Sara Jane Olson
Sara Jane Olson is an American far-left activist who was a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army in 1975. The group disbanded and she was a fugitive for decades before being arrested. In 2001, she pleaded guilty to attempted murder related to a failed bombing plot. In 2003 she pleaded guilty to second-degree murder related to the death of a customer during a botched bank robbery the SLA committed in California. Known then as Soliah, she was also accused of helping a group hide Patty Hearst, a kidnapped newspaper heiress, in 1974. After being federally indicted in 1976, Soliah was a wanted fugitive for several decades. She lived for periods in Zimbabwe and the U.S. states of Washington and Minnesota.
While in Minnesota, she legally changed her name to Sara Jane Olson, married, and had a family. Arrested in 1999, she pleaded guilty in 2001 to two counts of possessing explosives with intent to murder, and in 2003 to second-degree murder, both stemming from her SLA activities in the 1970s. She was sentenced to 14 years in prison. She was mistakenly released for five days in March 2008 due to an error made in calculating her parole and was rearrested. She was released on parole on March 17, 2009.
On November 4, 2020, Olson was arrested along with several others for blocking Interstate 94 in Minneapolis during a protest.
Early life and education
Kathleen Soliah was born on January 16, 1947, in Fargo, North Dakota, the daughter of Elsie Soliah and Martin Soliah, while her family was living in Barnesville, Minnesota. When she was eight, her conservative Lutheran family moved to Palmdale, California, where her father worked as an English teacher and coach at Palmdale High School. Soliah attended the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she initially majored in English. In college, she participated in theater and was cast in a production of ''J.B.''Symbionese Liberation Army
After graduating with a bachelor of arts degree in theater, Soliah moved to Berkeley, California, with her boyfriend, James Kilgore.She met Angela Atwood at an acting audition where they both won lead roles. They became inseparable during the play's run. Atwood tried to sponsor Soliah as a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army, a leftist group she had joined. Soliah, Kilgore, and Soliah's brother Steve and sister Josephine followed the SLA closely without joining.
Atwood and five other core members of the SLA, including leader Donald DeFreeze, were killed in May 1974 during a standoff and shootout with police at a house near Watts, Los Angeles. They were being pursued for armed robbery of banks, the November 1973 murder of Oakland school superintendent Marcus Foster, and the 1974 kidnapping of heiress Patty Hearst.
The Soliahs organized memorial rallies for the SLA victims, including one in Berkeley's Willard Park, where Soliah spoke in support of Atwood and was covertly filmed by the FBI.
She said that SLA members had been:
Soliah asserted that Atwood "was a truly revolutionary woman... among the first white women to fight so righteously for their beliefs and to die for what they believed in".
Founding SLA member and fugitive Emily Harris visited Soliah, who was working at a bookstore. Soliah later recalled, "I was glad she was alive. I expected them to be killed at any time." She felt sorry for the group and agreed to help the remaining members hide from the police and FBI. She assisted them by procuring supplies for their San Francisco hideout, and birth certificates of dead infants that could be reused for false identification.
Crocker National Bank robbery and Myrna Opsahl murder
On April 21, 1975, SLA members robbed the Crocker National Bank in Carmichael, California. In the process they killed Myrna Opsahl, a mother of four depositing money for her church.Patty Hearst, who had acted as getaway driver during the crime, later provided the information that led police to implicate the SLA in the robbery and murder. She identified Soliah as one of the robbers. According to Hearst, Soliah kicked a pregnant teller in the abdomen, leading to her suffering a miscarriage.
Police later searched Soliah's room at the SLA safehouse on Precita Avenue in San Francisco. They found several rounds of 9 mm ammunition on the floor and in a 9 mm Browning Hi-Power semi-automatic pistol in Soliah's dresser drawer. Manufacturing marks appeared to match similar cartridges found in Opsahl's body during the autopsy. In 2002, new forensics technology allowed police to link these shells definitively to those found at Crocker Bank; they charged former members of SLA, including Soliah, with the crime. Prosecutor Michael Latin said that Soliah was tied to the crime through fingerprints, a palm print, and handwriting evidence. The palm print was found on a garage door where the SLA kept a getaway car.
