Emily Harris: Murderer with Symbionese Liberation Army
Emily Harris was a founding member of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), the left-wing terrorist group best known for the kidnapping of newspaper heiress Patty Hearst.
Harris became involved with the SLA after moving from Bloomington to Berkeley, California, with her husband, Bill Harris, and their friends Gary Atwood and Angela (DeAngelis) Atwood, also IU alumni. All four alums were members of the organization.
As a member of the SLA, Harris was associated with the assassination of California superintendent Marcus Foster in 1973 and the 1975 robbery of Crocker National Bank in Carmichael, California, among other crimes.
She served a total of 16 years in prison, eight of them for the murder of Myrna Opsahl, who was fatally shot during the bank robbery.
Eric Rosser: Child Pornographer
In 2000, Eric Rosser, also known as Doc Rosser, became the first child sex crimes fugitive on the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted Fugitives” list for producing and distributing child pornography. His victims were in Bloomington, where he lived until the early 1990s, and in Thailand, where he had moved and was teaching piano.
Rosser, a keyboardist for John Mellencamp for two years beginning in 1979, was sentenced to more than 16 years in prison for his crimes. He was released in January 2017 but sentenced to an additional 10 years in prison in 2020 after he was discovered watching child pornography on public transportation in Montana in July 2017—only six months after he had been released.
Rosser earned a master’s degree from the IU Music School in 1979.
Jim Jones: Cult Mass Murderer
Jim Jones, infamous cult leader of the Peoples Temple, is known for the mass murder-suicide of 918 commune members in 1978 via cyanide-laced Flavor Aid. More than 300 of the victims were children.
Jones is also responsible for the deaths of five others, including Congressman Leo Ryan, who visited Jones’ commune, Jonestown, to verify the safety of its residents on the day of the mass murder. Ryan and four members of his entourage were killed by gunfire from Jones’ armed guards at an airstrip in Guyana, South America, where Jonestown was located.
Jones, who attended IU for two years before finishing his degree at Butler University, was killed by a gunshot to the head that same day, which was found to be consistent with suicide.
Jared Fogle: Possession of Child Pornography
Jared Fogle is a former spokesman for the Subway restaurant chain who attributed his weight loss to eating sandwiches at the former Subway location on Atwater Avenue. The 2000 IU grad was arrested in 2015 for possession of child pornography and was sentenced to more than 15 years in federal prison.
Fogle has also been accused of embezzlement through the Jared Foundation, a nonprofit organization he founded to combat childhood obesity. The organization was found to have never issued grants or funds to further its mission.
In April 2015, the director of the foundation, Russell Taylor, was arrested in Indianapolis for possession of child pornography and child exploitation. The
case against Taylor, who was sentenced to 27 years in federal prison, is what ultimately led to Fogle’s arrest.
