She Is Good, She Is Bad, She Is Dead: A Story of Three Women -- But, First, King Tut ... Former Boyfriend Still at Large … "Top Ten Most Wanted" Usama (Osama) bin-Laden …

Updates: Pugsly's Attacker Is Identified, Reward Offered … Stephen Fagan Gets to Work at the VA ... U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala Urges Leniency for Son of UW Badger Football Coach

Linda Carter, an ostrich farmer in Winlock, Wash., said her recently departed father was frightened of the 400-lb. male that Carter calls King Tut. She says she told her dad that he could just toss food over the fence rather than enter the pen to feed the King Tut and two female ostriches.

Why Fred Parker entered the pen, Carter can't explain. After his body was discovered in the pen, medical examiners determined that the 81-year-old had been kicked to death.

Because King Tut is livestock, and was properly inside a pen, the Lewis County, Wash. prosecutor's office will not take action. A relieved Carter said, "Losing my father is a very big loss, and I didn't want to lose my bird, too."

What if I told you that one of the stars of Serial Mom -- she also recently starred in a John Waters film, Pecker and was interviewed in a documentary about Waters' most famous star, Divine -- is a mother of two, a wife, a former high school cheerleader at Menlo Park, Calif.'s Sacred Heart School, a board member of Meals on Wheels, and a bank robber and convicted felon?

What if I told you that a church activist and mother of three who also volunteers her considerable acting skills at the Minnesota State Services for the Blind to read a week's worth of newspapers so that the blind can listen to local news reports -- is a bank robber and indicted fugitive?

Talk about cognitive dissonance. Who are these women anyway, and are they all of the above, or one of the above, hiding behind a fraudulent identity?

The first is Patricia Hearst Shaw. She was captured on bank security film as machine the gun-totting revolutionary named Tania, and was later convicted of bank robbery. Her transformation from kidnap victim to revolutionary and robber provided the inspiration for the song, "She," written by Glenn Danzig, most recently lead singer of Danzig, when he was part of the punk band aptly named The Misfits.

The second woman you have heard a lot about in the past weeks: Kathleen Soliah, age 52, known to her Minnesota neighbors and family for the past 23 years as Sara Jane Olson. On June 16, 1999, Olson was apprehended in her St. Paul neighborhood by federal officials for her 1976 indictment on charges of conspiracy to commit murder. She is accused of planting pipe bombs under two Los Angeles police cars in retaliation for the deaths of her best friend and five other SLA members in a 1974 shootout with police in Los Angeles. Her longevity as a fugitive is considered remarkable by federal authorities.

What if I told you about a third woman you probably haven't heard a lot about, a mother of four and an active member of the Seventh Day Adventist Church, who was shot by chance during a bank robbery, and who was declared dead by Trygve Opsahl, M.D., the surgeon in the hospital emergency room who was also her husband?

Myrna Opsahl died on April 21, 1975 after being shot, according to Patty Hearst, by SLA member Emily Harris during the robbery of the Carmichael, Calif. branch of Crocker National Bank. According to Hearst, Mrs. Opsahl had gone to the bank to deposit the collection of the Carmichael Seventh Day Adventist Church.

Mrs. Opsahl, an alumnus of the Loma Linda University School of Nursing, was survived by her husband Trygve, her four children -- Carl, Sonja, Jon and Roy -- her parents, and a sister.

Patricia Hearst and Kathleen Soliah became members of the Symbionese Liberation Army: Hearst by virtue of being kidnapped, terrorized and later indoctrinated by her captors, and Soliah by virtue, it is said, of her grief and shock over the death of her best friend in the infamous and fiery Los Angeles shootout between police and SLA members.

In need of funds after the loss of the SLA's founder and others in the Los Angeles inferno, some members of the tiny SLA group -- comprised of field marshal Bill Harris, his wife Emily Harris, Patty Hearst, Kathleen Soliah, Soliah's boyfriend Jim Kilgore, her brother Stephen Soliah, Michael Bortin, and Wendy Yoshimura -- robbed the Guild Savings and Loan, in north Sacramento in January 1975. Their second robbery was at the Crocker bank in Carmichael.

