Olson Case Revives Calls for Prosecution in Killing Tied to SLA

The shooting death of Myrna Opsahl during a bank robbery in Carmichael, Calif., remains unsolved more than 25 years later even though the case could hardly be considered a classic whodunit.

Authorities have long considered it a foregone conclusion that the heist and killing were committed by the Symbionese Liberation Army, the radical 1970s group best known for the kidnapping of newspaper heiress Patty Hearst.

Hearst detailed the robbery and shooting of the mother of four in her book, “Every Secret Thing.” The Hearst estate even settled a wrongful death lawsuit with Opsahl’s family years ago.

But to this day, no one has served a day in jail for the crime. In fact, no one has even been charged with murdering Opsahl, 42, who was shot to death on her way to deposit church collection money.

And last week, Sacramento County Dist. Atty. Jan Scully made it clear that the decades-old case is not likely to be prosecuted any time soon--despite claims by the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office and the Los Angeles Police Department that they have uncovered new evidence while preparing for the upcoming trial of alleged SLA fugitive Sara Jane Olson, then known as Kathleen Soliah, on separate charges in Los Angeles.

Sacramento County district attorney’s office spokeswoman Robin Shakely says the robbery at the Crocker National Bank branch near Sacramento remains “not prosecutable” despite evidence presented on two occasions in recent months by Los Angeles law enforcement officials.

She added that her office will monitor Olson’s trial in case additional evidence is revealed. Sacramento County prosecutors will pay particularly close attention to the testimony of Hearst, who says she drove a getaway car while three SLA members, including Olson, went into the bank and four others assisted outside.

“We anxiously await the opportunity to evaluate the evidence and witnesses that are presented in the Los Angeles trial in hopes it will provide additional information to further our prosecution efforts,” said Shakely of the trial scheduled to start in Los Angeles this spring.

Olson has been charged with trying to kill two LAPD officers in 1975 by placing pipe bombs under two patrol cars while she was a member of the SLA. Olson was arrested in St. Paul, Minn., in 1998 after being on the lam for more than two decades.

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

Despite Sacramento County’s latest refusal to pursue charges in the bank robbery case, Los Angeles authorities have not given up. They have been spurred on by the pleas of one of the victim’s sons, Dr. Jon Opsahl, who has expressed frustration since Olson’s arrest that stronger efforts have not been made in Sacramento to press charges in the Carmichael shooting.

This week, members of the LAPD task force and district attorney’s office plan to travel to Sacramento to meet with the county’s new sheriff, Lou Blanas, said LAPD spokeswoman Sharon Papa. Because Blanas is newly elected, he has not yet seen the evidence, she said. LAPD Chief Bernard C. Parks has already called Blanas to try to persuade him that the case should be pursued in Sacramento.

Scully is not the only Sacramento County district attorney to refuse to file charges in the case. Four other district attorneys declined to seek an indictment in the April 21, 1975, robbery and killing. One former district attorney did present the case to a grand jury in 1990 for investigative purposes, but he never sought an indictment. Sacramento officials were hoping at the time that some onetime SLA members would cooperate, Shakely said.

“Such cooperation was not forthcoming,” Shakely said. “Rather, it became apparent that these former revolutionaries were still ideologically entrenched and continued with their ‘the government-is-our enemy’ theology.”

But Los Angeles County Deputy Dist. Attys. Eleanor Hunter and Michael Latin and LAPD task force members have insisted that a lot has changed since then.

They have been telling Sacramento authorities that there is now ample evidence to seek an indictment, thanks to advances in technology that make it easier to analyze ballistics and fingerprint evidence.

Hunter and Latin have even offered to go to Sacramento to prosecute the case themselves.

The new evidence includes, according to law enforcement sources, a match of Olson’s palm print discovered in a Sacramento garage where SLA members had stored their getaway vehicles, including one believed used in the Carmichael robbery. Until Olson was arrested, they did not have a palm print to match with the old one.

The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office is also developing new ballistic evidence. Forensic experts are trying to link 19 live shells dropped inside the Carmichael bank with ammunition in the San Francisco apartments of SLA members, sources said.

Olson supporters, including her former attorney Stuart Hanlon, say the lobbying by Los Angeles authorities is improper and bizarre. Hanlon said he has never heard of one district attorney’s office trying to “strong-arm” another into filing charges.

“It raises questions about what is going on in this prosecution,” said Hanlon, who is still helping out with the Olson case. “There is either severe hatred of Sara Jane Olson in the district attorney’s office or the police are still running the district attorney’s office in L.A. County.”

Sandi Gibbons, a spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office, said Latin and Hunter are just doing their jobs. They have an ethical obligation to share the information with Sacramento County officials, she said, adding that the pair gathered much of it after rummaging through files scattered at law enforcement agencies throughout California, she said.

“This case has been delayed several times. So every time it is delayed we go out and find more evidence,” Gibbons said. “We shared it with the Sacramento district attorney’s office. They have to make their own decision about what to do with it.”

The Carmichael bank robbery is one of the most serious unsolved crime linked to the SLA.

Hearst described the crime in “Every Secret Thing,” claiming that Soliah (now Olson), James Kilgore and Emily Harris went into the bank while she and the others waited outside. In the book, Hearst wrote that SLA member Emily Harris said she shot Opsahl.

Harris has vehemently denied the claim and any involvement in the robbery.

“‘Unequivocally, I was not involved,” she told The Times in a 1999 interview. Olson, meanwhile, has denied that she was even a member of the SLA.

The closest authorities came to any conviction in the Carmichael case was in 1976 when the U.S. attorney’s office prosecuted Olson’s brother, Steve Soliah, for bank robbery. At the time, there was no federal murder statute.

He was acquitted, thanks in part to an alibi witness who a few days after the verdict admitted she was mistaken when she testified that she had spent the entire day of the robbery with Soliah.

As it turns out, the woman had actually been at a California state prison that day visiting her boyfriend. Prison officials even had photographs of her there.

Myrna Opsahl’s son, a physician who now lives in Riverside, said he remains baffled that so much is known about his mother’s death, yet so little has been done.

He has been encouraging Latin and Hunter to continue their efforts. He said Scully, the Sacramento district attorney, also has invited him to meet with her later this month, although he is skeptical of what will come of it.

He said he could accept the situation better if he believed that the Sacramento County district attorney’s office was making a sincere effort to prosecute his mother’s killers. But he says he believes that Sacramento authorities are trying to avoid the case because it is too controversial.

“I don’t believe they are really listening to the evidence in the case. They just keep trying to avoid prosecuting it any way they can by saying, ‘There’s not enough evidence,’ ” said Opsahl, who was 15 when his mother died.

For years, he said, he tried to put the injustice out of his mind, but when Olson was captured, it renewed his frustration.

He said he became even more angry when Olson published her cookbook, “Serving Time: America’s Most Wanted Recipes.” In the cookbook, published to generate money for her defense, Olson pokes fun at her arrest.

“I feel obligated to do something, especially when they show her ugly face on TV and she gets sympathy,” Opsahl said. “I want the truth to be known. The SLA killed my mother. It is not something they should get away with.”