Editing Patricia Soltysik (section)

==Founding of SLA==
On March 5, 1973, [[Donald DeFreeze]] escaped from Soledad prison. He sought refuge in Oakland with white friends from the Black Cultural Association (BCA), whom he had met earlier while incarcerated at [[Vacaville Prison]]. [[Russ Little (SLA)|Russ Little]] and [[Willie Wolfe]] took him to Soltysik's house in Oakland. She had not been part of the prisoner outreach program conducted at Vacaville by UC Berkeley volunteers, so they thought that law enforcement would not look there for DeFreeze.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.super70s.com/Super70s/News/Special-Reports/Terrorism/SLA/Chronology.asp |title=SLA Chronology |access-date=January 21, 2007 |last=Patrick Mondout }}</ref> DeFreeze lived with Soltysik for several months, and the two became lovers.  

Soltysik and DeFreeze are thought to have co-written the first SLA literature.<ref name="Toobin" /> Soltysik and [[Nancy Ling Perry]], another white woman, are considered by some analysts and reporters to have been the main theorists and drivers of the SLA. As noted, Soltysik and DeFreeze co-wrote SLA literature. DeFreeze has been described as a simple man, and may have been a figurehead. 

Researchers have strongly suggested that he started working as an informant for the [[Los Angeles Police Department]] in 1967. They believe this is why his probation was extended, although he had been picked up on weapons charges well before he was sentenced to Vacaville prison for 5 years to life. He was later transferred to Soledad for good behavior. Evidence suggests that DeFreeze acted as an agent provocateur for the LAPD, and had been encouraged to join or catalyze radical activists in the Berkeley area. While living in Oakland, he seemed to have ready access to illegal weapons and explosives, and would sell them to radical groups.

Most of the early SLA members were drawn from a group that encountered DeFreeze at Vacaville, where they first met as Berkeley volunteers to the [[Black Cultural Association]]. Most of the SLA members were white, but [[Joe Remiro]] was [[Chicano]], and [[Thero Wheeler]] was black and a former member of the [[Black Panthers]]. The relationships were complex, as DeFreeze was sexually involved with three of the women. Wheeler left the group as he disagreed with its plans to embrace violent tactics.

On November 6, 1973, in [[Oakland, California]], three SLA "soldiers" fatally shot [[Marcus Foster|Dr. Marcus Foster]], Superintendent of Public Schools, and badly wounded his deputy Robert Blackburn. The men were attacked as they left an Oakland school board meeting. Mistakenly believing that Foster supported the introduction of identification cards into Oakland schools, the SLA condemned him as "fascist", but he had opposed this measure and gotten agreement from the school board not to do it. 

[[Patty Hearst]], who joined the group after being kidnapped by them in early 1974, testified later that Soltysik and [[Emily Harris]], another white woman who had joined the SLA and became sexually involved with DeFreeze, were the two assailants who had shot Foster and Blackburn.<ref name="little"/> Another account says that DeFreeze shot and wounded Blackburn.

Joe Remiro and Russ Little were arrested in January 1974 after an armed confrontation with police in [[Concord, California]], near where other members were staying at a house rented under a false name by [[Nancy Ling Perry]]. They were convicted and sentenced to prison on charges related to the Foster killing.<ref name="little">{{cite web |date=2004 |title=Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst |url=https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0884842/ |access-date=March 1, 2021 |medium=TV special |publisher=PBS}}</ref>