Donald David DeFreeze (November 16, 1943 – May 17, 1974), also known as Cinque Mtume and using the nom de guerre "General Field Marshal Cinque", was an American man involved with the far-left radical group Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) and convicted criminal.
DeFreeze's exact role within the Symbionese Liberation Army is unclear, but analysts have suggested he was either a figurehead or an indirect leader. Born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, DeFreeze dropped out of high school and had a criminal record from the age of fourteen. He received probation in the late 1960s, leading some sources to suggest he was serving as a police informant to the Los Angeles Police Department.
He and several associates began to make plans for armed action that they believed would rouse the African-American community and attract more recruits. Three SLA soldiers fatally shot Marcus Foster, the superintendent of public schools in Oakland, California, the first African-American superintendent of any major public school system, and wounded his deputy. They mistakenly believed he supported a program of student IDs. Two members of the SLA were arrested in January 1974, convicted and sentenced to prison for the crimes.
DeFreeze and co-conspirators next kidnapped heiress Patty Hearst in February 1974, seeking a ransom and media attention for their cause. During a shootout with law enforcement in Los Angeles, DeFreeze committed suicide by gunshot when he and five SLA members resisted a police raid in a burning house.
A private investigation before the raid suggested that DeFreeze may have been a police informant and agent provocateur from before the founding days of the SLA. His remains were returned to his native Cleveland, where the funeral was organized at his family's request.
Early life
DeFreeze was born in Cleveland, Ohio, to Louis and Mary DeFreeze; he was the oldest of eight children. His mother was a registered nurse at a convalescent home. The Rev. Foster would say of him later:
<blockquote>He was a get up and go kid... he had a heart that was as big as a house. But some of the boys he used to hang around with, I didn't care for. You just knew they were 99 and 44/100 percent bad.
They reconciled. After having some gun charges dropped, in 1965 DeFreeze moved with his family from the Northeast to California, where they settled in Los Angeles. He made his way over to Oakland, California, where he was hidden by white friends from the Vacaville BCA.
SLA
thumb|right|FBI file photo showing DeFreeze robbing the Hibernia bank in San Francisco on April 15, 1974
DeFreeze and Soltysik co-founded the Symbionese Liberation Army, and soon recruited members for the <span class="plainlinks"></span>group. DeFreeze adopted the name General Field Marshal Cinque (which he pronounced "SINK-you", though this is not how the name is historically pronounced). He took the name from Joseph Cinqué, a captive Mende who reportedly led the slave rebellion that took over the Spanish slave ship Amistad in 1839; the Africans regained their freedom following a United States Supreme Court case. He adopted the surname Mtume from the Swahili word for "prophet".
By late summer SLA members included Joe Remiro, a Vietnam veteran and activist who was a friend of Little and Wolfe. As DeFreeze's circle of acquaintances widened, he also came to know Angela Atwood, 25. She and her husband had moved to the Bay Area from Indiana along with William and Emily Harris. All had moved from Bloomington, where they knew each other at university. The Atwoods separated that year, and Angela lived with the Harrises. The SLA provoked outrage in the black community by their assassination of Foster, an admired public figure who was the first black superintendent of any major public school system.
In February 1974 they kidnapped newspaper heiress Patty Hearst in Berkeley. They first sought an exchange and release of political prisoners. When that was refused, they told her to ask her father for a ransom enough to feed the poor people.
On April 15, 1974 they robbed the Hibernia Bank in San Francisco of $10,000. Both Hearst and DeFreeze were captured on security videos that showed them brandishing weapons.
Informant allegations
At an earlier probation hearing, defense attorney Morgan M. Morten said that it had been "indicated that [DeFreeze] had been cooperating with the police".
Lake Headley also provided evidence for the following:
DeFreeze's arrest records
Records showed that DeFreeze had set up the arrest of an associate in a case involving a stolen gun. The Los Angeles Police Department officer who handled the case became a key intelligence officer who handled informants related to black militants. This was during the same period when DeFreeze was receiving unusually lenient treatment and extended probation from the Los Angeles County criminal justice system. Headley suggested this implied that DeFreeze was working as an informant.
On May 17, 1974, The New York Times ran the story about Dr. Wolfe's investigation and Headley's report with some of this information. But the major story that day was the LAPD shootout at the SLA house, which was engulfed by an accidental fire. DeFreeze was found to have committed suicide by gunshot; two SLA members were fatally shot by police when they left the house; two others died of smoke and fire.
Investigator Lake Headley presented additional evidence that Donald DeFreeze was a police informant and an agent provocateur in his book Vegas P.I.: The Life and Times of America's Greatest Detective (1993), co-written with freelance writer William Hoffman. He also concluded that the Black Cultural Association was used by law enforcement to monitor radicals among both Berkeley students and prison inmates. Upon meeting radicals after his prison escape, DeFreeze was known for his eagerness to sell them firearms, explosives, and related items. Some of his contacts were suspicious that he was trying to set up sting operations. His means of acquiring weaponry has remained unexplained.
Death
On May 17, 1974, the Los Angeles Police Department tracked DeFreeze and five other SLA members to a house at 1466 East 54th Street; they surrounded it and demanded that occupants surrender. An elderly man and a child were allowed out of the house. Following that, police fired a tear gas canister through a window, which the SLA answered with bursts of automatic weapons fire. During the shootout the police were outgunned by the SLA's automatic weapons, and the SLA's gas masks rendered the tear gas ineffective. But the house caught fire during the shootout, possibly from an outdoor-type combusting tear gas canister.
DeFreeze and five others made their way into a crawlspace beneath the house, where they continued to fire at police. A canister exploded and the house caught fire. As it burned, Nancy Ling Perry and Camilla Hall left the house, brandishing pistols according to police, and were fatally shot. DeFreeze was found to have committed suicide by shooting himself in the right side of his head with a pistol before succumbing to the fire. Angela Atwood, Willie Wolfe and Patricia Soltysik, still in the crawlspace, may have died of smoke inhalation before the flames reached them.
Funeral and burial
DeFreeze's body was returned to family in Cleveland. They asked members of the Sunni Muslim sect to organize and conduct the funeral, which was held in the chapel of a funeral home. Some 500 attended, with another 1500 persons gathered outside. His younger brother Delano DeFreeze said that his brother had "lived for the people" and "died for the people". The family had appealed to revolutionaries to come to the funeral, but none were observed there.
References in media
Stephen King said in notes to his book Danse Macabre (1981), that DeFreeze was one of the inspirations for his recurring character Randall Flagg:
<blockquote>I sat there for another fifteen minutes or so, listening to the Eagles on my little cassette player, and then I wrote: Donald DeFreeze is a dark man." He first referred to him in his book The Stand.</blockquote>
DeFreeze is mentioned in King's post-apocalyptic novel The Stand as an acquaintance of Randall Flagg, the book's main antagonist; it is implied that Flagg was involved in Hearst's kidnapping.
DeFreeze and the SLA are referred to in the 1976 film Network. A television show is purportedly created that uses members of a fictional version of the SLA as the stars.
Paul Schrader's 1988 film Patty Hearst features DeFreeze played by Ving Rhames.
The Camper Van Beethoven song "Tania" from Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart refers to DeFreeze by his nom de guerre "Field Marshal Cinque" in the lyrics "A Polaroid of you, Cinque/With a seven-headed dragon/In a house in Daly City".
DeFreeze and the SLA are discussed in David Talbot's 2012 book about San Francisco in the 1960s and 1970s, "Season of the Witch", which treats as credible the theory that DeFreeze was secretly working with the authorities.