SLA: James Kilgore

By Patrick Mondout

James Kilgore was a member of the early-Super70s American terrorist group the Symbionese Liberation Army. He was the last SLA member to elude justice after emigrating to South Africa on a false passport.

Kilgore was born in Portland, Ore., but grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. He was an honors graduate from San Rafael High School in California. In 1969, he graduated from the University of California at Santa Barbara with a degree in Economics.

James William Kilgore was sentenced in 2003 to 48 months in federal prison for a 1975 bomb offense as well as a consecutive six months in federal prison for passport fraud connected to multiple fraudulent passports obtained by the defendant using the identity of a deceased child.  

Kilgore had been a fugitive for 26 years when he was apprehended in South Africa in November 2002.  He was arrested based on a 1976 federal Indictment in San Francisco for possession of an illegal explosive device.  After being transported to the Northern District of California in late December 2002, Mr. Kilgore pled guilty in 2003 to separate bomb and passport charges. In addition, on May 13, 2003, Mr. Kilgore pled guilty to second-degree murder in Sacramento County Superior Court for the shooting death of Myrna Opsah in an April 1975 bank robbery in Carmichael, California.

Kilgore participated in two SLA bank robberies and a SLA bombing campaign directed against police officers in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles, California.  He became a fugitive after the arrest of fellow SLA members Emily and William Harris, Steven Soliah, Wendy Yoshimura, and Patricia Hearst on September 18, 1975.  Three days later, a mover hired by James Kilgore to move his possessions from his Daly City apartment, found a pipe bomb or improvised explosive device (IED) and a pistol in a basket in the front hall closet, and daily notified the police. Kilgore's fingerprints were found on the explosive device and on bomb manuals found in the apartment of fellow bomb maker Kathleen Soliah, now known as Sara Jane Olsen.

Forensic sculptor Frank Bender provided an age-enhanced bust of Kilgore to the "America's Most Wanted" television program.

Mr. Kilgore and Ms. Soliah fled to the Milwaukee and Minnesota-St. Paul areas where Mr. Kilgore first obtained a false United States passport in the name of Charles William Paper, who was in fact a deceased 10-month old infant. 

Note: Portions are from the FBI press release on the prosecution of James Kilgore.

References/Bibliography

• Shana Alexander, Anyone's Daughter: The Times and Trials of Patricia Hearst,
• Carolyn Anspacher & the San Francisco Chronicle, The Trial of Patty Hearst, Great Fidelity Press, 1976.
• Marilyn Baker, Exclusive!: the inside story of Patricia Hearst and the SLA, Macmillan Publishing, 1974.
• Mary F. Beal, Safe House: A Casebook Study of Revolutionary Feminism in the 1970's, Northwest Matrix, 1976.
• Jerry Belcher & Don West, Patty/Tania, Pyramid Books, 1975
• David Boulton, The Making Of Tania Hearst, Bergenfield, N.J., U.S.A.: New American Library, 1975
• John Bryan, This Soldier Still At War, (on Joe Remiro) Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975
• Patty Hearst with Alvin Moscow, Patty Hearst: Her Own Story, New York: Avon, 1982. This was the title after the movie came out. Original title: Every Secret Thing.
• Sharon D. Hendry, Soliah: The Sara Jane Olson Story, Cable Publishing, 2002.
• Janey Jimenez (U.S. Marshal who escorted Hearst between prison and the court during the trial) with Ted Berkman, My Prisoner, Sheed Andrews and McMeel, 1977.
• Jean Brown Kinney, An American journey: The short life of Willy Wolfe, Simon and Schuster, 1976.
• Vin McLellan, Paul Avery, The voices of guns: The definitive and dramatic story of the twenty-two-month career of the Symbionese Liberation Army, one of the most bizarre chapters in the history of the American Left, Putnam, 1977.
• John Pascal, The Strange Case of Patty Hearst, New American Library, 1974.
• Findley & Craven Payne, Life and Death of the SLA, Ballantine, 1976.
• Robert Brainard Pearsall, Symbionese Liberation Army: Documents and Communications, Rodopi, 1974
• Fred Soltysik, In Search of a Sister 1976.
• Steven Weed, with Scott Swanton. My Search for Patty Hearst, New York: Warner, 1976. Weed was Hearst's boyfriend at the time of the kidnapping. That was the end of their relationship.
• Video: Patty Hearst, based on Every Secret Thing, directed by Paul Schrader, 1988.
• Video: The Ordeal of Patty Hearst (1979) (TV)
• Video: Patty Hearst: The E! True Hollywood Story (2000) (TV)
• Video: Neverland: The Rise and Fall of the Symbionese Liberation Army aka Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst, Directed by Robert Stone, 2004, documentary.

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