Contact: Eric Rose (805) 624-0572 orRyan Oliver (310) 854-8272
Los Angeles, March 11, 2009 – The St. Paul Police Federation submitted a letter to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Wednesday asking him to keep domestic terrorist Kathleen Soliah (AKA Sara Jane Olsen) out of their city.
“Soliah was an accessory to murder during a bank robbery and attempted to murder Los Angeles police officers with bombs,” St. Paul Police Federation President Dave Titus wrote in his letter. “These crimes occurred in California and her entire sentence should be served in California.”
The move by the 650-member St. Paul, Minn. police union joins the Los Angeles Police Protective League’s effort to keep Soliah in California, despite her wishes to move back to St. Paul. The League submitted its own letter to Schwarzenegger on March 6 arguing that Soliah would be better monitored in California because Minnesota does not have sufficient interest to do so.
“The police officers on both ends of this case are united in their opposition to Ms. Soliah’s attempt to once again run away from her crimes,” said LAPPL President Paul Weber. “Governor Schwarzenegger has the power to stop her this time, and we are asking that he exercise that power.”
Weber added that, “This is a woman who has never shown any remorse for terrorist activity that left one innocent person dead and could have killed LAPD officers. I don’t see why the state should cave to any of her requests.”
Soliah fled to St. Paul and went into hiding under the name Sara Jane Olsen for 24-years after attempting to set off car bombs on LAPD officers and for her involvement in a bank robbery by the Symbionese Liberation Army members that left customer Myrna Opsahl dead.
“Returning Soliah to the same neighborhood that harbored her during her 24-year flight from justice is hardly conducive to strict parole monitoring,” Titus wrote in his letter to the governor. “When Soliah has paid her entire debt to California, then and only then, should she be allowed to live where she chooses. Making parole convenient for the perpetrator is a travesty of justice.”
Background on Soliah Case
On August 21, 1975, LAPD officers, John Hall and James Bryan, were on routine patrol responding to radio calls in Hollywood Division. Around midnight, they took a break at the International House of Pancakes on Sunset Boulevard, parking their patrol car in front of the restaurant. Forty-five minutes later, they returned to patrol. A few minutes passed before an IHOP customer noticed a “long cylinder object” in the parking stall the officers had vacated. The police were summoned and soon identified the object as a pipe bomb. An alert went out over the police radio for all officers in the city to search under their vehicles. Ten miles from the IHOP, at Hollenbeck Station, a second pipe bomb was found under a parked vehicle used by a civilian anti-gang unit.
Police experts concluded the bombs were identical and deadly. Made from three-inch pipe and loaded with more than 100 concrete nails for shrapnel, the bombs were crafted to explode as the vehicles pulled out of their parking spots. The bombs were designed to be activated when the LAPD officers were inside their cars, while the gas lines were full and the engine was running. Experts concluded the IHOP bomb malfunctioned because Officer Bryan pulled out of the stall at a severe angle, wrenching two detonating screws one-sixteenth inch apart and preventing an explosion. The miniscule space between the screws was the difference between life and death, not only for officers Hall and Bryan, but probably for several other people just feet away inside the restaurant.
Kathleen Soliah changed her identity to Sara Jane Olson and went into hiding in Minnesota until she was arrested in 1999 after being profiled on the television show America’s Most Wanted. She was convicted in 2001 of attempting to kill the two LAPD officers. She was later convicted as an accomplice to the 1975 murder of Myrna Opsahl, a customer killed by the Symbionese Liberation Army during the robbery of a Carmichael, Calif. bank.
