An
open letter to James Kilgore, his family and friends.
I run the website http://soliah.com which has been following the SLA activities since the arrest of Kathleen Ann Soliah/Sara Jane Olson in June 1999. On a lark I also registered the domain names http://jimkilgore.com and http://jameskilgore.com (same page). While these developed a number of leads they never came close to locating you.
How you were located is probably a mixed bag. My websites such as http://soliah.com had a rather primitive site tracker software which I left openly accessible (the “rainbow” cube at the bottom) and I noted to my law enforcement contacts South African traffic. My experience with my law enforcement contacts is that they are not computer or Internet “savvy”. As I have stated earlier, this probably just “warmed the trail” (at best).
My goal in a former “open letter” to you was to get you to surrender and turn states evidence. If you had corroborated Patricia Hearst account of the Crocker Bank murder of Myrna Opsahl murder it would have been powerful in court and I would have fully approved of “use immunity” or a token sentence.
This “bargaining chip” disappeared with the "minimalistic" guilty pleas of the other four in the Opsahl murder. As I understand it your New York lawyer was negotiating for three months but in the last eleven days before your arrest he contacted the defense lawyers.
Odd, that within little more than a week a deadline suddenly meant something in this case on they all agreed to plea bargains. One national journalist I deal with speculated privately of you and this action “So they threw him (Kilgore) to the wolves?”
I have to agree that that this is apparently true. Stuart Hanlon “alerted the media” to apparently stop any efforts at Kathleen Soliah turning states evidence in the Opsahl murder and she apparently paid with a very long to indeterminate sentence. Right now your options are limited with the plea bargains of the other four in the Opsahl murder but here goes.
Right now, the other four have made only “minimalist confessions” . Full disclosure would be valuable to history and the legitimacy of the Hearst claims (which I believe are substantially correct) for you to come clean and fully cooperate with prosecutors.
With the Opsahl deal and the US statute of limitations this shouldn’t result in extra jail time for anyone. Verification of the Hearst account (which I believe I basically true) could use such corroboration.
Here is the situation. At worst, the feds can tack on another fifteen years for bomb and passport violations. The evidence seems solid on both of these so if the feds want convictions they can probably get them.
I do have an ( unauthorized ) plan for avoiding this fate. If James Kilgore will cooperate with authorities an agreement might yet be reached for cooperation. The fed charges are the current jeopardy. If James Kilgore would cooperate I would be happy with a 6/3 federal sentence served concurrently in a federal prison. There is also the matter of risk level. Based on the charges , Kilgore should be “high risk” but I believe him to be of the lowest risk. Kathleen Soliah is currently being held in “high risk” conditions.
Trust me on this, The federal prison are far nicer than California prisons. Three years at least will be served. Concurrent means served in the Federal Pen.
South Africa had “reconciliation” where one confessed every past action. We don’t have that here but turning states on the federal charges might be the next best thing.
It might just be me but I believe that Stuart Hanlon was allegedly your “Judas”. You owe nothing to these people, According to Patricia Hearst you were the one who tried to prevent Emily from carrying the dangerous shotgun and the one who expressed remorse.
"What did the SLA amount to anyways? You killed a black man and kidnapped a little girl." James Kilgore you cared. Apparently, none of the others did.
I don't know the details but South Africa has a "Reconciliation Commission" where a person gets a pardon or reduced sentence for for revealing past details. The US system is different but a deal would be on the same vein. The other four have struck deals and the statute of limitations applies with most other offenses.
A project of Soliah.com
Last updated
January 09, 2003