Parole OK in Brinks slays

One-time radical activist Judith Clark, who was the getaway driver in a botched 1981 armored car heist where two police officers and a security guard were gunned down, was paroled Wednesday after 38 years in prison —in a decision both lauded and reviled.

A Parole Board voted 2-1 to release Clark, who turns 70 this year and could walk free May 15 “or earlier” depending on state approval.

“I’m so grateful to everyone who has helped … to bring my mother home,” said her daughter Harriet Clark, who was just 11 months old when her mom was arrested while fleeing the scene of the $1.6 million robbery and triple homicide.

Clark (photo), the second-longest incarcerated woman in New York State and former acolyte of the Weather Underground, lost her first bid for parole two years ago after Gov. Cuomo commuted her sentence to make her eligible.

“I look at the world differently now,” Clark wrote in a letter to Cuomo. “Instead of abstract slogans, I am moved by flesh-and-blood people.”

She was convicted in the Oct. 20, 1981, murders of Nyack Police Sgt. Edward O’Grady, Nyack Police Officer Waverly “Chipper” Brown and Brinks security guard Peter Paige during the $1.6 million armored-car robbery at the Nanuet Mall in Rockland County.

Clark earned a master’s degree behind bars, trained service dogs, founded an AIDS education program and counseled mothers, eventually becoming a cause célèbre as more than 2,000 people provided statements of support for her release. Another letter signed by more than 70 elected officials called for parole officials to focus more on her rehabilitation than her crimes.

Among her supporters was Mayor de Blasio, who noted said Clark’s “rehabilitation and release should be a model for detainees to strive to emulate.”

But despite her incarceration and rehabilitation, Clark’s parole drew outrage from law enforcement and victims’ families.

“My entire family is outraged by this decision,” fumed Michael Paige, 54, who practices law in Sayreville, N.J., and said he will never get over the murder of his father, Peter. “Judith Clark should never see the light of day,” he said.

“Judith Clark is a murderer and a terrorist,” said Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Lynch. “Because of her actions, three families have been permanently deprived of husbands, father and sons. Those families cannot escape their loss, but Judith Clark will be allowed to escape accountability for her crimes. That is not justice.”