Transcripts Verify Scarcity of Evidence in Soliah Case

A photo identification by a store clerk, long dead. A fingerprint on the inside of a locked door to a closet containing guns, nails, gunpowder and military manuals. A connection made by a bomb expert--also now dead.

Such is the circumstantial evidence against Kathleen Ann Soliah, the Minnesota homemaker accused of having been a bomb maker with the revolutionary Symbionese Liberation Army, according to a 236-page grand jury transcript unsealed Friday in Los Angeles after 23 years.

A review of the transcripts of three days of testimony before a Los Angeles grand jury in February 1976 verifies that the case against Soliah is, as the current prosecutor recently acknowledged in court, “hardly a slam dunk.” Prosecutors maintain, however, that they have enough evidence to take their case before a jury.

Soliah’s defense was quick to point out Friday that there was never any evidence directly linking their client to two bombs planted under Los Angeles police cars--no eyewitness or physical evidence putting her at the scene of the crime, no tales told by deal-seeking co-conspirators, no careless moves by a woman who was under FBI surveillance within days after the explosive devices were found and defused.

Said defense attorney Susan B. Jordan, “It was a weak case to start out with, and when the prosecution said it wasn’t a strong case, they were telling the truth.”

James Marshall, a salesclerk at a plumbing supply store, was the only witness to tie Soliah to the purchase of bomb-building materials.

He picked her picture out of a photo lineup, identifying her as the full-faced woman, “a little plump,” accompanying a blond, clean-cut man who purchased sections of pipe at the South Gate store.

Marshall could not identify the man. But he said of the woman, “The most prominent thing on her was her nose. . . . She didn’t speak or anything, didn’t smile or anything.”

Marshall is now dead. As a result, his grand jury testimony and that of another now-deceased witness, LAPD bomb expert Arleigh McCree, probably cannot be used against Soliah during a trial because she and her lawyers could not confront and cross-examine them.

The transcript also revealed that several fingerprints were lifted from one of the bombs, found under a police vehicle parked outside the LAPD’s Hollenbeck station early Aug. 22, 1975.

The only identifiable print, however, belonged to the LAPD officer who defused the device.

The prosecutor, Michael Latin, has admitted in court that the case is highly circumstantial, the evidence old and the memories of witnesses fading.

Latin is not commenting outside the courtroom, declining to discuss the indictment accusing Soliah, also known as Sara Jane Olson, on charges of conspiracy to kill police officers and of possessing and attempting to detonate explosive devices.

The defense is talking, however. The two lawyers are blunt in their attacks on the prosecution’s case.

“There is no evidence,” Stuart Hanlon, one of Soliah’s attorneys, has repeatedly told reporters. He denies that Soliah was a member of the SLA and that she had anything to do with building or planting bombs.

“She wasn’t there,” he said.

Soliah, a physician’s wife who feeds the homeless, reads to the blind and teaches English to new immigrants, was taken into custody in St. Paul last month, when FBI agents stopped her minivan just a few blocks from her ivy-covered, Tudor-style home.

She has pleaded not guilty and was released from jail Tuesday after 250 friends, neighbors and strangers raised $1 million bail in little over a week.

As Soliah flew home Friday for a reunion with her three teenage daughters, the newly unsealed grand jury transcripts provided a glimpse into the proceedings 23 years ago.

After hearing from 27 witnesses and examining 74 pieces of evidence--including the defused bombs and their components--the grand jury issued its indictment.

Authorities said they believe that Soliah helped plant the bombs to avenge the deaths of six SLA members in a 1974 shootout with police in South-Central Los Angeles.

Among the SLA dead was Angela Atwood, a close friend of Soliah. The group of self-styled revolutionaries was notorious for kidnapping newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst, who joined her abductors, adopted the moniker “Tania,” and later was convicted for her role in an SLA bank robbery.

Latin has hinted in court that Hearst is a potential witness against Soliah. In recent public remarks, Hearst, now married with two children, has expressed reluctance to relive the events of her past by testifying. She said her value as a witness is limited because she is a convicted felon.

Soliah came to police attention in June 1974--within days of the SLA shootout in Los Angeles--when she spoke at a demonstration in Berkeley. She was photographed by former San Francisco Police Officer Alexander Jason, who told the grand jury that he heard Soliah exhort the crowd:

“Tania, Emily and Bill, you have made your message clear. Keep fighting. We are with you.”

Emily and Bill Harris were believed to be hiding Hearst and shared an apartment with Soliah for several weeks before their arrests in San Francisco, according to testimony before the grand jury.

It was in a locked closet between the Harris’ bedroom and Soliah’s that FBI agents said they found bomb-building materials highly similar to those used to make the nail-packed devices planted under the LAPD vehicles. After forcing open the locks, agents said, they found a fingerprint matching Soliah’s on the inside of the door.

On a military manual, according to testimony, Soliah’s prints were found, along with those of her brother and sister, Hearst, the Harrises and other SLA members.

LAPD bomb expert McCree testified that he was convinced that the same person built the bombs planted in Los Angeles and a partial bomb found in the closet.

The bomb maker tightly wrapped the device with black electrical tape and drilled tiny holes in a clothespin triggering device.

McCree concluded that someone with access to the closet in San Francisco was probably the Los Angeles bomb maker as well.

In his testimony, McCree repeatedly referred to the bomb builder as “he”--which he later said was “a poor selection of words.”

McCree and another officer were killed in 1996 when a pipe bomb exploded in the North Hollywood garage of a movie makeup artist.

Bill and Emily Harris both served eight years for their part in Hearst’s kidnapping. They later divorced. Bill Harris, now remarried with two children, recently was trying to get a private investigator’s license.