Justice Served

By TAD BARTIMUS

Most of us get one life to live. Sara Jane Olson is on her fourth.

The accused Symbionese Liberation Army terrorist was sentenced earlier this month for conspiracy to commit murder by helping to plant bombs under two Los Angeles patrol cars in 1974.

Kathleen Soliah, alias Kathy Silas, alias Kathy Olsen, alias Sara Jane Olson, has lived lives as a freckle-faced, Palmdale (Calif.) High School spirit champ and young Republican; a terrorist sympathizer; a hunted fugitive, and now, a prisoner.

It's as though several different people have inhabited her one body, each successively discarded for a new one. But no matter what face she uses or which face she turns to the world, Soliah/Olson's journey in search of herself has turned into a tragic dead end. As she's made her way through 55 years, her passage also has damaged, and perhaps destroyed, the lives of dozens of others.

Prosecutors claimed Olson, then known as Kathleen Soliah, helped plant the bombs in retaliation for a 1974 SLA shootout with Los Angeles police that left six SLA members dead, including Olson's close friend, Angela Atwood.

Soliah/Olson has steadfastly denied any involvement in SLA crimes, but she pleaded guilty last October to the attempted bombing charges because, she said, she could not get a fair trial following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Later, she changed her mind and tried to plead innocent but lost a court battle to recant, and is now serving a judge's sentence of 20 years to life in prison.

Soliah/Olson and four other SLA members also were charged this month with robbery and murder stemming from the 1975 robbery of a Carmichael, Calif., bank in which a bystander was killed. She has pleaded innocent.
The 1960s and 1970s were dark times in America. Not only was rage in the streets and on college campuses, it also festered in the secret hearts of many citizens. A feeling of powerlessness, of being disconnected from the democratic process, spurred thousands to use peaceful civil disobedience to protest against the Vietnam War, slow progress on civil rights and Watergate corruption.
However, a handful of Americans, calling themselves "revolutionaries," became common criminals who used guns and bombs to try to disrupt the status quo. These college-educated anarchists came mostly from middle-class white families, which had prospered from that stability.

Why some turned to violence and others didn't remains a mystery. For Olson, it was a chance encounter with Atwood in acting class that started her down the road to prison. Olson swears she was never an SLA member, but she sympathized with the SLA's pledge to overthrow "the fascist insect that preys upon the life of the people."

For three years, some of Soliah/Olson's closest friends were terrorists. As many of them were killed or captured, she went underground. If she had nothing to hide or be afraid of -- if she were innocent -- why didn't Soliah/Olson give herself up? Another mystery.

In her third incarnation, Soliah/Olson became the epitome of an establishment woman in St. Paul, Minn., a New Age Betty Crocker who married a doctor, had three daughters, lived in a five-bedroom mock-Tudor house in the suburbs, drove carpools in her minivan and dabbled in amateur theater.

Starring in her own secret production, Soliah/Olson's double life surely haunted her every waking moment, and her nightmares, too. As she play-acted her way from youth to middle age, she could never be certain who she was at any given moment, never feel safe from exposure, but miraculously, for 24 years, one of America's most wanted fugitives was a model citizen.

When she finally was caught after her photo appeared on a TV crime show, there was shock and disbelief in Minnesota. Her children were devastated. Her husband was heartbroken. Her friends helped raise $1 million in bail money.

Soliah/Olson's reaction? To self-publish a cookbook, "Serving Time: America's Most Wanted Recipes," and peddle it to raise defense money at book signings where she served coffee and cookies.

With all of her personas and disguises, Soliah/Olson seems disconnected to her own life. On a trip back to Palmdale shortly after her arrest, she sat in the Sunday school room of St. Stephen's Lutheran church and told a reporter for the Antelope Valley Press it was hard to remember details of her childhood:

"My life is so different now and I've changed so much. I don't really remember how I felt then, and it doesn't really matter. All that matters is where (my life) is now."

© 2002 The Women Syndicate

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