California frees 1970s radical turned housewife

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Fugitive radical turned Minnesota soccer mom Sara Jane Olson was released on Tuesday from a California prison, where she served nearly seven years for a pair of crimes committed with the radical Symbionese Liberation Army in the 1970s.

Olson, who spent nearly a quarter century on the run before her 1999 arrest, was released to her husband shortly after midnight on Tuesday and will return to Minnesota to serve parole, California Department of Corrections spokesman Terry Thornton said.

Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty and police unions in both states had asked that Olson, 62, spend her one-year parole in California, but Thornton said in a statement that the transfer was consistent with Department of Corrections guidelines.

Olson pleaded guilty in November 2001 to planting homemade nail bombs under a police car in August 1975, in what authorities said was intended as revenge for a shootout between officers and the SLA that killed six members of the rag-tag group, including leader Donald DeFreeze.

In November 2002 she was ordered to serve a concurrent six-year term after pleading guilty, along with three other former members of the Symbionese Liberation Army, to second-degree murder.

That charged stemmed from the shooting death of 42-year-old Myrna Opsahl during a Northern California bank robbery in April 1975 that was carried out to fund the SLA's operations.

The SLA, a tiny group of gun-toting extremists, became one of the best-known U.S. radical groups after the 1974 kidnapping of newspaper heiress Patty Hearst.

Made up largely of young people from middle- and upper-middle-class families, the SLA waged a campaign for violent revolution under the slogan "Death to the fascist insect that preys on the life of the people."

Olson, who was born Kathleen Soliah, eluded police in the 1970s and resurfaced in the suburbs of St. Paul, Minnesota, where she married an emergency room physician, raised three daughters, performed in community theatre productions and volunteered for charitable and civic causes.

When she was arrested on June 16, 1999, following a tip, she was supported by dozens of members of the Minnehaha United Methodist Church, where she was a popular member of the congregation.

(Editing by Cynthia Osterman)