[News] SLA's Kilgore sentenced to 4 1/2 years

Tue Apr 27 09:03:43 EDT 2004

SAN FRANCISCO
SLA's Kilgore sentenced to 4 1/2 years
Former 1970s radical still faces additional time
<mailto:begelko at sfchronicle.com>Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 27, 2004
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One of the last chapters of 1970s-style radicalism drew near to a close 
Monday as James Kilgore apologized for his contribution to Symbionese 
Liberation Army violence and was sentenced to 4 1/2 years in prison for 
federal explosives and passport violations.

The one-time revolutionary, who had spent 27 of his 56 years as a fugitive, 
still faces sentencing May 10 in Sacramento for a 1975 bank robbery in 
which bank customer Myrna Opsahl was shot to death. He has reached a plea 
agreement for a six-year sentence in that case, with release possible in 
three years, and could be a free man by early 2009. Four other former SLA 
members are already serving prison terms for the murder.

Kilgore is the last member of the SLA to face sentencing. The band of 
self-styled Bay Area revolutionaries gained nationwide notoriety with the 
November 1973 murder of Oakland schools Superintendent Marcus Foster and 
the February 1974 kidnapping of newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst, who 
later joined her captors.

Six SLA members were killed in a fiery shootout with Los Angeles police in 
May 1974. The survivors, including Hearst, returned to the Bay Area, where 
Kilgore joined the group in 1975.

He became a fugitive later that year, shortly after the arrests of Hearst 
and four others connected with the SLA in September 1975. Three days later, 
prosecutors said, a pipe bomb bearing Kilgore's fingerprints was found in a 
Daly City apartment, which led to the federal explosives charge against him.

The federal court hearing in San Francisco on Monday came almost 18 months 
after Kilgore's arrest in South Africa, where he had lived for a decade 
under the name Charles William Pape, teaching labor courses at a major 
university, engaging in quiet political and social activism and raising two 
children with his wife, an American-born college professor. He wrote a high 
school history textbook that his lawyers said was the most widely used in 
South Africa.

Federal prosecutors sought a sentence of more than 11 years on the federal 
charges. They alleged that Kilgore was involved in a series of violent SLA 
actions before he disappeared in 1975: the bombings of an Emeryville police 
car and two Marin County sheriff's vehicles and abortive bomb plots against 
two San Francisco police stations.

Chief U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel noted that Kilgore had never 
been charged or tried for those acts and said he would be sentenced solely 
on the charges for which he was indicted: possession of the pipe bomb and 
passport fraud by using a fictitious name to renew his U.S. passport in 
1994, when he was living in South Africa.

Kilgore has chosen "a very positive path that has helped a lot of people, 
'' Patel said, referring to his quiet life and community work in South 
Africa. She said he had taken part in very destructive acts and had fled 
rather than taking responsibility, but had also shown "extraordinary 
rehabilitation.''

He should complete his federal sentence by January 2006, with time off for 
good behavior and credit for custody since his November 2002 arrest, said 
Dayle Carlson, a sentencing consultant for the defense. Kilgore's 
subsequent six-year sentence on the state murder charge could be reduced by 
as much as half if he is allowed to take part in prison work programs.

The murder and explosives sentences are based on the laws of the 1970s and 
yield much shorter terms than Kilgore would face under current law.

At Monday's hearing, defense lawyers read a statement from one of the 
children of murder victim Myrna Opsahl, endorsing the modest prison terms 
in the Sacramento plea agreement. For the middle-aged defendants, the 
statement said, those terms represent more punishment than even a death 
sentence might have meant to the young firebrands who committed the crimes.

Opsahl, 42, who was depositing church receipts at a bank in the Sacramento 
suburb of Carmichael, was shot to death during a $15,000 robbery in April 
1975. Kilgore pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in Sacramento County 
Superior Court last May and admitted that he had carried a gun into the 
bank and watched employees and patrons to make sure they would not interfere.

Kilgore apologized at last year's hearing and said he hoped his words would 
give Opsahl's family a "small measure of solace.'' On Monday, Kilgore --

balding, bespectacled, looking more like a bank clerk than a revolutionary 
- - told Patel that nearly 30 years ago "I participated in the actions of a 
group which believed that the only meaningful way to bring about change was 
through the violent actions of a small vanguard.''

"We were totally wrong,'' he said. "I was totally misguided. ... I believe 
that that sort of violence leads only to destruction. ... There aren't any 
shortcuts to meaningful social change.''

Asked by Patel how he and his comrades became so self-righteous that they 
could justify acts of violence, Kilgore said they took the Vietnamese 
"armed struggle'' against the United States as a model. Over time, "we 
became isolated and more and more detached from reality,'' he said.

Kilgore's onetime lover and SLA cohort, Kathleen Soliah, now known as Sara 
Jane Olson, pleaded guilty to the Opsahl murder and is now serving a state 
prison sentence for that crime in addition to a separate sentence for 
attempting to murder Los Angeles police officers with car bombs.

The other SLA members -- William Harris, his ex-wife Emily Montague, and 
their friend Michael Bortin -- are all serving state prison terms for the 
same killing.

Hearst, a member of the family whose company owns The Chronicle, served 21 
months in federal prison for her role in a separate SLA bank robbery, which 
took place in San Francisco in 1974.

After Kilgore's sentencing, U.S. Attorney Kevin Ryan issued a statement 
saying the case showed that "we will never forget, nor tire, in our efforts 
to bring to justice those who plan or perpetrate terrorist acts against us.''

E-mail Bob Egelko at <mailto:begelko at sfchronicle.com>begelko at sfchronicle.com.

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