In her book, Every Secret Thing, Hearst reports that during the planning for the Guild bank robbery, "Kathy [Soliah] wanted a piece of the action." Hearst says that Soliah was an observer, watching the robbery from a nearby store, afterwards becoming part of the crowd outside the bank. Kathy became part of the team going into the Carmichael bank . In preparation for the robbery, Kathy, Steve and her boyfriend James Kilgore stole vehicle license plates and placed them on the SLA's vehicles, all stolen. The day of the robbery, Hearst says Soliah carried a carbine and Steve's pistol in her bag. Hearst also reports that because Soliah's sister worked in a San Francisco bank, Kathy knew enough "to force the tellers to open the cash drawers with their own special keys. She had not missed a drawer." Hearst also reports that she, Kathy Soliah, and James Kilgore, Soliah's boyfriend, were perplexed and upset by the shooting of Myrna Opsahl. Hearst recounts this conversation:

"How's the woman who was shot?" Kathy asked immediately.

"Oh, she's dead," replied Emily airily, "but it really doesn't matter. She was a bourgeois pig anyway. Her husband is a doctor. He was at the hospital where they brought her."

Harris told the group, says Hearst, that her gun went off accidentally.

The buzz about this case -- in conversations, on the airwaves, in Internet newsgroups and forums -- has been constant, and divisive since the June capture of Soliah after 23 years as a fugitive, and the discovery of her amazing transformation into a highly respected St. Paul wife, mother, volunteer, and patron of the arts. As a U.S. marshal commented, "She was one of those rare fugitives who just disappears. The only thing she probably could have done better was marry a priest."

On a forum that I host, I ran across an anonymous post that described the person's associations with Sara Jane Olson over many years. I managed to contact the person, who consented to an interview by e-mail. I had become acquainted already with this person, who I had found to be intelligent and educated as well as an expert on the theater, including current New York stage productions.

The press has covered the capture of Soliah, highlights of her life as Sara Jane Olson, her extradition to California, her bail hearing -- covered live on CourtTV, the $1 million bail and requirement for electronic surveillance, and her return a few days ago to her home, where she hosted a party to thank those who have contributed to her bail. I decided to ask my contact about the less public, more personal side of Kathleen Soliah, whom my contact knew as Sara Jane Olson. Here is the original forum post, followed by excerpts from the e-mail interview:

Look.

I knew Sara Jane in Minneapolis. I was a part of the arts community there for 11 years.

Her acting is extraordinary. Her role as Eleanor in The Lion in Winter is complex, and she carried it off beautifully.

She reveled in the luxury her lifestyle afforded, and openly scorned people in Minneapolis (not St. Paul, where she lived) who protested the loss of single-person rooming houses destroyed to build the sports palace known as Target Center. She held fundraisers at her house for god's sake for Norm Coleman! (Yes, I've been to her house!)

I guess, and I am guessing, that she viewed her little venture with the SLA as a "walk on the wild side," kind of the same way that I used to (in college) think that driving drunk was no big deal as long as the car didn't show any dents in the morning.

Her criminal past caught up with her, and now I personally believe she is using her extraordinary acting abilities to portray someone who is so above-board that her little time in the dark past where she bought explosives and both caused and intended to cause bodily harm is as much a lark as growing bean sprouts in plastic bags on the kitchen counter.

It ain't. She ain't. She was an involved wanna-be then who now wants off the hook.

Poor baby.

Throw her sorry, middleclass-climbing ass away. She herself walked away from a comfortable middle-class life when she was a teenager, only to throw herself headlong into it as her escape -- from herself -- when the going got tough.

Grow up. Live by the sword, you don't get to die by Martha Stewart.

The following is the text of the subsequent e-mail interview after I contacted the author of the above post:

At a reception after a play at the Guthrie Lab, an experimental arm of the Guthrie Theater that was in a converted warehouse in the Warehouse District.

Intense and focused. I envied her skill with make-up -- her eyes were very nicely done.

I would describe her as angular in the face with a strong aquiline nose. Her fingers were long and the nails were not polished but neatly trimmed. Her hair was thin and straight, and possibly had had some processing done -- the color was a brownish red with some lighter streaking. She was striking rather than attractive.

No one, really. In theater circles, at least in Minneapolis, everyone likes to think of themselves as very "in the know," so one assumes that, if you're at this party, you know everyone there and what they've done.

There wasn't any "buzz" about her, no gossip swirling of a past or anything of the like. She appeared to be exactly who and what she was -- someone with a certain amount of acting ability who had chosen to focus on a family then, as they grew, was finding time to stretch her own abilities.

