Jon Opsahl addresses the former members of the Symbionese Liberation Army about the effects of his mother's murder during their sentencing in Sacramento Superior Court Friday. Myrna Opsahl, seen in the photograph at right, was killed during a 1975 bank robbery in Carmichael. The four former SLA members were sentenced to six to eight years for their parts in the crime. Seen at left is Judge Thomas Cecil. Associated Press/Rich Pedroncelli

Four ex-SLA members sentenced to prison for 1975 murder

Published 12:19 pm PST Friday, February 14, 2003

Four former members of the Symbionese Liberation Army were sentenced Friday to prison terms ranging from six to eight years after emotional speeches in which three of the defendants apologized to survivors of a woman murdered during a 1975 bank robbery.

"I will be sorry for the rest of my life," said Emily Montague, 55, formerly the notorious SLA member Emily Harris, whose gun fired the shot that killed Myrna Opsahl.

Montague's ex-husband, William Harris, 58, addressed Opsahl's son, saying there was nothing he could do now to repair the damage to the Opsahl family "except to say I've thought about your mother a lot. Your mother was never an abstraction to me. It's absolutely unacceptable that this happened."

Montague was sentenced to eight years in prison, Harris to seven years, and co-defendants Michael Bortin, 54, and Sarah Jane Olson, 55, to six years apiece.

"By our recklessness we killed a woman," Bortin told the court. "Whatever we suffer is of no consequence. I can offer nothing but my apologies and I'm sorry."

Olson did not speak in court but did apologize in a letter contained in her probation report.

"If we had foreseen her killing we would never have robbed the bank," she wrote. "We were young and foolish. We felt we were committing an idealized, ideological action to obtain government-insured money and that we were not stealing from ordinary people. ... In the end we stole someone's life."

Olson previously pleaded guilty to trying to bomb police cars in Los Angeles, bringing her a sentence that was set at 14 years. Sentencing guidelines give her a total sentence of 16 years.

The four had admitted to their involvement in the bank robbery that was intended to fund the activities of the self-styled revolutionary band which had kidnapped newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst.

Opsahl, a mother of four children, was depositing her church's collection funds when she was shot in the Crocker National Bank in suburban Carmichael. Montague has said her gun went off accidentally.

Superior Court Judge Thomas Cecil acknowledged in passing sentence that the Board of Prison Terms could still extend the terms agreed to by the parties, but he discouraged such an action, saying he and everyone involved had carefully considered the long history of the case in making their recommendations.

"We recognize the seriousness of the crimes that occurred in 1975," he said. But unlike a normal case, he said, the future prospects of the defendants were clear.

"We need not guess whether these defendants will function in society," he said. "We have seen it."

He referred to their upstanding lives since then and said, "In my view and in the view of the district attorney, none of these defendants poses a danger to society."

One more defendant, James Kilgore, has a case pending. He was a fugitive when the four entered their pleas and is being prosecuted separately. Kilgore, 55, was recently extradited from South Africa, where he had assumed a new identity and lived for years as a respected university professor.

Opsahl's son, Dr. Jon Opsahl, read an emotional statement in which he told of the anguish his family has endured and how he had come to believe in "monsters" after his mother was killed.

But he said he agreed to the November plea bargain and felt that it was ironically more devastating to the defendants now than had they been captured, tried and sentenced at the time of the killing.

"Back then they were angry and foolish with nothing to lose," he said. "Back then some might have thought they were martyrs. ... Now they are more tolerant, a bit wiser and with so much more to lose. Maybe now the defendants will come to terms with what they did."

He said he hoped their children would understand that this was a just resolution.

Opsahl said that "a group of pathetic, deranged revolutionaries decided to make my mother instantly expendable" and that he still cannot accept that.

Among the most gripping statements to the court during the sentencing hearing was that of a bank teller who was present during the robbery.

Rachel Harp said she was 22 years old when she saw the violence at close hand.

"I was among the 25 people in the bank. There is not a day that goes by that we do not relive that tragedy," she said. "We were threatened with guns held to our heads. We were kicked and left on the ground as if we did not matter."

She wept as she went on.

"I was only 22 years old and it changed me. Life's journeys change us, but this one was not for the better. We were all victims," she said.

Harris' wife and two sons were in the courtroom, along with Olson's physician husband and two grown daughters who flew in from Minnesota.

A pre-sentencing memorandum had disclosed for the first time that both Harris and his ex-wife tried to negotiate a second-degree murder plea when they were sentenced in the Hearst kidnapping 25 years ago. The each spent eight years in prison for the abduction.

The Harrises divorced after their release from prison, and Harris became an investigator for a San Francisco law firm where he met and married attorney Rebecca Young.

-- Associated Press