FBI Reexamines Suspected SLA Links to 1975 Killing

The FBI is taking another look at an unsolved bank robbery and the shooting death of a woman in Sacramento County 25 years ago, long believed to be linked to the Symbionese Liberation Army, a spokesman for the FBI’s Sacramento office said.

Any decision to pursue charges will probably rest with local authorities, the spokesman said. For years, the Sacramento district attorney’s office has declined to pursue charges in the Carmichael bank robbery case. But ballistics evidence discovered since the 1998 arrest of alleged SLA member Sara Jane Olson has led Los Angeles authorities to urge that the Carmichael investigation be reopened.

“We are evaluating our options. We believe it is important to coordinate our actions with the Sacramento Sheriff’s Department and district attorney’s office,” FBI spokesman Nick Rossi said Friday. If pursued, the case would probably be prosecuted by the Sacramento district attorney because at the time of the April 1975 robbery there was no federal murder statute.

Spokesmen for the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department and district attorney’s office could not be reached for comment.

Los Angeles Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley issued a statement Friday acknowledging that his office is assisting authorities in Northern California:

“Our office continues to cooperate with other law enforcement agencies regarding the probe of an unsolved bank robbery and homicide committed in the Sacramento suburb of Carmichael, allegedly committed by members of the 1970s terrorist group that kidnapped newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst.”

In her book “Every Secret Thing,” Hearst said she drove a getaway car while three SLA members, including Olson, went into the bank and four others assisted outside. Hearst is expected to be a key witness in Olson’s Los Angeles trial.

But the potential for a Sacramento prosecution remained dim as recently as last month when Sacramento County Dist. Atty. Jan Scully announced that the case was “unprosecutable” after twice reviewing evidence uncovered by Los Angeles prosecutors since Olson’s arrest. Many of the new findings involved ballistic evidence analyzed with the aid of new technology.

Los Angeles County Deputy Dist. Attys. Michael Latin and Eleanor Hunter uncovered the evidence while preparing for the trial of Olson, then known as Kathleen Soliah, on separate charges in Los Angeles.

Olson is scheduled to go on trial in late April on charges that she tried to kill two Los Angeles police officers while a member of the SLA in 1975. She is accused of placing bombs under two police cars. The bombs did not detonate.

The bank robbery and the killing of Myrna Opsahl, a 42-year-old mother of four, remain the most serious unsolved crimes linked to the SLA.

The SLA was a small radical group started by an escaped felon in 1973 to overthrow the government. Several members died in a 1974 fire during a shootout with Los Angeles police.

But the SLA is believed to have regrouped and carried out several other crimes, including the bank robbery.

Despite the announcement by Scully, Los Angeles authorities have refused to give up on a prosecution in the Carmichael case.

They have been encouraged by Ospahl’s son, Jon, of Riverside.

Detectives with the Los Angeles Police Department and the district attorney’s office met with newly elected Sacramento County Sheriff Lou Blanas a few weeks ago.

Police Chief Bernard C. Parks also has called Blanas to encourage him to pursue the case.

The closest authorities came to a conviction in the Carmichael case was in 1976 when the U.S. attorney’s office prosecuted Olson’s brother, Steve Soliah, for bank robbery. He was acquitted.