I would say that her interactions appeared unguarded and open. She listened very intently to anyone who was speaking, and responded with the same level of interest. She drank wine -- I didn't see her with a beer at any time. I may be coloring my memories now that I know more about her, but it also seems that, more than other theater people, she allowed others to speak. (I can say this, but theater people do tend to be self-absorbed and vie for 'center stage.' She did not appear to have a requirement that she be the center all the time.)

It was a Craftsman-style interior, modified Tudor exterior. Plaster and wood exterior with brick base. Center hall, five rooms on the ground floor, three bedrooms and a bath on the upper floor. A half bath had been added downstairs (main floor.) Didn't see the basement. Fireplace in the living room, built in bookcases that were part of the original design.

Her home was actually very welcoming. I remember she had chocolate stashed all over the place. You could open any jar that was decorative (she liked stoneware from St. John's in Collegeville) and find Hershey's Kisses with almonds, and plain, and sometimes miniatures.

Hmmm. Nothing really stands out, which means it was basic buffet. I was not there for a formal dinner. I remember a duck-on-toast thing that was pretty tasty. No seafood, but it was not in season. Not Minnesota style "hot dishes" or casseroles, but fare that had some substance yet elegance to it. Somebody in her house liked Vermont ham, I remember that, although whether it was her or her husband, I don't know. It was smoked rather than salted, the way Virginia ham is salted. She liked the bakeries and food stores on Grand Avenue in St. Paul, because I remember someone asking about an olive-and-feta thing and she mentioned going down there. Beverages were standard wines, beers and soft drinks. Cranberry juices - she had about three varieties of those.

I was there as a guest of a professional colleague who was well placed in political circles, so I was not the guest of Soliah and her husband in that I was not invited on my own merits.

The one I really remember is The Lion in Winter, as Eleanor of Aquitaine.

What characterized her acting? What made her stand out?

Her intensity and ferocity in protecting the interests of her children in The Lion in Winter. The character's perceived ability to manipulate behind the scenes. Her portrayal of wanting to win at all costs, yet keep the love and admiration of her family at the same time that she ruined them.

Yes. Definitely. Except the guy who played Phillip of France, who mistook the role as being gay for being stupid and overly foppish.

No. I was not aware that she'd been there.

No, he was kind of the silent partner. For the most part, she attended theater events on her own. I remember thinking he appeared proud of her, rather than embarrassed when she would do a flourish or two. I thought that was pretty cool -- he had his world, and she had hers.

Nope, except in the photos in their house. Which reminds me, the house was kind of this mix of decors. There were definitely what I would call middle-class touches -- the studio portraits of family looked like they were from Sears, and there were

knitted lap blankets all around. Then there were these quietly tasteful photographs of nature tableaux, which can either be dreadful or lovely, and these were lovely.

I never heard of her being involved sexually with anyone else. There were rumors of Brenda Weihle at the Guthrie being resentful of Soliah monopolizing Garland Wright's time at certain events. Gar Wright was the artistic director at the Guthrie; he left several years ago, and died I think last year in NYC. Brenda was quite his little "pet," and it got to be a joke that Gar's increasingly ponderous choices of materials at the Guthrie could be interpreted as "Brenda Weihle Explains The Classics To You Rube Midwesterners." Brenda was (and is) involved with John Carroll Lynch, who had a breakthrough role in Fargo as Marge Gunderson's husband. He's since appeared in Volcano and Face/Off, and he and Brenda are still together.

Anyway, when Garland Wright was replaced as the artistic director, Brenda was immediately let go from the acting company. Brenda and Soliah physically resembled each other and had about the same level of raw talent, although Brenda appeared to be better trained. So the rumor was that Brenda considered Soliah a threat of some kind, and saw to it that she did not receive as many Guthrie invitations, thus relegating Soliah to the "second set" of theaters like Theater in the Round and Mixed Blood. Now that could all be just that, just rumor.

Did she have more "other lives," even in Minn? (Often, when one develops the art of disguise, subterfuge, one continues that pattern in various other ways.)

The only way in which I saw her as having "another life" was once running in to her at Coastal Seafoods in St. Paul and not recognizing her; it was a Saturday morning and we all looked like slobs. By the time I was able to place her, my number was called and I went to the counter. That's about it.

