Topic: Sara Jane Olson

Sara Jane Olson, formerly Kathleen Ann Soliah (born January 16, 1947), was a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) in the 1970s. She grew up in Palmdale, California, the daughter of Palmdale High School teacher and coach Martin Soliah. She has lived most of her life under the alias Sara Jane Olson, which she now uses as her legal name. In 2001, she pled guilty to two counts of possessing explosives with intent to murder stemming from her SLA activities in the 1970s. She was mistakenly released for five days in March 2008 and then rearrested due to an error made in calculating her parole. She was released again on March 17, 2009.

Kathleen Soliah was born in Barnesville, Minnesota. When she was eight, her family relocated to Southern California. After graduating from the University of California, Santa Barbara, Soliah moved to Berkeley, California with her boyfriend, Jim Kilgore. There, she met Angela Atwood at an acting audition where they both won lead roles. They became inseparable during the play's run. Atwood tried to sponsor Soliah into the SLA. Regardless, Soliah and Jim Kilgore, along with her brother Steve and sister Josephine followed the SLA closely, but did not join.

When Atwood and other core members of the SLA were killed in 1974 during a standoff with police near Watts, California following their murder of the Oakland school superintendent, the Soliahs organized memorial rallies, including a rally in Berkeley's Ho Chi Minh Park where Soliah spoke in support of her friend Atwood, while being covertly filmed by the FBI. At that rally, Soliah said that her fellow SLA members had been: