Myrna Opsahl

Case background and investigation

Myrna Lee Opsahl was a 42-year-old mother of four whose husband was a surgeon. On April 21, 1975, she went to the Crocker National Bank branch in Carmichael, a suburb of Sacramento, with other members of her Seventh-day Adventist church to deposit the weekend collection, according to PBS's American Experience.

Armed members of the Symbionese Liberation Army entered the bank and announced a robbery. Opsahl was hit by a shotgun blast and died of her wounds. The group left with about $15,000. The killing was not publicly tied to the SLA at first, and it drew far less attention than the group's kidnapping of Patricia Hearst the previous year.

For more than two decades nobody was held responsible for the death. The Seattle Times reported that Steven Soliah, an SLA associate, was tried for the robbery and acquitted, and that prosecutors said they lacked the evidence to charge anyone with murder. Hearst's 1982 memoir described the robbery and said that Emily Harris had admitted firing the shot. Harris denied any involvement for years.

The case was revived after the 1999 arrest in Minnesota of Sara Jane Olson, formerly Kathleen Soliah, who had been a fugitive on charges of placing bombs under Los Angeles police cars. In January 2002, Sacramento County authorities arrested William Harris, Emily Montague (the former Emily Harris) and Michael Bortin and charged them, together with Olson and the fugitive James Kilgore, with murder.

On November 7, 2002, the four defendants in custody or on bail pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in Sacramento County Superior Court, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Each apologized to the Opsahl family in court. Under the agreement Montague received eight years, William Harris seven, and Bortin and Olson six each; they were sentenced on February 14, 2003. According to later reporting by Fox News, Montague said the shotgun went off accidentally, and William Harris had acted as a lookout.

Kilgore was arrested in Cape Town, South Africa, in November 2002 and was returned to the United States. He also pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced in 2004. Bortin was paroled in February 2006, William Harris in September 2006 and Montague in February 2007. Olson was released in March 2009. Kilgore, the last of the five in custody, was paroled in May 2009, according to Wikipedia's account of his case.