NEW CITY, N.Y. -- Weather Underground fugitive Kathy Boudin was arrested with three others in a $1.6 million terrorist-style armored car robbery in which two police officers and a guard were killed, officials disclosed today.
Miss Boudin's capture ended her decade-long flight through the nation's radical underworld that began when an explosion at an urban guerrilla bomb factory leveled a Greenwich Village townhouse in March 1970.
Police using bloodhounds pressed a search in a wooded area near the scene of the robbery for four more suspects who escaped after the Tuesday night armored car ambush and subsequent gun battle.
Arrested with Miss Boudin were Judith Clark, 32, James Lester Hackford, 32, and Samuel Brown, 41, all of New York.
Miss Boudin, 38, was originally identified as Barbara Edson before a fingerprint check established her real identity. Police also were unsure of the identity of Brown, who used two other names when arrested.
All four were held on charges of murder.
Police Chief Robert Schakenberg told a news conference a political motive had not been ruled out in the armored car heist, which he described as 'well planned.' He said a number of shotgun and automatic rifles and pistols had been recovered.
Miss Clark was believed to be the same person who filed a $5.5 million against the U.S. government charging federal agents tapped her phone in a bid to locate Miss Boudin, who had been a fugitive since the March 6, 1970 townhouse blast in Greenwich Village.
Three people were killed in the blast. They were as Diana Oughton, 28, Theodore Gold, 23, and Terry Robins.
The ambush of the Brink's armored car occurred Tuesday. Three men armed with shotguns and automatic weapons opened fire on guards making a pickup at the Nanuet National Bank at the Nanuet Mall, about 25 miles north of New York City.
The robbers forced open the truck, took six money bags and fled in a van, later splitting up into two vehicles -- a truck and a car -- with five accomplices.
At the crowded entrance to the New York State Thruway, the getaway truck was stopped by a police roadblock, but when officers pulled two people from the front, three other robbers burst from the rear, killing two police officers and stealing cars to escape.
Police managed to capture one woman. That woman, who claimed to be Barbara Edson, turned out to be the long-sought Kathy Boudin.
All three robbers who fled Nanuet in the car were caught when they crashed in nearby Nyack. Police found the money taken from the Brinks truck -- $1.58 million -- inboth vehicles.
Brown was arraigned at Nyack Hospital by Justice Robert Lewis. No plea was entered and no bail was set. He was treated for head wounds that hospital officials said appeared to have been inflicted in a pistol whipping.
Miss Boudin was among the last of the Weather Underground members still at large.
The Greenwich Village townhouse belonged to the father of Cathlyn Platt Wilkerson, another member of the Weather Underground who surrendered July 8, 1980 to face charges involving the explosion.
Miss Wilkerson and Miss Boudin were seen leaving the townhouse at the time of the blast. The townhouse contained enough explosives to level an entire city block.
The Weather Undergound was spawned in the turbulence of the anti-Vietnam War protests of the late 1960s.
The Weather group went 'underground' in December 1969 and soon after launched a campaign of bombings aimed at toppling the 'establishment.'
The bombing campaign reached a climax with the townhouse explosion, but the group conducted sporadic bombing attacks in the 1970s.
In December 1980 two other top Weather members, Bernardine Dohrn and William Ayres, surrendered to authorities.
Former members of the group said at the time the surrender by Miss Dohrn, the ackowledged leader, and Ayers in Chicago meant the end of the group.
Since its founding in 1969, Miss Dohrn was the most important member of a group that apparently grew smaller as the 1970s progressed. She was at the forefront of a factional fight in 1977 -- an apparent last gasp to keep the group alive, two former members said.
'Just look at the list of people,' said one former member, who dropped out of the Underground in 1977.
'There's nobody left. How do you have an underground when there's nobody underground? People have moved on, given up. They (former members) are doing positive things in their communities. The ideas haven't died, just the whole underground thing,' said the former member, who spoke on the condition there be no identification.
The FBI spent more than $1 million hunting Miss Dorhn, but disagreed with the former member's analysis.
In December 1980, two other top Weathermen, Bernardine Dohrn and William Ayres, surrendered to authorities.
Former members of the group sat at the time the surrender by Miss Dohrn, the ackowledged leader, and Ayers in Chicago meant the end of the group.
Since its founding in 1969, Miss Dohrn was the most important member of a group that apparently grew smaller as the 1970s progressed. She was at the forefront of a factional fight in 1977, an apparent last gasp to keep the group alive, two former members said.
'Just look at the list of people,' said one former member, who dropped out of the Underground in 1977.
'There's nobody left. How do you have an underground when there's nobody underground? People have moved on, given up. They (former Weather Underground members) are doing positive things in their communities. The ideas haven't died, just the whole underground thing,' said the former member, who spoke on the condition there be no identification.
The FBI, which spent more than $1 million hunting Miss Dorhn, disagreed with the former member's analysis.
'The underground worked and it still works,' Tom Locke, former head of the FBI's New York Fugitive squad, said. He added, however, that the FBI has given up intense searches for radicals.
'We can assume there are still people underground that are just waiting for a cause,' Locke said.
And when Ayers refused 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 under forever and it wouldn't have made any difference. The movement as it was in 1970 is dead,' the source said.
Two members of the Underground are still wanted on state or federal charges. One is Jeff Jones, wanted for a Hoboken, N.J., 'bomb factory' incident in 1979. The FBI is seeking Silas 'Trim' Bissell, a Seattle radical accused of bombing an ROTC building at the University of Washington in 1969.
The source said Bissell played a role in the 1977 split. Miss Dohrn and a faction the former member called the 'official leadership' apparently wanted to keep the group underground, but another faction, the 'revolutionary committee,' wanted to surface.
The former member said Ayers was in the faction that wanted to come up, but Dohrn talked him into staying 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. Those arrested included Clayton Van Lydegraf, the leader of the group who was Washington State Secretary of the Communist Party in the 1940s.
The five were convicted in a plot to bomb the office of conservative California state Sen. John Briggs and are all now in jail.
After the 1977 split members of the 'official leadership' began appearing. Mark Rudd, Phoebe Hirsh and others surfaced, were given light sentences and are now free.
Wilkerson began serving a 3-year prison term in January for building bombs at the Greenwich Village townhouse.
The Weather Underground was an offshoot of the Tom Hayden-inspired Students for a Democratic Society, founded in Port Huron, Mich., in 1962.
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 get ready for the 'revolutionary war.'
Miss Dohrn led her helmeted troops into Chicago for a spree of rock-throwing and battles with police during the 'Days of Rage' in October 1969.
