Revolutionary's secret life
December 17 2002
By Martin Daly
The last fugitive from the Symbionese Liberation Army, the notoriously
violent band of American revolutionaries who committed murder, robbed banks
and kidnapped newspaper heiress Patty Hearst, led a secret life in
Melbourne as the FBI hunted him as one of their most wanted criminals.
The urban guerrillas who bombed and shot their way to worldwide attention
in the 1970s and who reportedly used cyanide-laced bullets in one murder
were, over the years, killed in gun battles with police, imprisoned or
forced underground, where some of them remained undetected for decades.
One member of the gang, James Kilgore, disappeared to Zimbabwe to escape
the FBI dragnet. He re-emerged in the 1980s as Charles William Pape and
headed for Australia to further his education.
He enrolled simultaneously at La Trobe and Deakin Universities where,
studying African and Latin American history, he impressed his professors
with the huge body of work he had taken on - and completed successfully.
He earnt a degree from La Trobe and a doctorate in philosophy from Deakin,
which he completed in absentia in about 1994. He is believed to have been
in Zimbabwe at the time. His thesis was on domestic workers in colonial
Rhodesia.
He remained in Melbourne for at least two years but later told one of his
professors in a letter that he was thinking about returning to Melbourne to
take a masters degree at La Trobe. Pape left Melbourne for Perth before
returning to Africa. He married a black American political activist, Terri
Barnes. They have a son, Lewis, now a teenager.
One former Melbourne professor who met him later in Zimbabwe, said Pape
spoke excellent Shona and was considered by many locals to be the best
foreign speaker of their language they had met.
He moved to South Africa where - thanks to his Melbourne qualifications and
references from two of Melbourne's leading universities - he got a job at
the University of Cape Town. Until his arrest last month, he was a
researcher with the International Labour Resource and Information Group,
specialising in labour issues and the effect of globalisation on the Third
World.
He maintained contact with some of his Melbourne lecturers and continued to
live openly as Charles Pape but sometimes signed his letters John Pape.
He surrendered last month to South African police for an extradition
hearing relating to his alleged involvement in a murder and possession of a
bomb 27 years ago.
In Melbourne, Pape is remembered by academics at both universities as a
brilliant student who always carried an aura of suspicion about his past.
They thought he was working undercover for the American government. "We
thought he had links to the CIA, not the SLA," said one Melbourne academic
who worked closely with Pape at Deakin University.
Pape had good connections with the black liberation movements, including
the African National Congress in South Africa and ZANU-PF in Zimbabwe. His
wife was an activist for black causes in South Africa.
He was in his late 20s when he arrived in Melbourne. He was secretive,
dressed well and unlike many of his fellow students, he did not appear to
be in any great need of money. He claimed to have once worked for the
American Peace Corps.
He did undergraduate work in African history and various other subjects at
La Trobe, where he was offered a chance to do honours, but he became an
off-campus student at Deakin University studying under the dean of Social
Sciences, Professor Jim Polhemus, who is now a USAID consultant to
governments in democracy and governance.
"It was hard to imagine that he was only a first year student. His work was
so sophisticated," said Dr Steve Niblo, senior lecturer at La Trobe's
Institute of Latin American Studies.
"He was very bright," recalls the then chair of the department of history
and professor of American history at La Trobe, John Salmond, who once
ordered Pape to leave his office after a discussion, possibly about
American politics, turned into a furious row.
"He seemed to have independent means... probably gained through robbing
banks," added Professor Salmond. Associate professor, David Dorward,
director of the African Research Institute at La Trobe, said he and others
were suspicious about Pape. "I thought he was a CIA plant," said Dr Dorward.
"He was very articulate, intelligent, friendly. The young ladies liked him."
But Dr Dorward, who last had a letter from Pape in 1988, said his
suspicions were based largely on Pape's claimed lack of academic training
and his ability to hand in such superior work, something that was not to be
expected from a man who had spent years "bumming around Africa," as Pape
had claimed.
The FBI's "Most Wanted" list describes the fugitive as a cook/house
painter. The truth was that Pape, born in Portland, Oregon, grew up in the
San Francisco Bay area. He was an honours graduate from San Rafael High
School in California. In 1969, he graduated from the University of
California at Santa Barbara with a degree in economics.
His exile ended in Cape Town, where he was a well-known and respected
left-wing academic and activist for workers' rights. He had been trying to
give himself up in a plea bargain.
He will be charged as James William Kilgore, with the 1975 murder of bank
customer Myrna Opsahi during an armed robbery in Carmichael, California,
and with the possession of explosives. He did not pull the trigger in the
killing.
Four other former SLA members - some who had been hiding under assumed
names since the 1970s - this month pleaded guilty to the murder.
Patty Hearst, who had been kidnapped and allegedly brainwashed by the gang,
drove the getaway car.
http://theage.com.au/articles/2002/12/16/1039656342717.html