Los Angeles Police Department bombs
On August 21, 1975, a bomb that came close to detonating was discovered where a Los Angeles Police Department patrol car had been parked earlier in front of an International House of Pancakes restaurant. After the bomb was discovered, all Los Angeles police were ordered to search under their cars and another bomb was found in front of a police station about a mile away. Soliah was accused of planting the bombs in an attempt to avenge the SLA members who had died in 1974 in the shootout with LA police.The pipe bombs were rigged to detonate as the patrol cars drove away. One police officer present that day described the first bomb as one of "the most dangerous pipe bombs he had ever seen" and said:
Soliah and five other SLA members were indicted in 1976 for setting the police bombs. She vanished before the trial could start. When Soliah was brought to trial at the turn of the century, prosecutors did not believe the evidence against her was a "slam dunk" but did believe it was enough to convince a jury of her guilt. Two witnesses who testified in the 1976 grand jury indictment had died by the time Soliah was tried. At the grand jury, a plumber who had sold materials used in the bomb had picked Soliah out of a lineup as one of the buyers. A bomb expert had said the explosive could have been built in Soliah's apartment. Police could not identify any fingerprints on the devices other than those of the officers who had disarmed them. But Soliah's fingerprint, handwriting, and signature were identified on a letter sent to order a fuse that could only be used for bomb-making. Components matching those used in the police car bombs were found in a locked closet at the Precita Avenue house where Soliah lived with the other remaining members of the SLA.
Underground life, capture, and prosecution
In February 1976, a grand jury indicted Soliah in the bombing case. Soliah went underground and became a fugitive for 23 years.She moved to Minnesota, having assumed the alias Sara Jane Olson. Olson is a common surname in the state because of the large Scandinavian-American population. In 1980, she married physician Gerald Frederick "Fred" Peterson, with whom she had three daughters.
Olson and Peterson also lived in Zimbabwe, where Peterson worked for a British medical missionary group. After their return, they settled in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where Olson picked up her acting career. She was active in Saint Paul on community issues. Her husband described the family as interested in progressive social causes.
On March 3, 1999, and again on May 15, 1999, Soliah was profiled on the America's Most Wanted television program. After a tip generated by the show, she was arrested on June 16, 1999. Soliah was charged in the police bomb case with conspiracy to commit murder, possession of explosives, explosion, and attempt to ignite an explosive with intent to murder.
Shortly after her arrest, Soliah legally changed her name to Sara Jane Olson. She also published a cookbook, Serving Time: America's Most Wanted Recipes.
On October 31, 2001, she accepted a plea bargain and pleaded guilty to two counts of possessing explosives with intent to murder. As part of a plea bargain, the other charges were dropped.
Plea controversy
Immediately after entering the plea, Olson told reporters that she was innocent. She said that she had taken a plea bargain because, due to the political climate after the September 11 attacks, she believed that an accused bomber could not receive a fair jury trial:It became clear to me that the incident would have a remarkable effect on the outcome of this trial... the effect was probably going to be negative. That's really what governed this decision, not the truth or honesty, but what was probably in my best interests and the interests of my family.
Angered by Olson's announcement that she had lied in court, Superior Court Judge Larry Fidler ordered another hearing on November 6. There he asked her several times if she was guilty of the charges. Olson replied, "I want to make it clear, Your Honor, that I did not make that bomb. I did not possess that bomb. I did not plant that bomb. But under the concept of aiding and abetting, I plead guilty."
On November 13, Olson filed a motion requesting to withdraw her guilty plea, acknowledging that she understood the judge when he read the charges against her. Rather, she said:
Sentencing in explosives charges
On December 3, 2001, Judge Fidler offered to let Olson testify under oath about her role in the case. She refused. He said, "I took those pleas twice... were you lying to me then or are you lying to me now?" and denied her request to withdraw her plea.Observers expected her to serve three to five years, but on January 18, 2002, she was sentenced to two consecutive 10-years-to-life terms. At Soliah's 2002 sentencing hearing on the bombing, police officer John Hall, who had been in the car parked over the bomb, talked about a little girl who stood feet away with her family:
Fidler said that under California law, the Board of Prison Terms could later reduce the sentence. Olson's lawyers asserted that due to discrepancies between 1970s laws and current California laws, Olson would most likely serve five years, which could be reduced to two years for good behavior. The Board of Prison Terms did later change the sentence.
At Olson's sentencing hearing, her teenage daughter Leila, her pastor, and her husband spoke in her defense. Her mother testified on the stand that Olson had never been part of the SLA. She criticized prosecutors and police, who she asserted had harassed the family.