Last SLA Fugitive Agrees to Return to California

CAPE TOWN, South Africa —  Fugitive U.S. radical activist James Kilgore agreed in a Cape Town court Friday to return to the United States to face charges over the murder of a woman in a 1975 bank robbery in Carmichael, Calif.

Kilgore, 55, is the last fugitive member of the Symbionese Liberation Army, a radical gang that kidnapped American heiress Patricia Hearst in 1974. He was arrested last month in Cape Town, where he had lived for years as an academic under a false name.

Lawyers told the court that the United States had filed for extradition requesting the listing of charges linked to illegal explosives and the bank robbery in which a fellow SLA member shot dead Myrna Opsahl, a mother of four who was depositing church collections.

Four of Kilgore’s former SLA comrades pleaded guilty in Sacramento last month to charges stemming from the same robbery and murder and were sent to prison for between six and eight years under a plea bargain.

Kilgore’s lawyers said in November that he would accept the same deal and was prepared to serve a similar jail term, as long as no additional charges were brought.

Kilgore’s lawyer, Anton Katz, said his client would not oppose extradition, which will proceed after South African Justice Minister Penuell Maduna signs the necessary documents.

Fellow lawyer Michael Evans said Kilgore probably will return to the United States this month.

Maduna could not be reached for comment.

In the U.S., Kilgore will first face the explosives charges, said Matt Jacobs, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in San Francisco. Aside from that, “there’s nothing else I can say publicly,” Jacobs said.

Lana Wyant, a spokeswoman for the Sacramento district attorney, had no comment.

Katz said Kilgore plans to serve his time, then return to South Africa.

The SLA surfaced in 1973 when the group claimed responsibility for the murder of Oakland’s first black superintendent of schools, Marcus Foster.

The small band of political extremists made worldwide headlines when they kidnapped Hearst, the heiress to the Hearst newspaper empire.

Hearst then briefly joined the gang before she was captured and jailed, despite her insistence that she had been brainwashed.

Hearst was later pardoned by President Clinton.