The United Federated Forces of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) was a small American far-left militant organization active between 1973 and 1975; it claimed to be a vanguard movement. Six members died in a May 1974 shootout with police in Los Angeles. The three surviving fugitives recruited new members, but nearly all of them were apprehended in 1975 and prosecuted.
The pursuit and prosecution of SLA members lasted until 2003, when former member Sara Jane Olson, another fugitive, was convicted in a plea bargain and sentenced for second-degree murder related to a 1975 bank robbery by the SLA in Carmichael, California.
During its existence from 1973 to 1975, the group murdered at least two people, and committed armed bank robberies, attempted bombings and other violent crimes, including the kidnapping in 1974 of newspaper heiress Patty Hearst. Its spokesman was escaped convict Donald DeFreeze, but Patricia Soltysik and Nancy Ling Perry were believed to share group leadership.
In November 1973, the previously unknown SLA assassinated Marcus Foster, the black Superintendent of Oakland Public Schools, and wounded his deputy superintendent Robert Blackburn. This murder alienated the SLA from the local radical community.
From the beginning, the small group overwhelmingly comprised white members. After Thero Wheeler left in October 1973, disagreeing with plans for violence, DeFreeze was the SLA's only black member. Joe Remiro was Chicano, described as white in a February 1974 article in The New York Times. He had been active for a time in the Latino activist group Venceremos before it disbanded in 1973.
Contents
Ideology and symbols
In their manifesto "Symbionese Liberation Army Declaration of Revolutionary War & the Symbionese Program,” co-founders Donald DeFreeze and Patricia "Mizmoon" Soltysik wrote:
The name 'symbionese' is taken from the word symbiosis and we define its meaning as a body of dissimilar bodies and organisms living in deep and loving harmony and partnership in the best interest of all within the body.
The group intended the political symbiosis to encompass the unity of all left-wing struggles: feminist, anti-racist, anti-capitalist, and others. They wanted all races, genders, and ages to fight together in a left-wing united front, and to live together peacefully.
The group adopted a seven-headed hydra-like cobra symbol as a logo. The SLA featured this image on their publications.
History
Formation: DeFreeze escapes prison
The SLA formed after the escape from prison by Donald DeFreeze, who took the name "General Field Marshal Cinque." He had been serving five years to life for robbing a prostitute. DeFreeze took the name Cinque from the leader of the slave rebellion that took over the slave ship Amistad in 1839.
DeFreeze escaped from Soledad State Prison on March 5, 1973, by walking away while on work duty in a boiler room located outside the perimeter fence.
Some sources have suggested that DeFreeze was an informant from 1967 to 1969 for the Public Disorder Intelligence Unit of the Los Angeles Police Department.
Venceremos associates and future SLA members Willie Wolfe and Russell Little, concerned with the potential for exposure through surveillance at the high-profile Peking House, arranged for DeFreeze to move in with their associate Patricia Soltysik in the relative anonymity of Concord, California. DeFreeze and Soltysik became lovers and began to outline the plans for founding the "Symbionese Nation".
1973
On November 6, 1973, in Oakland, California, two members of the SLA killed school superintendent Marcus Foster and badly wounded his deputy, Robert Blackburn, as the two men left an Oakland school board meeting. The hollow-point bullets used to kill Foster had been packed with cyanide.
Although Foster had been the first black school superintendent of any major public school system, the SLA condemned him in their flyers for his supposed plan to introduce identification cards into Oakland schools, calling him "fascist." Foster had already gained the support of the school board to change the proposal.
Some SLA members had mistakenly believed that killing Foster would gain support for them in the Black community and help them recruit new members; instead they alienated most black people and other leftists. Harry Reynolds, a deputy superintendent in the system, said those who published the flyers had "irresponsible flapping at the mouth." In addition, he said "somebody didn't like this guy [Foster] bringing all these people together. They may have been jealous of the type of progress he was making."
Robert Blackburn, who served for a time as acting superintendent, later discussed how wrong the SLA was:
These were not political radicals, Blackburn said of the SLA. They were uniquely mediocre and stunningly off-base. The people in the SLA had no grounding in history. They swung from the world of being thumb-in-the-mouth cheerleaders to self-described revolutionaries with nothing but rhetoric to support them.
On January 10, 1974, Russell Little and Joseph Remiro, also SLA founding members, were arrested during an armed encounter with police. After police found extensive SLA materials at a house the group was renting, the two were charged with Foster's murder. Both men were convicted of murder in 1975 and sentenced to life imprisonment. Seven years later, on June 5, 1981, Little's conviction was overturned by the California Court of Appeal. He was later acquitted in a retrial in Monterey County.
Russell Little said later that in fact Soltysik had shot Foster, and Nancy Ling Perry and DeFreeze had shot Blackburn.