The Target Center was built with public and private money both, and a lot of SRO was torn down to accommodate it. A number of us were talking about this; I mentioned that even though the bank I worked for was financing it, and we would benefit, I thought that throwing people out who had no money for anything else was perfectly awful. Others pointed out that the structures were pretty crummy and an eyesore anyway, and that the vacancy for apartments in Minneapolis was (at that time) high enough to accommodate more people.

Soliah chimed in with the idea that the people in SROs could just room together in other apartments further out of the city core and take the bus to services if they wanted to. We then got into a discussion of how do people in SROs come up with security deposits to share apartments when they have no money now, and she strode away from the group.

Norm Coleman stands for Norm Coleman, and nothing and no one else. I don't know if he's a key or not; I wonder now if it was her husband that supported him. Who knows? I was there as a guest; it could be that the event where I was at her house was not necessarily a Norm Coleman thing, but rather a Planning Commission thing where neighborhood activists working for or against something were throwing an event. I'd have to try to talk to my friend about this, and he may not even remember, he goes to so many of these. However, I do remember that it was about two-and-a-half years ago.

Just in ordinary conversation. Other than the SRO conversation, I can't really remember talking politics or social standards with her at all. Nothing stands out -- just one chance comment made by someone else about hoping some pictures of herself never came to light (we were talking about our choices of hair styles and wardrobe) and we all just laughed.

Watching her in the courtroom during arraignment: the easy smiles for her attorney, the ducking of the head to the judge, the actressy way she carries her body -- it looks more like her stage presence than what she is at the events at which I'd seen her. Like a switch being turned on and off.

No, not at all. Everyone I talked to feels duped and betrayed. Then again, we couldn't exactly expect her to take us into her confidence, could we? So why do we feel that? I think because the intense emotionality of acting implies an intimacy that may or may not be real.

No, not really. Minnesota is rather insular - most people are born, live and die there. When you've lived there a while, you take on that same mantle -- not traveling a great deal and having a life contained within the state. It's really very livable, and it's easy after a while to just stick close to home.

What interactions or observations led you to feel some distrust towards her?

I can't put my finger on it. And you're right, there's something more there. I think I blame her for falling into the same insularity as most Minnesotans.

Also, I do remember one conversation we all were having about family and backgrounds. I had a picture taken when I was 5, a very suburban white-world picture, my mom in a bouffant, all five of us children well scrubbed and arranged around our parents. I described it and said I really cherished how hard my parents had worked to give a better life than they had had, and that both of my parents worked full-time while raising a family and going to college all at once. I think Soliah had had some wine -- hell, we all had -- and she said something like "Oh, how ambitious of them!" Well, OK, neither of my parents were doctors like her husband, and maybe we didn't eat off Lenox china for Sunday dinner, but none of us turned out as axe murderers. Maybe my mom, after she raised her children, went into teaching instead of artistic pursuits like acting, but I don't consider her contributions any less valuable to the world.

Columnist Mona Charen reports that one of Myrna Opsahl's children, Dr. Roy Opsahl, says the past should be past. "I look at it as a total waste of money," he told the Associated Press. "Nothing's going to come of it. What's justice now? You're going to ruin the lives of her three children?''

Time has its own way of summarizing all that we are. If we get the time, that is. Myrna Opsahl left all that she was with her four children, and the measure of their compassion.

Kathleen Soliah's boyfriend during her SLA days remains at large. But, in 1995, authorities searching for the Unabomber stepped up efforts to find James Kilgore. For a time, Kilgore was near the top of the list of 200 possible suspects because in many ways he fit the profile of the Unabomber. Kilgore, like Soliah, disappeared in the 1970's but has not been found. He was regarded as the SLA's bomb expert, and he used the same brand of batteries as the Unabomber, later identified as Theodore Kaczynski. Kilgore was indicted along with Soliah for the bomb making charges. Sacramento, Calif. police department spokesman Joe Enloe says a fugitive unit is still looking for Kilgore.

On its "most wanted" pages, the FBI spells his name as Usama; all news reports spell his first name as Osama. Is a U.S. raid to capture Usama bin Laden, or a new round of bombings, being planned? 

The July 21 Chicago Tribune story quotes an Afghan Islamic Press report that Arab families have fled the area of eastern Aghanistan near the camp of Bin Laden. Demonstrators in Pakistan are decrying the U.S. for an anticipated attack on bin Laden's hideout near Pakistan. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has closed public tours of its headquarters in Washington, D.C. The FBI has received unconfirmed threats, including one that supposedly came from a bin Laden-led group, against the J. Edgar Hoover building.

