Murder of Betty Van Patter

Betty Louise Van Patter (née Floyd; October 12, 1929 – c. December 13, 1974),^[1] was a bookkeeper for the Black Panther Party, although she herself was white. Van Patter was murdered, a crime which remains unsolved.

Betty Van Patter
Born	Betty Louise Floyd (1929-10-12)October 12, 1929 U.S.
Died	c. December 13, 1974(1974-12-13) (aged 45) San Francisco, California, U.S.
Cause of death	Beating
Body discovered	January 17, 1975
Occupation	Bookkeeper
Known for	Victim of unsolved murder

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.^[2]

Disappearance and discovery of body

Van Patter went missing on December 13, 1974. Some weeks later, her severely beaten corpse was found on a San Francisco Bay beach.

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.^[3] According to other authors, Huey 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.^[4][5] 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".^[6] "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.^[7] She had reportedly threatened to make public her discovery that the party doctored its books and had major tax problems.^[7]

See also

• List of solved missing person cases
• List of unsolved murders

References

1. Ancestry.com, California Birth Index, 1905-1995 [database on-line], retrieved April 26, 2017
2. Horowitz, David (December 13, 1999). "Who killed Betty Van Patter?". Salon.com. Archived from the original on December 22, 2015. Retrieved April 3, 2024.
3. Browning, Frank (May 1987). "The Strange Journey of David Horowitz". Mother Jones. p. 34. Archived from the original on January 28, 2016. Retrieved April 3, 2024 – via Google Books.
4. Kelley, Ken (September 15, 1989). "Huey Newton: I'll Never Forget". East Bay Express. Vol. 11, no. 49 – via Internet Archive.
5. Pearson, Hugh (1994). The Shadow of the Panther: Huey Newton and the Price of Black Power in America. Da Capo Press. p. 328. ISBN 0-201-48341-6.
6. Hitchens, Christopher (November 16, 2003). "Left-leaving, left-leaning". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on June 30, 2016.
7. Bender, Kristin (January 15, 2007). "Mother's slaying fuels daughter's devotion". Oakland Tribune. Archived from the original on January 10, 2016. Retrieved July 27, 2015.