SLA Bank Robbery and Murder - Carmichael, CA
Posted by: 
linkys
N 38° 37.022 W 121° 19.808
10S E 645377 N 4275602
Former bank building where Myrna Opsahl, a bank customer, was killed during a robbery by the SLA.
Waymark Code: WMGZ29
Location: California, United States
Date Posted: 04/26/2013
Views: 7
The Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) was an American self-styled left-wing revolutionary group active between 1973 and 1975 that considered itself a vanguard army. The group committed bank robberies, two murders, and other acts of violence.
Crocker Bank robbery
On April 21, 1975, the remaining members of the SLA robbed the Crocker National Bank in Carmichael, California, and in doing so killed Myrna Opsahl, a bank customer. Hearst claimed to have been sitting in the getaway car. Much later, Patty Hearst, after being granted immunity from prosecution for this crime, claimed that Emily Harris, Kathleen Soliah (later aka Sara Jane Olson), Michael Bortin, and James Kilgore actually committed the robbery, while she and Wendy Yoshimura were getaway drivers and William Harris and Steven Soliah acted as lookouts. Hearst also claimed that Opsahl was killed by Emily Harris, but that she was not a witness. Source
From The New York Times Nov. 8, 2002: In a quiet end to one of the most sensational criminal cases in the nation's recent history, four former members of the radical Symbionese Liberation Army pleaded guilty to murder today in a Sacramento courtroom.
They were charged in the shotgun killing of Myrna Opsahl, a 42-year-old woman gunned down in the holdup of a Crocker National Bank branch in Carmichael, just north of Sacramento, on April 21, 1975.
Source
The bank was located at 5746 Marconi Ave. in Carmichael, California. In an ironic twist, the building is now the Ark Mission Church, its exterior altered to give it the appearance of an ark. The reason Mrs. Opsahl was in the bank that day was to deposit money from her own church.