A former member of the radical 1970s group Symbionese Liberation Army is back in custody after a clerical error miscalculated her prison release date, a California Department of Corrections spokesman said Saturday.
After serving six years in prison for trying to bomb police cars in the 1970s, former Symbionese Liberation Army member Sara Jane Olson has been released on parole and reunited with the family she hid with for years.
If you think life in America is wild and woolly these days, consider the early ’70s, when Radical Chic was de rigueur and when talk of the violent overthrow of the government wafted through space stations like Berkeley, Calif. There, such rhetoric was as much a part of daily life as clearlight acid and the tie-dye T-shirts favored by the radical children of orthodontists. Capping the weirdness of it all was the Feb. 4, 1974 kidnapping of the 19-year-old newspaper heiress Patty Hearst from her apartment in Berkeley, where she lived with her fiance, Steven Weed. The event became an
The story of the SLA gripped the nation. Now a film captures the craziness of the times. Robert Stone was editing his documentary about the Symbionese Liberation Army, the 1970s revolutionary group, when, only blocks away, a far more dangerous organization unleashed the most devastating attack ever on U.S. soil. “I was right there,” Stone recalls of working in Lower Manhattan’s Tribeca district on Sept. 11, 2001. As one of the first people to get out of the neighborhood, the filmmaker himself was surrounded, at one point, by dozens of news cameras. “Not only was I in the middle of
Former Symbionese Liberation Army members and where they are now: James Kilgore, sentenced Monday to six years in state prison for April 21, 1975, shotgun slaying of Myrna Opsahl during a bank robbery in Carmichael, a Sacramento suburb. Also sentenced April 27 to 54 months in federal prison on explosives and passport fraud convictions. Extradited from South Africa in November 2002 after 26 years living under an alias, Charles William Pape. Emily Montague, serving an eight-year sentence at Valley State Prison for Women, Chowchilla. The former computer consultant from Altadena confessed to pulling the trigger in Opsahl’s shooting, but claimed
SACRAMENTO – The long, violent saga of the Symbionese Liberation Army finally came to an end. SLA member James Kilgore was sentenced to six years in state prison Monday for the killing of a suburban Sacramento housewife during an April 1975 bank robbery that netted the would-be revolutionaries $15,000. Kilgore, 56, who evaded authorities for more than two decades before his November 2002 arrest in South Africa, was the last of five SLA members sentenced for the shotgun slaying of 42-year-old Myrna Opsahl, a mother of four who was in the Crocker National Bank depositing a church collection. ” I
SAN FRANCISCO – Former Symbionese Liberation Army member James Kilgore, who dodged authorities on bomb and murder charges for decades, was sentenced Monday to 41/2 years in prison on federal explosives and passport fraud convictions. Kilgore, who was extradited from South Africa in 2002 after living there as a professor, was a member of the 1970s radical group that kidnapped newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst. Authorities say he was the last unaccounted-for member of the revolutionary group to face justice. The 56-year-old was charged with possession of a pipe bomb that federal authorities said they found in his Daly City apartment
Independent (England), Nov. 8, 2002 http://news.independent.co.uk/ By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles Four former members of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), the Californian guerrilla group that kidnapped Patty Hearst, pleaded guilty yesterday rather than face trial for the last outstanding crime of their days of political violence – the murder of a disabled housewife shot dead during a 1975 bank robbery outside Sacramento. Under a deal worked out with prosecutors, who revived the case years after it had been abandoned because it was deemed to be unsolvable, the four defendants pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in exchange for assurances that
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, Aug. 2, 2002 http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-SLA-Robbery.html SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Three former Symbionese Liberation Army members pleaded innocent Friday to a 1975 bank robbery and murder. Prosecutors plan to call kidnapped newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst as the chief witness at the trial. Superior Court Judge Thomas Cecil set a Nov. 12 preliminary hearing for Emily Montague, 55; her ex-husband William Harris, 57; and Michael Bortin, 54. All were charged in January with killing 42-year-old Myrna Opsahl, a bank customer and mother of four who was depositing church collection money during the April 1975 robbery in suburban Carmichael. Defense