Kathy Boudin, fugitive from the Weather Underground, was killed with three... (2023)

NEW CITY, NY --Weather Underground fugitive Kathy Boudin was arrested along with three others in a $1.6 million terrorist robbery of an armored car that killed two police officers and a guard, authorities said today.

Boudin's capture ended his decade-long defeat by the country's radical underworld, which began when an explosion at an urban guerrilla bomb factory destroyed a Greenwich Village home in March 1970.

Police used bloodhounds and searched a wooded area near the site for four other suspects who escaped after the ambush in an armored car and the shootout that followed on Tuesday night.

Arrested with Boudin were Judith Clark, 32, James Lester Hackford, 32, and Samuel Brown, 41, all from New York.

Miss Boudin, 38, was originally identified as Barbara Edson before a fingerprint check established her true identity. Police were also unsure of the identity of Brown, who used two other names during his arrest.

The four were arrested for murder.

Police Chief Robert Schakenberg told a news conference that political motives had not been ruled out in the theft of the armored car, which he described as "well-planned". He said several shotguns, automatic rifles and pistols were seized.

Clark is believed to be the same person who filed a $5.5 million lawsuit against the US government accusing federal agents of tapping her phone to locate Boudin, from whom she had been on the run since the explosion of a row house in 6 March 1970 in Greenwich Village.

Three people died in the explosion. They were like Diana Oughton, 28, Theodore Gold, 23, and Terry Robins.

The ambush of Brink's armored car took place on Tuesday. Three men armed with shotguns and automatic weapons opened fire on guards driving a pickup truck at the Nanuet National Bank on Nanuet Mall, about 25 miles north of New York City.

The assailants broke into the van by force, stole six bags of money and fled in a van, which then split into two vehicles, a van and a car, with five accomplices.

At the crowded entrance to New York State Highway, the getaway car was stopped by a police checkpoint, but as officers pulled two people from the front, three other thieves broke in from behind, killing two officers and stealing cars to escape.

The police managed to arrest a woman. This woman, who claimed to be Barbara Edson, turned out to be the Kathy Boudin she was looking for.

The three thieves, who fled Nanuet by car, were caught when they collided near Nyack. Police found cash ($1.58 million) stolen from the Brinks truck in both vehicles.

Brown was indicted by Judge Robert Lewis at Nyack Hospital. No guilty pleas were filed and no bail was posted. He was being treated for head injuries that hospital officials said appeared to have been inflicted with a firearm.

Miss Boudin was among the last members of the Weather Underground still at large.

The Greenwich Village townhouse belonged to the father of Cathlyn Platt Wilkerson, another member of the Weather Underground who surrendered on July 8, 1980 to face charges for the explosion.

Miss Wilkerson and Miss Boudin were seen leaving the house at the time of the explosion. The house contained enough explosives to destroy an entire city block.

The Weather Undergound was created in the turmoil of the Vietnam War protests in the late 1960s.

Weather Group went "underground" in December 1969 and shortly thereafter launched a bombing campaign aimed at bringing down the "system".

The bombing campaign peaked with the explosion of the house, but the group carried out sporadic bombings throughout the 1970s.

In December 1980, two other senior Weather members, Bernardine Dohrn and William Ayres, turned themselves in to authorities.

Former members of the group said at the time that the surrender of Miss Dohrn, the recognized leader, and Ayers in Chicago spelled the end of the group.

Since its inception in 1969, Ms. Dohrn has been the key member of a group that seems to have dwindled throughout the 1970s. She led a faction struggle in 1977 in what appeared to be a last-ditch effort to keep the group alive, two former members said.

"Just look at the list of people," said a former member who left the underground in 1977.

No one was left. How do you have an underground when there's nobody underground? People moved on, gave up. They (former members) are doing positive things in their communities. Ideas aren't dead, just the whole underground thing," said the former member, who spoke on condition that he remain anonymous.

The FBI spent over a million dollars hunting Ms. Dorhn, but contradicted the former member's analysis.

In December 1980, two other leading meteorologists, Bernardine Dohrn and William Ayres, surrendered to the authorities.

Former members of the group stood by when the capitulation of Miss Dohrn, the recognized leader, and Ayers in Chicago spelled the end of the group.

Since its inception in 1969, Dohrn has been a key member of a group that seems to have dwindled throughout the 1970s. She led a faction struggle in 1977 in what appeared to be a last gasp to keep the group alive, two former -members said.

"Just look at the list of people," said a former member who left the underground in 1977.

No one was left. How do you have an underground when there's nobody underground? People moved on, gave up. They (former Weather Underground members) do positive things in their communities. Ideas aren't dead, just the whole underground thing," said the former member, who spoke on condition that he remain anonymous.

The FBI, which spent more than $1 million hunting Ms. Dorhn, contradicted the former member's analysis.

"Clandestine worked and still works," said Tom Locke, former head of the FBI's fugitive police force in New York. However, he added that the FBI has given up its intensive search for radicals.

"We can safely assume that there are still people underground who are just waiting for one thing," Locke said.

And when Ayers declined to answer questions in Chicago in December 1980, he said he did so because "the survival of others depends on our silence."

But the former member said there were only a handful of members in 1977 and even fewer now.

"They (Miss Dohrn and Ayers) could have stayed underwater forever and it wouldn't have made any difference. The movement as it was in the 1970s is dead," the source said.

Two members of the clandestine movement are still wanted at the state or federal level. One is Jeff Jones, wanted in 1979 for an incident at a "bomb factory" in Hoboken, New Jersey. The FBI is looking for Silas "Trim" Bissell, a Seattle radical accused of bombing a ROTC building at the University of Washington in 1969.

The source said Bissell played a role in the 1977 split. Dohrn and a faction calling the former member the "official leadership" apparently wanted to keep the group underground, but another faction, the "Revolutionary Committee", wanted to emerge.

The former member said Ayers was on the faction he wanted to run, but Dohrn convinced him to stay with her, apparently living on New York's West Side.

Five members of the "Revolutionary Committee", including Bissell's wife, Judith, were arrested in Houston in November 1978. Among those arrested was Clayton Van Lydegraf, leader of the group, who was Secretary of State for the Communist Party in Washington in the 1970s. 1940.

All five were convicted of attacking the office of conservative California senator John Briggs and are now in prison.

After the 1977 split, members of the "official leadership" began to emerge. Mark Rudd, Phoebe Hirsh and others attended, received light sentences and are now free.

Wilkerson was serving a three-year sentence in January for building bombs at his Greenwich Village home.

The Weather Underground was an offshoot of the Tom Hayden-inspired Students for a Democratic Society, founded in Port Huron, Michigan in 1962.

The SDS split into three factions in June 1969, and Rudd and Miss Dohrn took members of the Weathermen to a training camp near Cleveland to prepare for the "revolutionary war".

Miss Dohrn led her helmeted troops to throw rocks and fight with police in Chicago during the "Days of Rage" in October 1969.