Friends of ex-Symbionese Liberation Army member Kathleen Ann Soliah posted her $1 million bail Tuesday, allowing her to return to Minnesota to await trial on California charges that she planted bombs under police cars during the 1970s.
“I’m just looking forward to going home and being with my family and experiencing with my daughters the trauma of everyday teenage life, cooking food for my friends, saying hello to my dog Emma,” Soliah said after walking out of a county jail and being embraced by her husband.
Defense lawyer Susan Jordan told a judge that 250 people, including artists, lawyers, doctors, bankers, bakers and landscapers, had contributed large and small amounts to raise the $1 million. She asserted that Soliah would not violate their trust.
“If she absconded, one of these 250 people would know about it before the electronic monitoring people,” Jordan said.
That monitoring could include a video camera installed in Soliah’s ivy-clad St. Paul home that will verify her presence there each night, Jordan said.
Soliah, 52, had been a fugitive for 23 years before she was captured last month in St. Paul, where she had been living as Sara Jane Olson, a doctor’s wife, a mother of three and a local stage actress.
Bail was posted during a hearing before Superior Court Judge Larry Fidler.
Her husband, Dr. Gerald Peterson, and mother were in court. Soliah smiled in their direction as she was being led away.
Speaking forcefully after her release, Soliah said spending five weeks in custody was “a real education.” She thanked “friends who have been so supportive and who worked so hard for me, and put up their houses and their retirement funds to get me out of jail.”
Peterson spent some five hours waiting outside the jail for his wife’s release. He called the outpouring of support “astounding” and said members of the community already are collecting money for a defense fund.
Soliah was indicted in 1976 on state charges of conspiracy to murder and possession of explosives. Prosecutors allege that in 1975 she placed bombs under two Los Angeles police cars in retaliation for a 1974 shootout with police in which six SLA members were killed. The bombs did not explode.
If convicted, she could face up to life in prison.
The SLA was the radical group that kidnapped newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst, who later went to prison for taking part in an SLA bank robbery.
Soliah’s lawyers said there is no evidence linking her to the attempted bombings and said there will be no effort to plea-bargain. No trial date has been set.
Attorney Stuart Hanlon said that Soliah made a mistake only in running from the law at the time she was charged with the crime, but said she had good reason as a suspected member of the radical SLA.
FBI agents acting on a tip generated by the television show “America’s Most Wanted” captured Soliah.
