Sara Jane Olson
| Sara Jane Olson | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Kathleen Ann Soliah January 16, 1947 Fargo, North Dakota |
| Movement | Symbionese Liberation Army |
Sara Jane Olson (born Kathleen Ann Soliah on January 16, 1947) was a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) in the 1970s. She grew up in Palmdale, California, the daughter of Norwegian-American parents, Elsie Soliah (née Engstrom) and Palmdale High School English teacher and coach Martin Soliah. She went into hiding in 1976 after having been indicted in a bombing case. She has lived much of her life under the alias Sara Jane Olson, which is now her legal name. 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 received a sentence of 14 years in prison.
She was mistakenly released for five days in March 2008, due to an error made in calculating her parole, before being rearrested. She was finally released on parole on March 17, 2009.
Kathleen Soliah was born in Fargo, North Dakota, while her family were living in Barnesville, Minnesota. When she was eight, her conservative Lutheran family relocated to Southern California. After graduating from the University of California, Santa Barbara, Soliah moved to Berkeley, California, with her boyfriend, James Kilgore. There, 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 into the SLA. Regardless, Soliah and Jim Kilgore, along with her brother Steve and sister Josephine followed the SLA closely, but did not join.
When Atwood and other core members of the SLA were killed in 1974 during a standoff with police near Watts, Los Angeles, following their murder of the Oakland school superintendent, the Soliahs organized memorial rallies, including a rally in Berkeley's Willard Park (called Ho Chi Minh park by activists) where Soliah spoke in support of her friend Atwood, while being covertly filmed by the FBI. At that rally, Soliah said that her fellow SLA members had been:
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