Symbonian Advocate Freed

Michael C. Moynihan | March 21, 2008

Former SLA "urban guerrilla" Sara Jane Olsen (nee Kathy Soliah) has been released from prison after serving half of her sentence. The L.A. Times has details:

The child of a middle-class Palmdale family, Soliah joined the violent band of radicals best known for kidnapping newspaper heiress Patty Hearst in the mid-1970s. She was charged with taking part in a 1975 plan to plant pipe bombs beneath police cars in retaliation for a shootout with Los Angeles police that left six SLA members dead.

The nail-packed bombs didn't detonate when the triggering device on one malfunctioned. Not waiting around to make her case in court though, she fled.
[...]
Prosecutors scoffed at her reasoning, pointing to reams of documents, fingerprints and other evidence they had amassed against her. The deal aborted a trial that had promised high drama -- the saga of a fetching high school pep-squad member turned fugitive -- and a revisiting of the social tumult of the 1970s.

Soliah pleaded guilty to two charges of possessing a destructive device with the intent to murder and also struck a deal in a separate case, in which she pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for participating in a Sacramento bank robbery where another SLA member killed a customer. For the murder conviction, she received a one-year sentence. For the botched bombings, Soliah initially was sentenced to five years and four months, but that term was extended to 12 years by a state prison board after the board designated her a serious offender.

According to Patty Heart's account of the Carmichael bank robbery, which ended in the murder of church worker Myrna Opsahl, Soliah inquired "How's the woman who was shot?" The trigger woman, SLA member Emily Harris, deadpanned, "Oh, she's dead. But it really doesn't matter. She was a bourgeois pig anyway. Her husband is a doctor. He was at the hospital where they brought her."

Comments

Rimfax|3.21.08 @ 11:03AM|#

I first read it as "Sybian Advocate Freed" and prepared myself for hotness. Alas, there was none.

|3.21.08 @ 11:03AM|#

Lovely people. Just lovely. I am sure Ms. Olsen is well on her way to a cush teaching job somewhere or a good position in some progressive political organization.

|3.21.08 @ 11:07AM|#

Thank you, SLA, for giving us SWAT teams. You fucking morons.

Episiarch|3.21.08 @ 11:14AM|#

Uh, actually, Warty, you should thank Charles Whitman, but I'm sure the SLA made it worse.

Episiarch|3.21.08 @ 11:20AM|#

He was at the hospital where they brought her.

Now that's fucking cold. Inhuman, even. What a fucking disgusting creature.

Edward|3.21.08 @ 11:22AM|#

You marxists of the right have always needed a libertarian equivalent of Homo Sovieticus. Now you have her. Kathy Soliah is obviously the ideal Homo Libertarianus.

|3.21.08 @ 11:24AM|#

Edward,

Well, which is it? DMX or Soliah? I always thought Homo libertatensis was represented by Penn Jillette. Or, perhaps, Kurt Russell--call me Snake!

|3.21.08 @ 11:39AM|#

Heavens above, I was wrong about something. Imagine that.

Abdul|3.21.08 @ 11:39AM|#

I found this funny (from the article about Soliah's husband--ironically and ER doctor--visiting her in prison):

Prison rules allowed one kiss and one hug at the start of each visit and a second at the end.

Two hugs! Turn the hose on prisoner #W94197!

|3.21.08 @ 11:40AM|#

Good thing she wasn't carrying marijuana, she might have gotten life.

shecky|3.21.08 @ 11:45AM|#

ISTR SWAT teams predate the SLA.

We're all to blame, really. Blaming the SLA (or al Qaida) for SWAT teams (or warrantless wiretapping, extraordinary rendition, Patriot Act, etc) is a feeble attempt to let us off the hook for our faith in government to coddle us all.

Yes, we're the fucking morons here, for letting criminals scare us into submission.

|3.21.08 @ 11:57AM|#

I don't think the stupid bitch presents any danger to society. I don't think that six years was appropriate punishment for her crimes either. She should still be be on the first half of her time (20 years). If she was a male, she would be.

|3.21.08 @ 12:06PM|#

Maybe a publicly accessible database of convicted...

javier|3.21.08 @ 12:10PM|#

must be before my time. no idea what this article is about.

Dello|3.21.08 @ 12:32PM|#

Rimfax,
I misread it the same way...:)

Mark in Minneapolis|3.21.08 @ 1:37PM|#

The real warp-headedness in this story is how all of her Liberal friends were selling Sara Jane Olsen cookbooks and other such "I'm just an innocent mother / homemaker now" items in order to raise money for her defense. She was quite the little Liberal celebrity around here. I pity her children having to come to terms with the fact that their mother is a murderous phony bitch.

John l\'Douche|3.21.08 @ 1:52PM|#

"John | March 21, 2008, 11:03am | #
Lovely people. Just lovely. I am sure Ms. Olsen is well on her way to a cush teaching job somewhere or a good position in some progressive political organization."

Actually John, she has become an anti-intellectual warmonger just like you. Once you two meet, you can have really "explosive" conversations with each other.

Rhywun|3.21.08 @ 6:02PM|#

Wait a minute... it took them 25 years to find her?! That's some crack teamwork, boys.

|3.21.08 @ 6:56PM|#

Now she's free to sign up for the Obama campaign!

SIV|3.21.08 @ 7:00PM|#

I agree with J sub D

VM|3.22.08 @ 10:03AM|#

"Rhywun | March 21, 2008, 6:02pm | #
Wait a minute... it took them 25 years to find her?! That's some crack teamwork, boys."

they got distracted lookin for the WMDs...

[ducks]

Gunner|3.23.08 @ 10:09AM|#

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/03/23/MN4QVOVJT.DTL

Ooops! They made a mistake and had to rearrest her. Seems they counted the year wrong..

"1..2..4..7...Let her go boys"