Betty Van Patter (c.1932 – December 13, 1974) was a bookkeeper for the Black Panther Party who was beaten and murdered.
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.
Later that year, after a dispute with Brown allegedly over financial irregularities, Van Patter went missing on December 13, 1974. Some weeks later, her severely beaten corpse was found on a San Francisco Bay beach.
Though the case remains officially unsolved, former Panther supporter David Horowitz has maintained for years that Elaine Brown was directly responsible for the murder. He has said Brown believed Van Patter was about to "blow the whistle" on the misappropriation of funds by certain party members and according to Mother Jones magazine, the Black Panther Party is “almost universally believed to be responsible”.
Famous quotes containing the words betty, van and/or patter:
“He could jazz up the map-reading class by having a full-size color photograph of Betty Grable in a bathing suit, with a co- ordinate grid system laid over it. The instructor could point to different parts of her and say, “Give me the co-ordinates.”... The Major could see every unit in the Army using his idea.... Hot dog!”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
“I passed a tomb among green shades
Where seven anemones with down-dropped heads
Wept tears of dew upon the stone beneath.”
—Unknown. The Thousand and One Nights.
AWP. Anthology of World Poetry, An. Mark Van Doren, ed. (Rev. and enl. Ed., 1936)
“Houndsditch was ... a crumbling and smoke-grimed necropolis in boarded windows, mummified everywhere by old railings, stagnant air, and cobwebs, where draughty hallways reek with the smell of stale cabbage, Blakean children weep soot, and merchants patter with Mammon and make God evanescent.”
—Alexander Theroux (b. 1940)