Betty Van Patter (12 October 1929-13 December 1974) was an American woman who worked as a bookkeeper for the Black Panther Party. She was raped and beaten to death after she threatened to reveal the party's doctoring of its books and its major tax problems.
Biography[]
Betty Louise Floyd was born in 1929, and she worked as a bookkeeper for the New Left Ramparts magazine before David Horowitz introduced her to Black Panther Party leader Elaine Brown in 1974. She was hired as a bookkeeper for the BPP's Educational Opportunities Commission and as an aide to Brown, but she soon discovered financial improprieties and threatened to expose the party and its leader Huey P. Newton. On 13 December 1974, while spending a night on the town with some friends, Van Patter was handed a note by a black-clad tall Black man, and she returned to the BPP gathering place at the Lamp Post bar. There, she was kidnapped and taken away, and, when a boyfriend called the bar in an attempt to find her, he was answered with, "The party has left." On 17 January 1975, Van Patter's body was found in San Francisco Bay, and the evidence suggested that she had been raped and beaten to death. Brown would later deny that she had killed Van Patter, but said that Van Patter was becoming too nosy about the Panthers' business and wasn't a benefit to the party. Van Patter's murder by the Black Panthers led to her former friend Horowitz abandoning leftism and becoming a neoconservative, regretting introducing Van Patter to the Black Panthers for the rest of his life.