LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Jack Scott, who gained fame by helping Patty Hearst flee from the FBI, died of cancer just days after lawyers tried to get his testimony for the trial of a former Symbionese Liberation Army fugitive.
Lawyers for Sara Jane Olson had warned the judge that Scott was near death and asked Friday for an emergency order to take his testimony. But prosecutors opposed the move, and resolution of it was postponed until today.Scott, 57, died of throat cancer Sunday night in Eugene, Ore., said his wife, Micki.
Defense lawyer Susan Jordan refused to comment on Scott's death because of a gag order in the case.
On Friday, she had bitterly denounced the prosecution opposition to Scott's testimony, saying: "This is a smokescreen. They want to let this witness die."
Scott became a guru to basketball star Bill Walton and more recently was a physical therapist to such track stars as Carl Lewis and Tommie Smith. He was dedicated to treating athletic injuries without resorting to drugs.
In an interview with The Associated Press late last year, Scott told how his path crossed with Hearst and the SLA. A graduate of Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley, Scott became sports editor of the radical Ramparts Magazine and later took a job as physical education director of Oberlin College in Ohio.
In 1974, he heard about the SLA and came back to Berkeley.
"I said, 'This is my generation gone crazy and I want to write about them,' " he recalled.
Olson, formerly known as Kathleen Ann Soliah, was one of those he contacted in his quest to meet Hearst.
Olson is accused of planting pipe bombs under two Los Angeles police cars in a 1975 plot to avenge the deaths of six SLA members in a shootout. The bombs didn't explode.
Olson was indicted in 1976. During her years as a fugitive she married a doctor, had three children and became a community activist and actress in St. Paul, Minn. She was arrested near her home last summer.
She could face life in prison if convicted.
Hearst, the newspaper heiress who was kidnapped by the SLA and later robbed a bank with her captors, was expected to testify for the prosecution about her fear of the organization.
Defense lawyers hoped Scott would be able to impeach her credibility by testifying that she told him she had arranged her own kidnapping in order to escape her impending marriage and that she stayed with the SLA because the group treated her so well.
Bill Harris, the former SLA member who kidnapped Hearst and went underground with Scott's help, credited him with saving their lives at a time when they were the most hunted fugitives in the nation.
"Jack wasn't afraid to take a risk," Harris said. "And he was a journalist. He wanted the story.