, unflinchingly.
For that, Betty’s case must be solved.
LINKS:
Who Killed Betty Van Patter? (Salon)
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