Patty Hearst descended from one of the most famous and powerful media families in American history. So it’s not surprising that the true-crime odyssey of her kidnapping and crimes with the radical terrorist gang, the Symbionese Liberation Army, would bring into its orbit an assortment of famous and infamous figures from the 1970s and beyond. The following figures make cameo appearances in Jeffrey Toobin’s new book on the Hearst case: “American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst”:

Jane Pauley and Kevin Kline: Future “Today” show co-host Jane Pauley and Academy Award-winning actor Kevin Kline were both graduates of Indiana University where they separately befriended Angela Atwood, a former high school cheerleader and aspiring actress from New Jersey who would later become one of Hearst’s SLA kidnappers. Atwood fixed up Pauley with a date but rescued her when the guy tried to put the moves on her. Meanwhile, Kline was the leader of the school’s avant-garde theater scene in the 1970s, and the increasingly political Atwood became his assistant in running a guerilla theater group at a local coffee house.

Sara Jane Moore: To meet the SLA’s ransom demands, San Francisco Examiner publisher Randolph Hearst had to quickly put together a program to provide millions of dollars in food to thousands of needy Bay Area residents. The People in Need Program set up operations in China Basin where it quickly attracted a “raffish mix of 1970s San Francisco” among its volunteers and political and community groups that wanted in on the action. One volunteer was Sara Jane Moore, a middle-aged Danville mom, who offered to provide bookkeeping skills for the operation. But her eccentric, imperious behavior got her booted. She later turned up at the Hearst’s Hillsborough mansion, demanding a job. Six months later, she was arrested after trying to shoot President Gerald Ford during his visit to San Francisco. She was sentenced to life in prison and moved to the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin in September 1979, the same month Hearst was released from the same facility after her sentence for bank robbery was commuted by President Jimmy Carter. Moore was released on parole in 2007 at age 77 after serving 32 years.

Yusef Bey and Your Black Muslim Bakery: Before the Oakland-based bakery became publicly linked to corruption, physical and sexual abuse, intimidation, welfare fraud and murder, it purported to serve as a model of African-American self-sufficiency. The Nation of Islam, along with Your Black Muslim Bakery founder Yusef Bey, also wanted a piece of the People in Need action. But their participation ended up having disastrous results. On Feb. 22, 1974, people lined up along the sidewalks leading to the bakery. After keeping people waiting for hours, the trucks finally arrived but a riot broke out and more than 21 people were taken to local hospitals. The bakery claimed it had to distribute food from its own inventory to stop more rioting and handed Hearst a bill for $154,000.

Jim Jones: The megalomanical leader of the San Francisco-based People’s Temple tried to intimidate his way into running the People in Need program. Jones and two other men, all wearing dark suits and sunglasses, arrived at PIN’s China Basin headquarters. Jones insisted the program be run by locals, and claimed he could run and manage the program for $2 million. The PIN directors showed Jones the door. More than four years later, Jones and his Temple had relocated to a remote jungle location in Guyana. Allegations surfaced of human rights abuses, prompting a fact-finding mission by U.S. Congressman Leo Ryan and others. Temple members attacked and killed Ryan and four others. The next day Jones and more than 900 temple members died by suicide by ingesting cyanide.

Ronald Reagan: As governor of California, Reagan, a Republican, enjoyed loyal support from Hearst’s mother, Catherine Hearst, when she was on the UC Board of Regents during the riotous 1960s. He reappointed her to the board in 1974, when her daughter was being held captive by the SLA. He strongly disagreed with Randolph Hearst’s willingness to negotiate with his daughter’s kidnappers and he expressed disdain for the People in Need program, specifically the Bay Area residents who benefitted from it. At a private luncheon with Republican leaders in Washington D.C., the aspiring U.S. president said of the program: “It’s just too bad we can’t have an epidemic of botulism.” Despite his disdain for PIN, Reagan became one of Hearst’s supporters in her bid to seek clemency from Jimmy Carter.

Joan Baez and Regis Debray: After Hearst announced she was “Tania” and was joining the SLA, her fiance Steven Weed tried to intervene, notably by trying to make connections with the radical exile community. Through singer-songwriter Joan Baez, he made contact with her friend Regis Debray, a famous French Marxist theoretician and advocate of urban guerilla warfare. He asked Debray to write a letter that would debunk the SLA’s incoherent stew of radical ideology and coax Hearst to return home. Weed traveled to Mexico to secure the letter. But the letter, which he presented at a press conference, backfired, prompting a scathing response from Hearst herself, who denied in a recorded message that she had been brainwashed.

Congressman Leo Ryan: Before he died in the attack by members of Jim Jones’ People’s Temple, the congressman, who represented the Peninsula district that was home to the Hearst family, publicly advocated for President Carter to commute Hearst’s seven-year sentence. The mass suicide of members of the People’s Temple prompted Americans to ponder the kind of mental coercion that somehow led hundreds of people to take their own lives and kill their own children. People supporting Hearst’s clemency drew connections between the Jonestown mass suicide and Hearst’s possible brainwashing at the hands of the SLA.

John Wayne: The famously right-wing, tough-guy actor also became one of the curiously eclectic group of people who supported Hearst’s clemency. He drew a parallel between her “brainwashing” and the Jonestown suicides: “It seems quite odd to me that the American people have immediately accepted the fact that one man can brainwash 900 human beings into mass suicide but will not accept the fact that a ruthless group, the Symbionese Liberation Army, could brainwash a little girl by torture, degradation and confinement.”

Daryl Gates: Before he became the legendarily gruff Los Angeles police chief, he was the officer in charge of his department’s famous SWAT operations. That includes on May 17, 1974 when the LAPD engaged in a deadly shootout with the SLA. That shootout ended with a fiery explosion and the death of six SLA members: Nancy Ling Perry, Angela Atwood, Camilla Hall, Willy Wolfe, Donald DeFreeze and Patricia Soltysik. Gates became one of LAPD’s longest running chiefs but stepped down after the Rodney King beating and subsequent riots.

Lance Ito: As a law student, the future Los Angeles County Superior court judge, who presided over the infamous O.J. Simpson murder trial in 1995, visited the Chabot Gun Club in Oakland in the early 1970s. The gun club is where founding SLA member Joseph Remiro liked to take his comrades to learn to shoot guns. During Ito’s visit, Remiro apparently was there and invited attention from other visitors when he opened fire with an automatic weapon.