Thero Wheeler

Wheeler moved to Texas and changed his name to Bradley Bruce. He relied on electronics skills learned in prison to gain employment. He formed a relationship with a woman and they had a daughter. His cover was blown while interceding in a dispute. When he sought hospital treatment, his alias was fed into a computer and the FBI arrested him. He was returned to California to face escape charges and continue serving his previous term. In 1976, he married Cynthia Spencer.

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. 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.

On 4 May 1974, an article in The Pittsburgh Courier quoted Wheeler's girlfriend Mary Alice Siem. It reported material published in The San Francisco Examiner. She said that they had left the SLA due to death threats from DeFreeze.

But by late 1973, Wheeler was living as Bruce Bradley in Houston, Texas. He worked there as an electronics technician. 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.

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".

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 his girlfriend Mary Alice Siem, a white heiress. 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.

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. 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.

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.