James Kilgore, the last fugitive member of the Symbionese Liberation Army radical group still at large, was arrested today in connection with a 1975 California bank robbery and murder.
Lana Wyant, a spokeswoman for the Sacramento County District Attorneys office, said Kilgore was taken into custody this morning by FBI agents but declined to say where he was found.
A source close to the case say Kilgore was arrested in South Africa. The arrest comes one day after four of Kilgore's fellow SLA members pleaded guilty to second degree murder stemming from the shooting death of a 42-year-old woman during a robbery at Crocker National Bank in Carmichael, California.
The SLA was the radical group which kidnapped heiress Patricia Hearst in 1974. Had the case gone to trial, Hearst, who was present at the bank robbery, would have been a key prosecution witness. William Harris, Emily Harris Montague, Michael Bortin and Sara Jane Olson each pleaded guilty during a surprise appearance in Sacramento Superior Court.
They face prison terms ranging between six and eight years when they are sentenced on Feb. 14. All four defendants, who long ago traded their radical ways for life in suburbia, had signed plea deals with prosecutors that spared them a trial and the prospect of life in prison if convicted of first-degree murder.