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Having renounced her Republican
sympathies in college, Olson met SLA member Angela Atwood through
their mutual involvement in local theater. Olson sympathized
with their cause and allegedly became a member of the "second
team" that formed after the safe house fire. Atwood was among
those who died, prompting Olson to give a fiery speech at a Berkeley
rally, which was filmed by undercover police. Then she allegedly
assisted Patty, along with Bill and Emily Harris. Emily
recruited her into membership and she became a key player.
According to Hearst's memoir, Soliah had seemed to hardcore SLA
members "too flaky to be trusted," but as their numbers
dwindled, her name came to the top of the list. She was so
excited to be contacted that she immediately handed over all of her
ready cash to assist with the cause. She also persuaded her
sister to withdraw all her funds and hand over the money, and got her
brother Steve involved. "Kathy had promised," Hearst
writes, "that she would do everything she possibly could to help
us."
Soliah was embraced with enthusiasm, an enthusiasm that she
returned. She came up with names of other radicals who would
join and insisted that she was willing to take part in any warfare
needed to wound the establishment. She had a friend, Jack Scott, who
was a writer and who could offer safe haven across the country if they
needed it. He currently lived in New York.
As Scott came into the group, Hearst viewed him as someone who
believed he was smuggling slaves to freedom. He was doing
something noble, and in fact offered to arrange to have them all
driven across the country himself. He got his own parents to
take him and Patty. On that trip, she developed her impressions
of him as someone who wasn't quite okay---he talked a lot and he was
nervous all the time---while he developed his impressions of her,
which he apparently kept to himself.
In short, while readers of Hearst's book get an eyewitness account
of Soliah's whole-hearted involvement in several illegal activities,
it's also clear that Hearst is more of a participant than she admitted
when she was finally in custody. Nevertheless, her descriptions
of Soliah's behavior and attitudes certainly fortify the prosecution's
case. Soliah/Olson was unreservedly one of them.
In retaliation for the fatal fire, she
is thought to have placed pipe bombs in the tailpipes of two Los
Angeles police cruisers. Designed to blow a hundred construction
nails at anyone in the vicinity, as well as kill occupants of the car,
they failed to detonate. A hardware store employee identified
Olson from mug shots as the purchaser of a pipe used to make the bomb,
so she was indicted on charges of conspiracy to commit murder, for
which she could face 20 years to life in prison.
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The
house where Hearst was kept
(CORBIS) |
Ironically, it was through Olson that
the FBI located and arrested Patty Hearst. In 1975, they had her
under surveillance and soon discovered where the Harrises lived. Bill
and Emily were arrested on September 18th, while jogging. Olson
and her gang heard about the arrest on the radio, and fled. Then
Olson's brother, Stephen Soliah, was caught on his way to a second
safe house to warn Patty, and police soon found her there. Olson
quickly went underground. By some reports, she went to
Minnesota, where she met Fred Peterson, who was to become her husband.
They went together for a stint in Zimbabwe, where she taught English.
Then they returned to Minnesota, where Peterson was hired to be an ER
physician. They had three daughters and got involved in their
community. |
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Los Angeles Police Detective David
Reyes and his partner, Mike Fanning, acquired the cold case via the
son of Mervin King, the police captain who had been in charge of
investigating the SLA bomb scare on the police cruisers. Reyes
and Fanning started sifting through two boxes of records and soon
became obsessed with finding Soliah. With help from the FBI,
they interviewed Soliah's parents. They also acquired a
digitally-enhanced photo from experts working for "America's Most
Wanted," so they could see how Soliah would look two decades
later. Her mother, who had firmly resisted giving up any information,
said the photo did not look like their daughter and she pulled out a
recent photo to prove it.
Tracking more leads, the cops learned
through a reporter that Soliah was interested in a deal. The
L.A. police were not about to give her immunity or just a fine, so the
indirect conversation was over.