1974
After Remiro and Little were arrested, the remaining SLA members considered kidnapping an important figure in order to negotiate the release of their jailed comrades. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) found documents at one abandoned safe house revealing an action was planned for the "full moon of January 7". The FBI did not take any precautions, and the SLA did not act until a month later.
On February 4, 1974, publishing heiress Patty Hearst, a sophomore at the University of California, Berkeley, was abducted from her Berkeley residence at Apartment 4, 2603 Benvenue Avenue. This was less than three months after a November 1973 San Francisco Chronicle story announcing her betrothal to Steven Weed, which published their address. The SLA choice of Hearst was for maximum news coverage of their action.
The SLA next demanded a ransom from the Hearsts in the form of a food distribution program. The value of food to be distributed fluctuated: on February 23 the demand was for $4 million; it peaked at $400 million. The Hearsts created an organization, People in Need, which distributed free food, though the operation was halted when violence erupted at one of the four distribution points. The crowds were much greater than expected, and people were injured as panicked workers threw boxes of food off moving trucks into the crowd. The SLA then demanded that a community coalition called the Western Addition Project Area Committee be given charge of food distribution. The committee organized the distribution of 100,000 bags of groceries at 16 locations across four counties between February 26 and the end of March.
Terence Hallinan, the first attorney who represented Hearst, was planning to argue involuntary intoxication, a side effect of which is amnesia.
Hearst's attorney F. Lee Bailey used the Stockholm syndrome argument as part of her defense at trial. He claimed that she had been confined in a closet barely large enough for her to lie down in; that her contact with the outside world was regulated by her captors; and that she was regularly threatened with execution. Hearst's lawyer said that she had been raped by both DeFreeze and Wolfe. Both men were among those who died in 1974 in a firefight with police. The SLA publicly claimed to be holding Hearst according to the conditions of the Geneva Conventions.
1975
Emily and William Harris, a married couple who were founding members, remained at large as fugitives with Hearst. Claiming to lead the SLA, they later picked up a few more members and committed more crimes, including the 1975 armed robbery of a bank in Carmichael, California, in which a customer was killed.
Most of the small group were apprehended in 1975 and brought to trial; most accepted plea deals and served several years in prison.
Initially the Harrises and Hearst stayed in the Bay area. By early the next year, Bill and Emily Harris were leaders. They had taken refuge with Hearst for a period on the East Coast, where they were aided by former radical Wendy Yoshimura from San Francisco.
After the four returned to the Bay area, the SLA members recruited activists and siblings Steve and Kathleen Soliah, Kathleen's boyfriend James Kilgore, and Michael Bortin. Except for Yoshimura, who was Japanese American and born at the internment camp where her parents were held during World War II, all the new members were white.
On April 21, 1975, the SLA members conducted an armed robbery of the Crocker National Bank branch in Carmichael, California, in the Sacramento area. During the robbery, Emily Harris discharged her shotgun and accidentally shot and killed customer Myrna Lee Opsahl, a 42-year-old mother of four children. Five SLA members were ultimately charged in this murder and robbery.
After being apprehended following years as fugitives, four of them pleaded guilty to reduced charges in early 2002.
After a long and highly publicized search, Hearst was captured on September 18, 1975, along with the Harrises, Steven Soliah, and Yoshimura; they had been found in San Francisco safe houses. In Hearst's arrest affidavit, she claimed that SLA members had used LSD to drug her and had forced her to take part in the bank raid.
She was convicted of the Hibernia Bank robbery and sentenced to seven years in prison. After she had been in prison for 21 months, US President Jimmy Carter commuted the sentence to time served. She was pardoned by President Bill Clinton. The Harrises were convicted for their part in the Hearst kidnapping and spent eight years in prison. Police allegedly consulted psychics in searching for Hearst.
Aftermath
On February 26, 1976, a Los Angeles county grand jury indicted Kathleen Ann Soliah on explosives and conspiracy charges. She was accused of planting pipe bombs under two LAPD squad cars in August 1975, intending to kill police officers in retaliation for the six SLA members who died in the May 17, 1974 shootout in Los Angeles. The devices did not detonate.
Soliah went on the run, eventually moving to Minnesota. She lived as a fugitive for 21 years, changing her name and creating a new upper-middle-class life under the alias Sara Jane Olson. She married a doctor and they had three daughters.
The FBI arrested Soliah/Olson in 1999 after a tip was received by the television show America's Most Wanted, which had twice aired her profile. She was prosecuted in Los Angeles by its deputy district attorneys. Before going to trial in 2001, she pleaded guilty to possession of explosives with the intent to murder and was sentenced to two consecutive terms of ten years to life. In negotiation of the plea bargain, she had been told that she would serve no more than eight years. She attempted to change her plea, telling the judge that she had pleaded guilty only because she believed she could not receive a fair trial for bombing charges after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. She said that she was innocent of the making, possessing, or placing of the pipe bombs. The judge refused her request.
