The bombs never exploded, but in 1976 a grand jury indicted an SLA sympathizer named Kathleen Soliah on charges of conspiracy and attempted murder. Soliah fled and lived underground as Olson until her arrest June 16 near her home. Her trial is scheduled to begin Feb. 7 in Los Angeles, but her attorneys plan to ask for a lengthy delay at a hearing Tuesday. One of them, Stuart Hanlon, of San Francisco, is seeking to withdraw from the case. Like the Harrises, Olson built a life that combined the comforts of the American dream they had lived as children of the middle class with a political outlook that remained far outside the mainstream.
People drift toward what they're meant to be.
The SLA was a strange and violent vestige of the 1960s' counterculture. From the Hearst kidnapping in February 1974, until their capture in September 1975, these ragtag radicals dominated the headlines, especially in California. It was a time of cynicism, disillusionment and fear, of Watergate and tensions between two generations. Afterward, the SLA's class of 1975 went to prison, faded from the limelight, or, like Soliah, fled. In a series of interviews, key SLA alumni, some for the first time in decades, recently shared their thoughts about their pasts, their present middle-class trappings and the upcoming trial.