Murder of Betty Van Patter

Template:Short description Template:Use mdy dates Template:Infobox person Betty Louise Van Patter (née Floyd; October 12, 1929 – Template:Circa)<ref name="Ancestry2">Template:Citation</ref> was a bookkeeper for the Black Panther Party, although she herself was white. Van Patter was murdered, a crime which remains unsolved.

Biography

After serving as a bookkeeper for Ramparts magazine, Van Patter became an aide to Panther leader Elaine Brown in 1974, after being introduced to the Party by David Horowitz.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Van Patter went missing on December 13, 1974. On January 20 of the following year, her severely beaten corpse was found floating in San Francisco Bay.<ref>Editors (Jan 21, 1975) "Body of woman found in Bay is identified." San Francisco Examiner. Page 38.</ref>

There was insufficient evidence for police to charge anyone with van Patter's death, but the Black Panther Party was "almost universally believed to be responsible," wrote Frank Browning in 1987.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> According to other authors, Huey P. Newton allegedly confessed to a friend that he had ordered Van Patter's murder, and that Van Patter had been tortured and raped before being killed.<ref name="Kelley, Ken 1989">Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="Pearson,Hugh 1994 p328">Template:Cite book</ref> Christopher Hitchens wrote in the Los Angeles Times in 2003 that: "There is no doubt now, and there was precious little then, of the Panther leadership's complicity in this revolting crime".<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> "While it was true that I had come to dislike Betty Van Patter, I had fired her, not killed her", Elaine Brown wrote in 1993. Brown said Van Patter was fired because she was too nosy about the Black Panther Party and was no longer of use to the party.<ref name="OT" /> She had reportedly threatened to make public her discovery that the party doctored its books and had major tax problems.<ref name="OT">Template:Cite news</ref>

See also

• Lists of solved missing person cases
• List of unsolved murders (1900–1979)

Further reading

• Who Killed Betty Van Patter?, David Wier's ten-part investigation into the murder

References

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