Osama bin Laden has been added to the "most wanted" list because he is considered the mastermind and chief financier of the two U.S. embassy bombings last year in Kenya and Tanzania that resulted in the deaths of 12 Americans, and a total of 224 people.

Last month, five U.S. embassies in Africa were closed temporarily for undisclosed security reasons. On July 16, Secretary of Defense William Cohen cancelled his trip to Albania. Secretary of State Madeline Albright has also avoided trips to Albania.

ABC News reported on July 9 that bin Laden has raised $50 million for additional attacks, and that most of his funding has come from businessmen in the Persian Gulf region, particularly Saudi Arabia.

Some believe that the Saudi help is defensive, an effort to encourage him to strike elsewhere, and to keep him from attacking Saudis, including the royal family.

ABC News reports that terrorism expert Yossef Bodansky told them that Saudi government money is being laundered as part of the defensive effort. A CIA official explains that the Saudis frequently support both sides in an effort to buy protection. After a bomb killed 19 American servicemen at Khobar, Saudi Arabia n June 1996, Saudi officials announced that no foreign governments, particularly the heretofore chief suspect nations Iran and Iraq, were involved.

Bodansky theorizes that, by denying outside participation in the bombing, the Saudi royal family is balancing its need for U.S. forces to protect it against Iraq and Iran, the likely culprits in the bombing, while appeasing the fundamentalist movement in its own country opposed to the presence of American troops.

[Yossef Bodansky is the Director of the Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional warfare for the U.S. Congress. He has written books on terrorism, the latest on bin Laden. bin Laden : The Man Who Declared War on America was released on July 9. The book, according to its press release, is about more than bin Laden; it is "a description of a whole movement waging a jihad--holy war--against the United States in the belief that America's modernizing influence on Arab nations thwarts Islamic fundamentalist goals."

His other books include two in-depth analyses of the potential for war in the Balkans, and an out-of-print treatise on Islamic terrorism in America, Target America & the West : Terrorism Today.]

Authorities of the Taliban in Afghanistan claim that the U.S. has turned Osama bin Laden into a hero, and accuse President Clinton of basing his foreign policy "on his personal complexes and sexual illness." (Taliban leaders are understandably cranky since pressure to turn over bin Laden has led to economic repercussions and increasing international isolation. The U.S. government has frozen Taliban assets and imposed economic sanctions. The Taliban group is recognized as a government by only three countries.)

There's something about the persona of Osama bin Laden -- not him, his persona -- that reminds me of those gigantic inflated cartoon characters in Macy's Thanksgiving parades. There's considerable doubt that bin Laden has been directly involved in all the terrorist acts of which he has been accused. But there is no doubt in my mind that the problem of terrorism becomes more understandable to the public, and more marketable to the media, when a zealot is singled out for capture by the U.S. government.

Almost no one would remember the Symbionese Liberation Army if it hadn't kidnapped Patty Hearst and the FBI hadn't pursued her as a criminal. There were more active, popular revolutionary groups around the same time that are now obscure footnotes to the history of the 1960s and 1970s.

1. In Khost, the region of Pakistan that borders Afghanistan, Osama is the most popular name for male infants born recently. After the 1998 U.S. missile attack on a suspected bin Laden hideout in Afghanistan, more than 500 infants were named Osama.

2. Merchants in Khost are also naming their businesses after bin Laden. There are the Osama Poultry Farms, Osama Bakery, Osama medical store, Osama Cloth Houses, and an Osama watchmaker. There's even a public school named Osama.

3. He is 6'4" to 6'6" tall and weighs 140 to 160 lbs. He walks with a cane.

4. He is 42 years old.

5. He has four wives, and several children. He married his first wife, a cousin from Syria, when he was 17.

6. He frequently cooks for and serves meals to the members of his group.

7. He will not allow others to have any electronic devices, even wristwatches, near him in case they might be used to target him or monitor his movements.

8. He brushes his teeth with a stick of miswak wood. The prophet Mohammed recommends cleaning teeth with miswak before each of the five daily prayers. " Cleanliness of our mind is prerequisite for total creaminess (body and mind)," writes Shahid Athar, M.D.

