Sacramento Sheriff to Revive Probe of ’75 Death
The Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department says it will, with the FBI’s help, revive a criminal investigation of the 1975 shooting death of Myrna Opsahl and robbery of Crocker National Bank in Carmichael, Calif.
Sheriff Lou Blanas said he is assigning a full-time investigator to the crime, which is believed to have been committed by members of the revolutionary Symbionese Liberation Army. The FBI also is assigning two part-time agents and a part-time crime analyst to assist.
“Law enforcement agencies and the [Sacramento County] district attorney’s office will work cooperatively to bring the case up to date, to do everything possible to lead this case to successful prosecution,” reads a statement released by the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department this week.
The Los Angeles district attorney’s office and the Los Angeles Police Department have been trying for the last several months to persuade Sacramento County officials to prosecute the decades-old case.
Los Angeles authorities became interested in the case, the most serious unsolved crime linked to the SLA, while preparing for the trial of Sara Jane Olson, who is charged with trying to kill two LAPD officers while a member of the SLA. Olson, formerly Kathleen Soliah, was arrested in 1998 after being on the lam for 25 years.
Blanas said he decided to concentrate on the case again because of promising evidence developed with the help of new technology. The new evidence links slugs found in Opsahl’s body and at the bank to a box of ammunition found at an SLA hide-out in San Francisco, according to sources.
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