Mar 17, 2009 5:39 pm US/Central
How Bad Was The Symbionese Liberation Army?
(WCCO)
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Later, Patty Hearst would join her captors in robbing banks. She said she'd been brainwashed but served time for bank robbery before being granted immunity. (File)
AP/ACC
So just how bad was the group that Sara Jane Olson belonged to? The Symbionese Liberation Army committed murders, bank robberies and a high-profile kidnapping that gripped the country back in the 1970s.
In 1974, the SLA kidnapped newspaper heiress Patty Hearst, the granddaughter of publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst. The SLA seized a media giant by the throat and forced the country to pay attention.
Later, Hearst would join her captors in robbing banks. She said she'd been brainwashed but served time for bank robbery before being granted immunity.
In addition to the Hearst kidnapping, it claimed responsibility for assassinating Oakland Schools Superintendent Marcus Foster.
In a sign of those turbulent times, the group adopted a seven-headed snake as its symbol and the slogan, "Death to the fascist insect that preys upon the life of the people."
The end of the SLA came in a shootout at a home in Los Angeles. Teargas grenades started a fire and five SLA members were killed. The police raid on the home was broadcast live across the nation on TV.
Patty Hearst, who was not in the house, was arrested a year later in San Francisco. President Jimmy Carter commuted Hearst's prison sentence in the late '70s. President Bill Clinton gave her a full pardon before he left office.
Hearst once said she wished the police had never found Sara Jane Olson because her trial dragged up the past.
(© 2009 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
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