SLA Terrorist Turned Progressive Activist Walks Free

This woman should have received far more jail time than she did, and not only did she get a relatively light sentence, she now walks free after serving only six years for trying to murder Los Angeles policemen.

Kathleen Soliah, a former member of the radical Symbionese Liberation Army, was released on parole this week from a California women's prison after serving about six years behind bars for her role in a plot to kill Los Angeles police officers by blowing up their patrol cars.

The white-haired convict, who has changed her name to Sara Jane Olson, had been sentenced to 12 years in prison. Like most California inmates, Soliah earned credit against her sentence for working while in prison. She served on a maintenance crew that swept and cleaned the main yard of the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla, prison officials said.

The 61-year-old Soliah, who was released Monday, must now serve a three-year parole, although prison officials declined to provide the conditions of her release.

Reached at her family's home in Palmdale on Thursday, Soliah refused to comment. Her husband, Dr. Gerald Peterson, who was also at the house, said only that he was "relieved."

Soliah's attorney, Shawn Chapman Holley, said, "We're thrilled she's out and can return to her family. For someone who was not a danger or a threat to society, it was six years too long."

Los Angeles police see Soliah in far harsher light.

She "attempted to murder LAPD officers by bombing two police cars," said Tim Sands, president of the Police Protective League, which represents the city's 9,300 rank-and-file officers. "She needs to serve her full time in prison for these crimes and does not deserve time off for working in prison. Criminals who attempt to murder police officers should not be able to escape justice simply because they have good lawyers."

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.

She changed her name to Sara Jane Olson, left California and married Peterson, an emergency room physician. The couple lived for a while in Zimbabwe before settling in St. Paul, Minn. Soliah lived the quiet life of a homemaker and mother of three daughters in a Tudor-style home in an upscale neighborhood near the Mississippi River and performed in a local theater's Shakespeare productions.

I wonder whether she'll now return to being a community activist?

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune describes the attitude of the liberal community in St. Paul after learning of her past in these terms: "In the days since her June 16 arrest, Olson [Soliah] has been almost canonized: reader of newspapers for the blind, volunteer among victims of torture, organizer of soup kitchens. The office manager of the Minnehaha United Methodist Church, where she is a member of the congregation, called on its members to build a "contingent of support." Twenty of them were said to have been in court in California on the day she was arraigned.

Soliah's brother-in-law, Michael Bortin, was a Berkeley radical and with his wife Josephine (who is Soliah's sister) was also an SLA member. Recently, Bortin attempted to explain to the press the relationship between the radical gangster Soliah and the St. Paul housewife "Sara Jane Olson," who was such an upstanding member of the progressive community: "There's not this dichotomy between what Kathy was and what she is now. She was doing the same things in the early Seventies."