Emily Harris - Later SLA and Opsahl Murder

Later SLA and Opsahl Murder

Emily and Bill Harris took over the leadership of the SLA after six other SLA members died in a Los Angeles shootout with police and the house fire it triggered. After the fire, the Harrises spent over a year on the run with their victim, Patty Hearst and new members Kathleen Soliah, Josephine Soliah, Steven Soliah, Mike Bortin, Jim Kilgore, and Wendy Yoshimura. Hearst had since become an active participant in SLA crimes herself. Yoshimura, Patty's closest friend while underground, was a fugitive for her involvement with explosives that were stored in a garage she rented. During that year the SLA committed a string of crimes, including an April 21, 1975 robbery of Crocker National Bank in Carmichael, California. During the robbery, 42-year-old Myrna Opsahl was shotgunned to death. Opsahl was depositing a church collection at the time. Patty Hearst stated in her 1982 autobiography Every Secret Thing that Emily was the shooter. Hearst also stated that Harris said "Oh, she's dead, but it doesn't really matter. She was a bourgeois pig anyway. Her husband is a doctor." Other SLA members had urged Harris not to bring the shotgun to the robbery, as it had accidentally gone off twice during preparations.

The Harrises were eventually arrested and served eight years in prison for the Hearst kidnapping. Imprisoned at the California Institution for Women at Frontera, California, Emily Harris spent the first half of her term in solitary confinement. Emily learned computer programming in prison.