9. He is the 17th child of 52 siblings.

10. He escaped an assassination attempt by Saudi intelligence during his stay in Sudan from 1991 to 1994. The Saudis revoked his citizenship in 1994 after freezing his assets. Reportedly, the Saudis attempted to assassinate him later in Pakistan.

11. He uses a system of laptop computers that transmit encrypted communications via satellite.

12. There is a $5 million reward for providing information leading to "the apprehension or conviction of Usama Bin Laden." Those with information may contact the FBI , or the U.S. Department of State, Diplomatic Security Service at 1-800-HEROES-1 or mail@dssrewards.net.

13. The U.S. government said it targeted the factory in Yemen because it was supposedly a chemical plant financed by bin Laden. Many news reporters question if the plant produced dangerous chemicals or if bin Laden financed it. Beyond the widespread doubts of Western journalists, many Arab commentators believe that the U.S. bombings in Yemen and Afghanistan during the impeachment brouhaha were Clinton's "Wag the Dog" diversionary tactics, but not for the same reason as Clinton's U.S. opponents. The popular belief in Arab circles was that Monica Lewinsky, who is Jewish, was used by Israel and its American Jewish supporters "to cripple Clinton's ability to pressure Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu," according to Jonathon Broder in Salon magazine.

14. Osama bin Laden's first attempt to assassinate President Clinton, some allege, was to take place in Manila, the capital of The Philippines, during Clinton's visit in 1994. One of the key planners, and the chosen triggerman, was Ramzi Yousef. Yousef has since been convicted for masterminding the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Osama bin Laden has also been implicated in the New York City bombing.

Wali Khan Amin Shah, bin Laden's former top aide, has told FBI investigators that he and Yousef considered the use of explosives, a missile attack on the motorcade and a sniper attack using mercury-tipped bullets. Shah and Yousef cancelled their plans after their Manila bomb factory caught fire.

The second attempt was to occur in Pakistan during a February 1999 visit that Clinton cancelled. However, anonymous intelligence sources quoted in Salon magazine "acknowledge that the plot never went beyond the coffee-shop talking stage."

15. The family of Osama bin Laden reportedly is bankrolling two fellowships at Harvard. The Boston Globe says bin Laden's family has sponsored two fellowships at Harvard since 1992. Both are in Islamic studies.

Updates

According to Court TV, the request by Florida officials to remove Stephen Fagan from performing his community service for a Palm Beach area veterans hospital has been denied by a Massachusetts court. In the last Wallbanger, you learned that Fagan was to be reassigned to a homeless shelter after former Florida governor Claude Kirk objected to a felon working in a Veterans Administration hospital. Kirk's objections were detailed in the June 25 Wallbangers. 

Chad Alvarez, whose past legal difficulties I chronicled in the July 10 and June 2 Wallbangers, appeared in court on July 23 with his lawyer and both parents. His father is Barry Alvarez, head coach of the University of Wisconsin football team, winners of the 1999 Rose Bowl. Alvarez is accused of the theft of a fraternity brother's parrot, and of animal cruelty for forcing the parrot into a microwave. The pet died, cooked in its own juices, before other fraternity brothers who heard its screams could open the microwave door.

For the theft charge added by prosecutors on July 21, Alvarez faces a maximum fine of $10,000 and a prison sentence of up to five years. The original animal mistreatment charge carries a $10,000 maximum fine and a jail sentence of up to two years.

Alvarez has been the beneficiary of over 100 letters sent to the court. The letters, which argue for leniency and compassion, have come from his great aunt, a minister, an assistant UW football coach, a retired Air Force colonel and a senior vice president of Tropicana Products Inc.

The most prominent support for young Alvarez, who has had run-ins with the police four times since Fall 1998, including an arrest for drunk driving (see the July 10 Wallbangers) - has come from U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala, a former chancellor at UW.

According to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Shalala's letter says: "A proper balance between punishment and an opportunity to get the professional help he needs desperately will give this young man an opportunity to survive, mature, and straighten out his life and future."

Animal welfare advocates have attended his court appearances, and publicized his alleged crime.

Pasado's Safe Haven, an animal sanctuary in Monroe, Wash., has offered a $1,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of Gerri Rebel Elkins. Elkins, a 6'3" American Indian, has been identified as the woman accused of dragging a 7-month-old puppy behind a speeding van. Read all about Pugsly's harrowing experience and slow recovery in the July 10 Wallbangers.

Acknowledgments