70s radical-turned-housewife out of prison

[Mugu]

(CNN) -- A 1970s radical who spent 24 years as a housewife while on the run from the law has been released from a women's prison in California. Sara Jane Olson, a former member of the Symbionese Liberation Army, served about half her 12-year sentence.

She received concurrent senetences for two incidents in 1975 -- the attempted bombings of two LAPD squad cars and the shooting death of a customer during the robbery of a Sacramento-area bank.

Prosecutors said she was part of an SLA plot to murder Los Angeles police officers by planting bombs under their squad cars. One of the cars was parked outside a crowded Hollywood restaurant. The bombs did not go off and no one was hurt.

After authorities started looking for her, Olson fled California and lived for more than two decades as a fugitive before she was arrested in 1999 in Minnesota. She had married a physician, Fred Peterson, and was raising three daughters there.



Read complete article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/03/21/sara.jane.olson/index.html

[islandmkl]

1. as Warren referred to Patty:

"The eternal Thompson gunner
Still wand'ring through the night
Now it's ten years later, but he still keeps up the fight
In Ireland, in Lebanon, in Palestine and Berkeley
Patty Hearst heard the burst
Of Roland's Thompson gun and bought it..."

[pitohui]

2. apparently she turned her life around and is a threat to no one

i see no further benefit to keeping the lady caged now that she has done her time

honestly surprised the sentence was so short for the bank robbery killing, is it because it happened in the 1970s? today, to kill someone while committing a felony would be an "enhanced" offense

[kestrel91316]

3. She not only turned her life around, she's a better American than most of us.

Very involved in good social works and a local peace church in MN, from what I heard.......

I was enraged this AM to hear that LAPD is claiming she "escaped justice". Yeah, right. THEIR idea of justice for her is a bullet in the head and no trial.

[maxsolomon]

4. she wasn't the triggerman

occasionally our Prison Industrial Complex functions with society's interests in mind.

she did her time. time to let it go.

[seabeyond]

5. well good. and she no longer has to hide, have anything hanging over her

tis done.