Ill Health Hits 3rd Witness in Olson Case

A witness expected to testify in the murder conspiracy case of alleged Symbionese Liberation Army member Sara Jane Olson suffered a heart attack Tuesday night and has been hospitalized, according to prosecutors.

Evelyn Burns, 78, has become the third elderly witness for the prosecution to suffer a health setback in the last couple of weeks. Prosecutors have been allowed to proceed with what are called conditional examinations, or interviews, of the witnesses before the trial starts.

Burns’ illness follows by one day the hospitalization for a broken hip of prosecution witness Marceline Jones, 80.

Both witnesses were supposed to testify before lawyers in a Sacramento courtroom Friday.

Instead, prosecutors hope to hold a status hearing on the case Friday in Los Angeles with defense counsel and Judge Larry Paul Fidler. The trial is scheduled to start Sept. 24.

Another witness, Dorothy White, 77, had been scheduled to be interviewed on Friday as well. However, she is in such failing health that lawyers went to her mobile home in Citrus Heights, outside Sacramento, last Friday to speak to her.

All three women were expected to supply information not about what Olson is charged with--planting bombs, which did not explode, under two Los Angeles Police Department squad cars in 1975--but about two bank robberies allegedly committed by SLA members in the Sacramento area.