Sara Jane Olson (born Kathleen Ann Soliah, January 16, 1947) is an American far-left activist who was a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) in 1975. The group disbanded and she was a fugitive for decades before being arrested. In 2001, she pleaded guilty to attempted murder related to a failed bombing plot. In 2003 she pleaded guilty to second-degree murder related to the death of a customer during a botched bank robbery the SLA committed in California. Known then as Soliah, she was also accused of helping a group hide Patty Hearst, a kidnapped newspaper heiress, in 1974. After being federally indicted in 1976, Soliah was a wanted fugitive for several decades. She lived for periods in Zimbabwe and the U.S. states of Washington and Minnesota.
While in Minnesota, she legally changed her name to Sara Jane Olson, married, and had a family. Arrested in 1999, she pleaded guilty in 2001 to two counts of possessing explosives with intent to murder, and in 2003 to second-degree murder, both stemming from her SLA activities in the 1970s. She was sentenced to 14 years in prison. She was mistakenly released for five days in March 2008 due to an error made in calculating her parole and was rearrested. She was released on parole on March 17, 2009.
On November 4, 2020, Olson was arrested along with several others for blocking Interstate 94 in Minneapolis during a protest.
Early life and education
Kathleen Soliah was born on January 16, 1947, in Fargo, North Dakota, the daughter of Elsie Soliah (née Engstrøm) When she was eight, her conservative Norwegian Lutheran Soliah attended the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she initially majored in English. In college, she participated in theater and was cast in a production of J.B.
She met Angela Atwood at an acting audition where they both won lead roles. They became inseparable during the play's run. Atwood tried to sponsor Soliah as a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), a leftist group she had joined. Soliah, Kilgore, and Soliah's brother Steve and sister Josephine followed the SLA closely without joining.
Atwood and five other core members of the SLA, including leader Donald DeFreeze, were killed in May 1974 during a standoff and shootout with police at a house near Watts, Los Angeles. They were being pursued for armed robbery of banks, the November 1973 murder of Oakland school superintendent Marcus Foster, and the 1974 kidnapping of heiress Patty Hearst.
The Soliahs organized memorial rallies for the SLA victims, including one in Berkeley's Willard Park (called Ho Chi Minh park by activists), where Soliah spoke in support of Atwood and was covertly filmed by the FBI.
She said that SLA members had been:
Fidler said that under California law, the Board of Prison Terms could later reduce the sentence. On February 14, 2003, she was sentenced to the maximum term allowed under her plea bargain, six years,
The state <!-- or federal case? -->appealed and an appeals court panel restored her full 14-year sentence as of April 12, 2007. It ruled that a lower court did not follow procedure when it allowed Olson to appeal.
Olson served her time at the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla. Her custody status was "Close A", which is reserved for inmates requiring the most supervision. This status limited her privileges and required that she be counted seven times a day. It also prevented her from seeking relocation to a facility closer to her home. David Nickerson, Olson's attorney, said that her status reflected the Department of Corrections' view that she was a potential flight risk.
In a 2007 interview with Marie Claire magazine (published by Hearst Corporation), Olson's 23-year-old daughter Emily Peterson dismissed her mother's radical past with the SLA. She said of her mother, "She lived in Berkeley. It was kind of normal... I always tell people she wasn't a terrorist. She was an urban guerrilla." Olson never publicly expressed remorse or regret for her actions.
Release from prison and rearrest
Olson was released on parole from the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla on March 17, 2008. For five days, she stayed at her mother's home in Palmdale and spent some time hiking with her husband.
On March 21, 2008, she was rearrested when it was decided that she had been mistakenly released a year early from prison due to a miscalculation by the parole board. Her attorney claimed that the action was politically motivated.
Release and parole
After serving seven years in prison, about half her sentence, Olson was released on March 17, 2009, to serve her parole in Minnesota. Police unions in both Minnesota and California protested the arrangement, saying that they believed her parole should be served in California, where her crimes were committed.
In a letter to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty also protested Olson being allowed to return to Minnesota.
Interstate 94 protest
Years after her return to Minnesota, on November 4, 2020, Olson participated in a protest in Minneapolis called by the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression after the U.S. presidential election. Olson and several others marched onto Interstate 94, where they were met with a response from the Minneapolis Police Department and Minnesota State Patrol. Several hundred protesters were arrested.