Joe Remiro

Joseph Michael Remiro (born 1947) is an American convicted murderer and one of the founding members of the Symbionese Liberation Army in the early fall of 1973.

It was an American leftist terrorist group based in the Bay Area of California.

He used the pseudonym or nom de guerre "Bo" while he was a member of the group.

Remiro was born in 1947 and raised in San Francisco in a lower-middle-class family of Italian and Mexican ancestry.

He attended Roman Catholic schools and was raised in the faith.

He began to attend San Francisco City College, but dropped out in 1965.

He enlisted in the US Army.

Remiro was assigned to Long-range reconnaissance patrol (LRRP).

Remiro remains incarcerated, serving a life sentence for the November 1973 murder of Marcus Foster, Superintendent of the Oakland Public Schools.

The only member of the Symbionese Liberation Army still incarcerated, he has been denied parole at least eleven times.

In the spring of 1973 Donald DeFreeze escaped from Soledad Prison and made his way to Oakland.

He sought shelter at Peking House with white contacts from the Black Cultural Association.

Concerned about surveillance at their high-profile, Maoist radical commune, they moved DeFreeze to a less well-known house in Concord, which was rented by Nancy Ling Perry.

Patricia Soltysik was also living there.

DeFreeze, who may have been an informant setting up sting operations, offered guns, explosives, and related supplies for sale to radicals he came into contact with.

Veteran Remiro used his knowledge of weaponry to train the affiliated radicals into an armed force.

He trained other members in target practice, as well as the use, maintenance and dismantling of weaponry.

During that transformation the group was joined by Thero Wheeler, a former Black Panther who knew DeFreeze from the BCA in Vacaville; he escaped from prison in August 1973.

The group seemed increasingly committed to armed violence and preparing for action.

With the internal opposition cleared out of the way after Wheeler left, the SLA prepared for its first action, the assassination of Marcus Foster, Superintendent of Oakland Public Schools.

Purportedly DeFreeze urged the action to gain attention and reduce competition in the city.

The assassination was carried out on November 6, 1973, as Foster and Blackburn left an Oakland School Board meeting.

Foster was killed by five cyanide-packed bullets and Blackburn was badly wounded by a shotgun blast.

Remiro and Russell Little were arrested in January 1974 after an unrelated confrontation with police.

They were convicted of charges of murder in the shootings: Foster was killed and his deputy wounded.

The SLA selected Superintendent of Oakland Schools Marcus Foster and his deputy Robert Blackburn as their first assassination targets, denouncing them as "fascist" for supporting issuance of ID cards for Oakland students to keep non-student drug dealers off of campuses.

Foster's proposal was actually a compromise offered in response to more intrusive proposals supported by more conservative players in Oakland city and school politics.

Although there were no eyewitnesses who could identify the assailants, circumstantial evidence discovered in January 1974 implicated Joe Remiro and Russ Little in the murder.

The killing of Oakland's first black school superintendent outraged many blacks and other leftists.

“Black folks have never been given enough power in this country to be No. 1 on anybody's hit list.

He served two tours in Vietnam as a member of the 101st Airborne Division.

He had training as an auto mechanic and in weaponry.

He participated in search and destroy missions in Vietnam, where he became addicted to drugs.

When Remiro returned from service, he joined Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

He also joined the more radical organization Venceremos, which had many Chicano or Mexican-American members and was militating for civil rights for its people.

He also became involved with the Black Cultural Association, a prisoner outreach and education program for inmates at the Vacaville psychiatric prison in California.

Lastly, Remiro became involved at Peking House, a Maoist collective where he became best friends with Russ Little.

Through these connections he also became friendly with Willie Wolfe and Angela Atwood.

This small group became founding members of the Symbionese Liberation Army, along with Donald DeFreeze, Patricia Soltysik, Nancy Ling Perry, Thero Wheeler, Mary Alice Siem, Camilla Hall, and married couple Bill and Emily Harris.

Most were white, many from middle-class or upper-middle-class backgrounds, and they had been radicalized at University of California, Berkeley, or by associates in northern California.