The Opsahl murder/Crocker bank robbery cold case had been pursued due to new evidence developed through the efforts of the Los Angeles deputy district attorneys who had prosecuted Olson. On January 16, 2002, first-degree murder charges for the killing of Myrna Opsahl were filed against Sara Jane Olson, Emily Harris, William Harris, Michael Bortin, and James Kilgore in Sacramento. All were living "above ground" and were quickly arrested except for Kilgore. He had been living in South Africa and remained at large for nearly another year.
On November 7, 2002, Olson, the Harrises, and Bortin pleaded guilty to reduced second-degree murder charges. The Harrises had divorced, and Emily had taken back her surname of Montague. She admitted to holding the murder weapon at the bank but said that the shotgun had gone off accidentally. Hearst had earlier said that Montague had dismissed the murder at the time saying, "She was a bourgeois pig anyway. Her husband is a doctor." In court, Montague denied having said this. She added, "I do not want [the Opsahl family] to believe that we ever considered her life insignificant."
Known members
Founding members
Donald DeFreeze (General Field Marshal Cinque Mtume), an escaped prisoner and major spokesman of the SLA, died by suicide during a police shootout in Los Angeles on May 17, 1974
Patricia Soltysik, alias Mizmoon Soltysik (Zoya), major theorist with Perry, killed in LAPD shootout on May 17, 1974
Nancy Ling Perry (Fahizah), major theorist with Soltysik, killed in LAPD shootout on May 17, 1974.
These three were responsible for the assassination of Marcus Foster and wounding of his deputy.
Thero Wheeler (Bayo), left the SLA after rejecting their turn to armed conflict and receiving death threats from DeFreeze.
Mary Alice Siem, Wheeler's girlfriend, left the SLA after receiving death threats from DeFreeze.
Russell Little (SLA pseudonym Osceola or Osi), arrested and convicted for the shooting of Marcus Foster. Little was in custody during the time when Patty Hearst was with the SLA. Little was sentenced to life in prison in April 1975. He appealed, winning a new trial in 1981 at which he was acquitted of the Foster murder. He now lives in Hawaii.
Joseph Remiro (Bo), arrested with Russell Little and convicted of Foster's fatal shooting. The SLA tried to gain freedom for Little and Remiro after their kidnapping of Hearst. Remiro was sentenced to life in prison in April 1975. He is serving the sentence at Pelican Bay State Prison, Crescent City, California. By 2004, he had been denied parole a dozen times. However, in 2024, author Roger Rappaport said that Remiro had been paroled in 2018, though this was not publicized at the time.
William (Willie) Wolfe (Kahjoh), killed in LAPD shootout on May 17, 1974.
Angela Atwood (General Gelina), killed in LAPD shootout on May 17, 1974.
Later members (after the Hearst kidnapping)
Patty Hearst (Tania), kidnapped and became a member of SLA. Arrested in 1975 and imprisoned for robbery, released in 1979, pardoned in 2001.
Kathleen Ann Soliah (alias Sara Jane Olson), a friend of Atwood. Soliah became more involved after her friend Atwood's death in the LAPD 1974 shootout. After being arrested in 1999 following decades as a fugitive, she pleaded guilty of charges related to her role in placing explosives intended for bombing the LAPD, and the California bank robbery and murder. She served seven years of a 14-year sentence before gaining parole in 2009.
Jim (James) Kilgore, Kathleen Soliah's boyfriend during the SLA period. As a fugitive, he escaped to South Africa, where he made a new life for years. He is now a research scholar at the Center for African Studies at the University of Illinois.
Steven Soliah, brother to Kathleen Soliah.
Michael Bortin, married to Josephine Soliah, sister to Kathleen Soliah.
Wendy Yoshimura, former member with her friend Willie Brandt of the Revolutionary Army, a violent activist group. She was convicted and imprisoned for the California bank robbery and murder with the SLA, and was later paroled.
Associates and sympathizers
Josephine Soliah, Kathleen Soliah's sister
Bonnie Jean Wilder, Seanna, Sally (a friend of Remiro's), and Bridget. Hearst identifies each of them in her book Every Secret Thing (1982) as potential members of the SLA.
Micki and Jack Scott, a writer and sports activist. While not an SLA member, he aided them as fugitives in the hope of writing a book with them about the Hearst kidnapping and other activities. Jack Scott participated in transporting the Harrises and Hearst, then fugitive SLA members, to different parts of the US, including his farmhouse in Pennsylvania. He volunteered to shelter them in hopes of writing a book on them with their cooperation. Scott, sports editor for the radical magazine Ramparts, died in 2000.
Cultural impact
The SLA distributed photographs, news releases and radio-quality taped interviews in which they explained their activities to the press. The Bay Area Research Collective was formed as an above-ground support group for the SLA, and distributed a mimeographed newsletter, The Dragon.