CHOWCHILLA, Calif. — Sara Jane Olson, the 1970s radical who assumed a new identity as a Minnesota housewife while spending a quarter century as a fugitive, was released from prison today, a corrections spokeswoman said.
Olson, 62, was freed just after midnight from the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, in the heart of the state’s farm country about 150 miles southeast of San Francisco, corrections spokeswoman Terry Thornton said.
Thornton said two parole agents picked Olson up and took her to an office in Madera County, where she was processed and released to her husband, Dr. Gerald “Fred” Peterson.
Olson served seven years — half her sentence — after pleading guilty to placing pipe bombs under Los Angeles Police Department patrol cars and participating in the deadly robbery of a bank in a Sacramento suburb. The crimes took place while she was a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army, most notorious for kidnapping newspaper heiress Patty Hearst.
She was released by mistake a year ago after California corrections officials miscalculated her parole date, joining her family for five days before she was re-arrested. Authorities now say she has served the proper seven-year sentence.
There was no immediate indication when Olson would head back to St. Paul, Minn., where she lived during her years as a fugitive. She was expected to first return to Palmdale, where her mother lives.
Critics, including police protective leagues in Los Angeles and Minnesota, had urged Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to have Olson serve her time in California. They said Olson should finish her parole where her crimes were committed.
“It is not enough to simply send her off to another state and hope for the best,” Los Angeles Police Protective League President Paul Weber said in a statement issued today. “It was a California mother of four she was convicted of murdering. It was Los Angeles police officers she attempted to blow up. We continue to believe that the community she targeted with her crimes retains the right to ensure she complies with the terms of her parole.”
In the 1975 robbery of Crocker National Bank near Sacramento, a 42-year-old mother of four who was trying to deposit a church collection was killed by a shotgun blast.
California state Sen. Jeff Denham invoked the bank robbery in a letter Monday to Schwarzenegger asking that Olson not be allowed to return to her adopted state.
Denham, a Republican from Merced, called Olson a domestic terrorist.
“She fled the state, changed her name, and lived a leisurely life of lies and deception in Minnesota, while the children of Myrna Opsahl were forced to grow up without a mother,” he said in his letter.
Schwarzenegger deferred to the corrections department.
In Minnesota, Olson developed an identity that was worlds apart from her California past. She volunteered in social causes and acted in community theater while raising the couple’s three daughters.
Her past resurfaced in 1999, when she was profiled on the television show “America’s Most Wanted,” and a tip led to her arrest.
The SLA was a band of mostly white, middle class young people. In addition to the Hearst kidnapping, it claimed responsibility for assassinating Oakland Schools Superintendent Marcus Foster and was involved in a shootout with Los Angeles police officers that killed five SLA members.
In a sign of those turbulent times, the group adopted a seven-headed snake as its symbol and the slogan “Death to the fascist insect that preys upon the life of the people.”
Olson was known then by her birth name, Kathleen Soliah. Her brother, Steven, was acquitted of charges that he was involved in the fatal bank robbery.
“We were young and foolish. We felt we were committing an idealized, ideological action to obtain government-insured money and that we were not stealing from ordinary people,” Olson wrote in an apology before her sentencing for the bank robbery. “In the end, we stole someone’s life.”
All but one other former SLA member have been released from prison.
Emily Montague-Harris was paroled in February 2007 after serving half her eight-year sentence. She says she accidentally fired the shotgun that killed Myrna Opsahl.
Montague-Harris’ former husband, William Harris, was paroled in September 2006 after serving half his seven-year sentence for acting as a lookout during the robbery. The couple previously spent eight years in prison for the Hearst kidnapping.
Hearst herself spent nearly two years in prison before her sentence was commuted by President Jimmy Carter. She was pardoned by President Bill Clinton in 2001.
Michael Bortin was paroled in February 2006.
Only James Kilgore remains in prison. He eluded capture in South Africa until his arrest in November 2002 and was sentenced in May 2004. He is scheduled for release in May.
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