James Kilgore, the former Symbionese Liberation Army member who spent more than two decades on the run, is expected to plead guilty later this month to federal explosives and forgery charges, lawyers in the case said on Monday.
Kilgore, a member of the 1970s radical group that kidnapped newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst, was charged with possession of a pipe bomb found in his Daly City apartment in 1976, and with obtaining a passport under a false name in 1994.
Kilgore (55) faces a maximum of 10 years in prison for the bomb charge and five for the passport offence.
He is expected to plead guilty on February 21, according to prosecutors and his attorney, Gregor Guy-Smith. Federal prosecutors said the expected pleas will come without any deal for a reduced sentence.
”There are no plea agreements,” said C. Donald Clay, first assistant US attorney. Kilgore also faces murder charges in state court for an SLA bank robbery in Sacramento in 1975 in which 42-year-old housewife Myrna Opsahl was killed while depositing a church collection.
Kilgore, the last known SLA fugitive, was captured in November in South Africa, where the former Californian was working as a University of Cape Town professor under an assumed name.
Four other SLA members pleaded guilty in November to Opsahl’s murder in a plea bargain in which they will get no more than eight years in prison. Sentencing is set for Friday. – Sapa-AP