The Years Pile Up -

The Years Pile Up - Reading the various accounts of the sentencing of Sarah Jane Olson/Katheen Soliah yesterday was jaw-droppingly depressing as well.

The only words spoken by the gaunt and graying Olson — who in earlier court appearances was demonstrative and chatty with her attorneys — came when asked if she would like to comment.

"No, I do not," the 56-year-old former St. Paul resident said before being sentenced to six years for second-degree murder.

The past year in prison has been a struggle for Olson, an inmate at the women's prison in Chowchilla, Calif., after her 2001 guilty plea to charges of attempting to blow up Los Angeles police cars in August 1975. She told probation officials she was exposed to tuberculosis. Olson also told probation officials she had been tested for breast cancer.

I can't blame Olson/Soliah for not being too talkative - it's gotten her into trouble in the past.

But I remember the furor her arrest caused here in the Twin Cities almost four years ago. The local left acted like Olson/Soliah's arrest was a gross imposition on her and their spaces. Their mellows were harshed, like, majorly.

The Pioneer Press article on the subject interviewed people at the Barnes and Noble on Ford Parkway - deep in the heart of ultra-liberal Highland Park. Said one customer:

"She has to make a resolution,'' said Thomas Hanson, who lives across the Mississippi River in Minneapolis. "It's not the one she may have wanted, but it's time for her to resolve it by doing time."

"Not what she might have wanted?" This is a woman who, according to Jon Opsahl (the victim's son):

...kicked a pregnant teller who was lying on the floor of that bank, not far from where my mother was bleeding out. Ms. Soliah would have us believe that it never happened, and if it did, it wasn't her fault the woman miscarried."

I don't think I can remember two words of concern from any Highland Park DFLer in the past three and a half years on behalf of the cops Soliah tried to immolate, or for Myrna Opsahl, or for the child who never came into the world due to Soliah's "foolishness".

That so many of my neighbors ever lionized this woman disgusts me. That so many still claim nodding understanding of her motivations depresses me.

Posted by Mitch at February 15, 2003 11:56 AM