Marathon Pundit: SLA terrorist Illini faculty member and convicted murderer dismisses crimes as "political" on his web site

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James William Kilgore, a convicted murderer and a former Symbionese Liberation Army terrorist, as I reported yesterday, is now a research scholar for the Center for African Studies at my alma mater, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The Symbionese Liberation Army is best known for its kidnapping of Patty Hearst--who quickly joined the radicals.

He served over six years in a California prison for the murder of, Myrna Opsahl, a California mother of four during a 1975 bank robbery. He lived for years as a fugitive from justice--he was part of the catch after his former girlfriend, fellow SLA terrorist Kathleen Soliah, was arrested in 1999 after assuming a new identity in Minnesota as Sara Jane Olson.

Opshal was at the bank to deposit money for her church.

Kilgore also served a short federal prison sentence--he was register number 09879-000--for passport fraud and possessing a pipe bomb.

On his web site, Freedom Never Rests, Kilgore has this to say about that ugly time: "In 2002, authorities extradited him to the United States where he served six and a half years in prison for political offenses committed in the 1970s."

University of Illinois Quad, Urbana

Political? A woman is dead because of the "politics" of Kilgore and his fellow terrorists.

And my taxes are paying this guy.

ILL-inois really is ill.

Related post:

Ex-Symbionese Liberation Army terrorist on University of Illinois faculty

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