Page One

ACRAMENTO — Four former members of the Symbionese Liberation Army accused of killing a woman during a 1975 bank robbery pleaded guilty to second-degree murder Thursday. 

The four are William Harris; his ex-wife, Emily Montague; Michael Bortin; and Sara Jane Olson, who is already serving 14 years behind bars for a 1975 attempt to blow up two Los Angeles police cars. 

They face prison terms of six to eight years in the plea agreement they entered in Sacramento County Superior Court. Sentencing is scheduled Feb. 14. 

The pleas bring the legal proceedings involving the SLA, the radical group that became prominent when it kidnapped newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst in 1974, almost to an end. 

Montague admitted in court that she had pulled the trigger in the shotgun slaying of 42-year-old Myrna Opsahl during an April 21, 1975, robbery of the Crocker National Bank in suburban Sacramento. Montague received the longest term of eight years. 

Opsahl’s death was “a very violent, horrific senseless crime,” said Sacramento County Assistant District Attorney Robert Gold. 

Montague, 55, fought back tears and said the shotgun discharged accidentally. 

“I was horrified at the time,” she said. “There has not been a day in the last 27 years that I have not thought of Mrs. Opsahl and the tragedy I brought on her family.” 

She also denied ever calling Mrs. Opsahl a “bourgeois pig,” as Hearst alleged in her 1982 book, “Every Secret Thing.” Montague said she didn’t want anyone to think she considered Opsahl’s life insignificant. 

All four former SLA members apologized to Opsahl’s family, sitting in the front row of the courtroom. 

“I say that from the bottom of my heart,” said Harris, 57, of Oakland. He faces a seven-year sentence, unless he can convince prosecutors and Judge Cecil Thomas to lower it to six years, which Thomas called “an uphill battle.” 

Olson, 55, of St. Paul, Minn., will receive a six-year sentence under the plea agreement. She will be allowed to withdraw her plea if the state’s parole board disagrees with that agreement, authorities said. 

“I never entered that bank with the intent of harming anyone,” Olson said. “I am truly sorry, and I will be sorry until the day I die.” 

The state Board of Prison Terms in October lengthened Olson’s original prison term for the attempted bombing by five years, citing the potential for violence and harm from the multiple intended victims. 

Bortin, 54, a Portland flooring contractor, also received a six-year sentence. 

During the robbery, Bortin said in court Thursday, he held a handgun that he “waved a little bit” and was the one who announced it was a robbery. 

He was “devastated and very ashamed” about his role in the robbery and murder, Bortin said. “I know it doesn’t mean much to say I am sorry to the family. ... I just cannot imagine how horrible it must be.” 

Bortin said the actions of the revolutionary band did “horrible damage” to people who peacefully protested social conditions. 

The guilty pleas essentially mirror Hearst’s account of a bank robbery that wound up with an unintentional shooting. 

Hearst gave “the FBI this information first in 1976 and then she wrote a book about it in 1982 and from what I understand the information ... from the defendants in absolutely consistent,” said George Martinez, Hearst’s attorney. “Her reaction is basically gratitude that this chapter in her life may now hopefully be finished.” 

A fifth suspect in the case, James Kilgore, 55, has been a fugitive since the 1970s. 

Before the pleas, prosecutors had been building their case in the 27-year-old robbery and murder. They cited new forensic evidence in bringing the charges after the 1999 arrest of Olson, who had moved to Minnesota in the 1970s, changed her name from Kathleen Soliah and became a housewife and mother. 

Gold cited several reasons for accepting the pleas, including “evidentiary difficulties” that existed even when the case was fresh. Gold also explained that while the defendants were violent criminals at the time, for the last 20 years or more, “each defendant has led an otherwise law-abiding life,” and is no longer is a danger to society. 

He said the Opsahl family agreed to the case’s resolution as long as the defendant each publicly admitted responsibility for Myrna Opsahl’s death. 

All agreed to pay restitution if requested by the family, and to give up any rights to profit from selling their version of the high-profile national case. 

Myrna Opsahl’s son, Jon Opsahl, who led the fight to see his mother’s killers arrested and tried, was in the front row of the courtroom, sitting next to his widower father. 

A smiling Opsahl declined comment, saying “I want to see it before I believe it.” 

Olson, the only defendant in custody, appeared wearing orange pants, a yellow top, and was shackled at the wrists and ankles.