They speculated that Soliah might live
near her brother in Iowa and zeroed in on a professor that had a
similar appearance. That proved to be a dead-end. On May
15, 1999, the "America's Most Wanted" episode about Soliah
was televised, generating around twenty useless tips in response to
the impressive FBI reward. Then one paid off. With the
help of the St. Paul police, they stopped Soliah/Olson, now 52, for a
"traffic violation" and arrested her. She surrendered
but demanded her lawyer. At first, bail was denied, but then was
set at $1 million.
In October, four months after Olson's
arrest, Patty Hearst was ordered to appear as a witness for the
prosecution, because they intended to question Olson about other SLA
events besides the defunct bombs. Patty had written about
Soliah's escapades in her 1982 memoir, implicating her in several
crimes. Prosecutors believe that Olson had disguised herself as
a man to lead a 1975 bank robbery in Carmichael, California, in which
a bank customer was murdered. (Myna Opsahl, 42 and the mother of four,
was there to deposit church funds. She placed her adding machine
on the counter as ordered, and either Emily Harris or Kathleen Soliah
allegedly pointed a shotgun at her that went off.) They escaped
with $15,000.
Olson engaged Stuart Hanlon and Susan
Jordon to defend her. Hanlon had been the defense attorney for
other SLA members, Bill and Emily Harris (who served eight years for
kidnapping).
Among the items over which the
prosecution and defense argued were:
- The taped grand jury testimony of
the hardware store employee, now deceased, who identified Soliah
as the purchaser of a bomb part.
- The admission into testimony of the
history of the SLA crimes.
- The testimony of an explosives
expert, now dead, who evaluated the bombs and said that they could
have been fatal and that their components matched bomb-making
material found in Olson/Soliahs's apartment.
- Having cameras in the courtroom
(Olson wanted them).
- The testimony of James Bryan, a
police officer who claimed that Olson, as Soliah, looked at him
across the parking lot when the bomb failed to go off and she had
"hatred in her eyes."
In January 2000, Judge Ideman
made some rulings: the SLA history and Bryan's testimony were in,
there were to be no cameras in court, and the taped testimonies of the
hardware store employee was out. He also issued a strict gag
order---no one involved was to discuss the case or his rulings with
the media.
Another issue that suddenly arose was
the need to go to Oregon to get testimony from Jack Scott, with whom
Patty Hearst had allegedly had conversations while she was in the SLA.
If she was going to testify, then Olson was going to discredit her,
going all the way back to statements she had made under oath in 1975.
Scott claimed that Patty had resisted returning to her parents, had
been lovers with Willie Wolfe (rather than being raped by him), had
helped to plan the kidnap to escape her impending marriage, and was
the most zealous member of the SLA. He had observed her making
her "daily death list."
However, Scott had throat cancer and
was on his deathbed. They would have to go to him to get his
statement, but the judge wasn't so sure that was legal and prosecutors
delayed things further by claiming they would need a month to prepare
their own questions. On the day Ideman finally granted the
emergency order, February 4th, Scott succumbed to his illness and
died.
Then there were further delays, Hanlon
resigned in March to meet family obligations. Since Olson was
now out of funds, an alternative public defender, Henry Hall, was
provided by the state of California. The trial was postponed
until August so he could prepare.
It did not take place in August.
While Hearst waited to see if there
would indeed be a trial, President Carter interceded on her behalf
with President Bill Clinton. Just before leaving office, in
January 2001, Clinton issued a full pardon. Patty was grateful
to have her record expunged so that she could participate as a regular
citizen again, but Olson felt that this turn of events gave Patty more
credibility than she deserved.
A case this old is shaky at best, and
will likely be difficult to prosecute. Even in 1976, with 28
witnesses testifying before the grand jury, the case was mostly
circumstantial. With the loss of several key witnesses on both
sides, and with the tide of public opinion against wasting the money
to prosecute Olson, it's difficult to say what will happen.
However, there may yet be another interesting chapter in the strange
story of Patty Hearst.
Despite tearful pleas from her daughter, Sara Jane Olson was
sentenced to 20 years to life for her role in two attempted bombings in 1975.
Even though she may serve as little as five years, the sentencing
came just two days after Olson and four other members of the
Symbionese Liberation Army were charged in a separate case with the murder of a
bank customer during a 1975 robbery.
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