Victim of SLA violence is resigned to ex-member’s release

The husband of Myrna Opsahl, a mother of four shot to death during a botched 1975 Symbionese Liberation Army bank robbery in a Sacramento suburb, hesitated to pass judgment on the release this week of former SLA member Kathleen Soliah. But he indicated he felt her time behind bars was hardly enough.

“It’s all pretty much in the past,” Dr. Trygve Opsahl, a retired surgeon. “The sentencing system is so complicated it’s pretty hard to comprehend… . I feel if somebody’s involved in murder it used to be the death sentence. But now they just quibble over whether it’s a few months or years in jail.”

Soliah, who has changed her name to Sara Jane Olson, was paroled this week from a California prison after serving about six years for her role in a plot to kill Los Angeles police officers by blowing up their patrol cars.

The white-haired convict had been sentenced to 12 years in prison. Like most California inmates, Olson 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.

Opsahl expressed hope that Olson can offer society some productive years.

“I hope she has learned something from this and can go out and be a good citizen and contribute to the community where she lives,” he said. “And still have some life left to live.”

As for his own tragic link to the notorious band of 1970s revolutionaries, “it’s done and over worth,” said Opsahl, 82, now remarried and living in the Sierra foothills town of Sonora. “And I’m kind of putting it out of my mind.”

The 61-year-old Olson, 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, Olson refused to comment. Her husband, Dr. Gerald Peterson, who was also at the house, said only that he was “relieved.”

Olson’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 Olson 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, Kathleen 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.

Soliah fled, changed her name, left California and married Peterson, an emergency room physician. The couple lived for a while in Zimbabwe before settling in St. Paul, Minn. She 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.

Olson’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, she 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.

Olson 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 in which another SLA member killed a customer. For the murder conviction, she received a one-year sentence. For the botched bombings, Olson initially was sentenced to five years and four months, but that term was extended to 12 years after a state prison 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. Olson 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 Los Angeles 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.

Olson 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.

joel.rubin@latimes.com