Betty Van Patter was a 45-year-old Black Panther Party bookkeeper and idealist who deeply admired the party and its programs to fight racism and help the poor.
But somebody killed her and despite many clues and much evidence the mystery has remained unsolved for 50 years.
Meanwhile, over the course of my 59 years in journalism, I have worked on a lot of big stories. We got some of them, we didn’t get others. I have few regrets.
The Betty Van Patter case is one of those regrets. The Alameda County District Attorney, the Berkeley Police Department, several private investigators, and a number of other journalists are among those who have looked into the case and come up empty.
Some of the best work on the case was done by the late investigative reporter Kate Coleman, who published one plausible scenario for Betty’s murder in the now defunct magazine Heterodoxy in 1994. Coleman revealed that a private investigator named 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 inside the Panthers ordered Betty’s murder and who carried it out.
Lipset was working for Van Patter’s family at the time. Both Lipset and Fechheimer have since died.
Nobody has ever been charged in the case, and now, 50 years later, interest by law enforcement and the media has all but vanished. The problem with this 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 illegal arrest of countless black people, as well as the poverty and oppressive living conditions endured by many to this day.
I too want to celebrate that legacy.
To honestly tell the story of what happened to Betty Van Patter may seem to some to run counter to the ideal narrative, because it brings up the Panthers’ internal corruption, violence, sexism, prostitution, drugs, shakedowns, weaponry and justification of gratuitous violence.
All of which are every bit as true as the good stuff.
Therefore, any honest appraisal of the group’s place in history must first be capable of holding both sides of the truth in one hand, both the good and the bad, unflinchingly.
Aa part of that, Betty’s case must be solved. Those responsible for her death need to be brought to justice.
So it's time to get back to her story…
(Part Three appears tomorrow.)
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