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.
In the following several months, SLA soldiers committed two murders, kidnapped heiress Patty Hearst, and conducted armed robberies of banks.
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.
While held at Vacaville, Wheeler met some student activists from University of California, Berkeley, including Willie Wolfe and Russ Little.
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.
[4][page needed] 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.
[3] 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.
[6] 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.
[7] Reported but mistaken sightings of Wheeler around the time of the Hearst kidnapping led to speculation that he was still involved, and to the notion that he was one of those killed in the Los Angeles shootout and fire.