Detective in Olson Case Reassigned

A Los Angeles police detective who helped track down former SLA member Sara Jane Olson--hunted for more than two decades by the officer’s father, an LAPD detective--has been taken off the case because he was approached about movie deals.

Det. Tom King, a member of the law enforcement team that tracked and captured the Symbionese Liberation Army fugitive, never signed a movie contract. And he immediately told his supervisors he had been contacted, a Los Angeles Police Department spokeswoman said.

But King was removed from any further role in the case to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest at a trial the LAPD is keenly interested in winning, said Lt. Sharyn Buck.

“It’s a case we feel very strongly about,” Buck said. “He was removed so we can keep this case as solid as we can.”

Detectives from the LAPD’s Robbery-Homicide division have joined its criminal conspiracy unit to help prepare the case for trial, Buck said. She added that she was not aware of any other officers involved in the case being approached about book or movie deals.

The story of Tom King and his father, Mervin, would be perfect for a movie script: The son inherits and solves a high-profile case in which his father played a prominent role for two decades.

Mervin King was present at the April 1974 police raid on an SLA “safe house” that ended in a shootout and fire that killed six SLA members. Fourteen months later, he investigated the group’s alleged attempt at revenge--planting nail-packed pipe bombs under police cars.

The bombing suspects eluded the father, now retired, but one of them was nabbed two decades later by his son.

That suspect is Olson, who was known as Kathleen Soliah before becoming Sara Jane Olson when she assumed a new life in Minnesota as a doctor’s wife and community activist. She is scheduled to go on trial in January on a 1976 grand jury indictment for conspiracy to kill police officers.

Despite the story’s dramatic appeal, any book or movie deal with King or others would seriously undermine the prosecution’s case, said Laurie Levenson, associate dean at Loyola Law School.

Levenson said a deal could cast doubt on the credibility of police witnesses; defense attorneys could accuse such witnesses of hyping their testimony to make their stories more compelling.

That would only add a burden to prosecutors who already have acknowledged that they face an up-hill battle to convict Olson. Two decades have passed, memories have faded, witnesses have died and the evidence is circumstantial.

One of Olson’s attorneys, Stuart Hanlon, said his office also had received calls about potential movie deals, which he has turned away.

Hanlon added that if anyone on the prosecution team has signed book or movie deals, the defense is entitled to information on the contracts under pretrial discovery rules.

If he finds any deals for story rights, he said, “the whole investigation could be called into question.”