Former fugitive SLA member leaves prison

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.

Soliah’s disappearance inadvertently led authorities to Hearst, who had joined the SLA after being kidnapped. Los Angeles detectives who were tracking Soliah raided two San Francisco apartments, where authorities found Hearst and other SLA members.

Soliah’s second life came to an abrupt end in 1999 when she was apprehended soon after being featured on TV’s “America’s Most Wanted.” Her case was moving toward trial on Sept. 11, 2001. After the terrorist attacks, Soliah struck a plea deal in the bombing attempt, saying she feared she would not get a fair trial in such an atmosphere.

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.

Inmate W94197 reported for work in the prison yard shortly after 8 each morning. She earned 24 cents an hour emptying trash cans and tidying up. Soliah chafed under her placement in the security group “Close A,” among the most intensely supervised inmates, who are denied privileges and required to be counted seven times a day. In interviews and letters sent to The Times, she said other inmates often confronted her, with one saying she was rumored to be a member of Al Qaeda. Peterson visited about 10 times a year, bringing at least one of the couple’s three daughters each time. Prison rules allowed one kiss and one hug at the start of each visit and a second at the end.

Soliah had no discipline problems while in prison, according to Terry Thornton, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. While on parole, she must remain in Los Angeles County, Thornton said, but has submitted a request to be allowed to live elsewhere -- presumably Minnesota, where her husband lives.

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joel.rubin@latimes.com