Thero Wheeler

Thero Lavon Wheeler (1945–2009), aka Bruce Bradley while a fugitive (1973–1975), was a founding member of the Symbionese Liberation Army, an American left-wing organization in the San Francisco Bay area.

Wheeler was born into an African-American family in Schulenburg, Texas, on January 28, 1945.

His mother was Ethel Mae Anderson and his father was John Henry Wheeler.

The family moved to California after World War II, in the second part of the Great Migration.

He grew up in San Francisco's Fillmore and Western Addition areas.

He had two brothers, one of whom became a police officer.

Wheeler was convicted of assault and robbery at age 17.

He was sentenced to one-year-to-life and sent to Vacaville Prison.

There he began studying politics and history.

He became a convict organizer, known as a "jailhouse lawyer."

He read Engels, Marx and Lenin, socialist and communist theorists.

He had joined the Black Panthers and a Maoist group, but resigned from both after critiquing their approaches.

He also was involved for a time with Venceremos, a Chicano political group based in Palo Alto, California.

While held at Vacaville, Wheeler met some student activists from University of California, Berkeley, including Willie Wolfe and Russ Little.

They were participating in a prisoner outreach program organized in part by professor Colston Westbrook and associated with the Black Cultural Association in prison.

They sponsored many programs, including discussions devoted to social justice and correcting wrongs in United States society.

For a time Wheeler was involved in a small prison group, Unisight, organized by Donald DeFreeze, whom he had met through the BCA.

In this period, Wheeler also met Mary Alice Siem, a white Berkeley student and heiress, and they began a relationship.

He left the group in October 1973 as he objected to its plans to undertake violent acts.

Law enforcement later classified the SLA as a terrorist group.

In the following several months, SLA "soldiers" committed two murders, kidnapped heiress Patty Hearst, and conducted armed robberies of banks.

Believed to be a member of the group, Wheeler was put on the FBI's Most Wanted List.

But by late 1973, Wheeler was living as Bruce Bradley in Houston, Texas.

He worked there as an electronics technician.

In August 1973, Thero Wheeler escaped from Vacaville; friends, perhaps from the nascent SLA, provided transportation and a change of clothes after he walked away from the complex.

In a later prison interview, Wheeler said friends who aided his escape were "well-connected".

That fall he joined ex-con Donald DeFreeze, whom he knew from the Black Cultural Association at Vacaville, and "a curious group of upper middle-class whites, most college-educated but menially employed", at a small house in Oakland.

These were the founders of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA).

Close friends say Wheeler split with the SLA in October 1973 because of their plans for violent tactics (as in the Marcus Foster murder) and he argued with DeFreeze and others competing for leadership.

He called DeFreeze a "drunken fool" and was threatened with death.

Wheeler was not impressed with the blind charge toward gratuitous violence.

He was staying at the Concord house, with Mary Alice Siem.

On occasion DeFreeze, Soltysik, and Perry aimed guns at Siem, and Wheeler interceded on her behalf.

Wheeler and Siem decided to leave in October, their ex-comrades robbed her of $600 at gunpoint.

The couple separated: Wheeler moved to Houston, Texas, where he assumed a new name.

Six of the founding members died in a shootout and fire in a house in Los Angeles in May 1974, and Wheeler was thought possibly to be among them.

He had a girlfriend and their daughter was born in early 1975.

Wheeler/Bradley was apprehended by the FBI in July 1975.

After reviewing the case, the FBI said they did not want Wheeler "in connection with any SLA crimes".

He was returned to California to serve time for the escape and complete his previous sentence.