(Sara Jane Olson)

January 16, 1947

Terrorist

In 1975 Kathleen Soliah joined the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), a radical political group best remembered for its 1974 kidnapping of newspaper heiress Patty Hearst (see entry). According to Hearst, Soliah participated in a bank robbery in which a bank customer, Myrna Opsahl, was shot and killed. In 1976 Soliah was charged with conspiracy to commit murder by attempting to bomb two police cars. While most of the SLA was killed or captured by the late 1970s, the fugitive Soliah slipped into suburbia, changing her name and her identity to become Sara Jane Olson. After information about her was aired on the television program America’s Most Wanted in June 1999, she was arrested. In 2001 she was found guilty of conspiracy, and in 2002 she was charged with Opsahl’s murder.

From Fargo to Berkeley

Kathleen Ann Soliah was born in Fargo, North Dakota...