Weathermen terrorist who turned her life around while serving 22 years in jail

Kathy Boudin b May 19 1943 d May 1, 2022

Kathy Boudin, who has died aged 78, was a member of the radical 1970s US urban guerrilla group Weather Underground and served 22 years behind bars after pleading guilty to seconddegree murder for her role in a botched 1981 armed robbery.

While incarcerated she developed programmes on Aids education and parenting classes that became national models and helped to write a handbook for inmates with children in foster care. Her work teaching prisoners to read earned her a degree in education and her articles were published in educational journals. In 1999 she won an award from Pen, the writers’ organisation, for her poetry.

Kathy Boudin expressed regret for her involvement in violent radicalism: ‘‘People were killed and injured and I abandoned my son, whom I loved . . .’’ she wrote from prison. ‘‘After years of soulsearching, I can see that a combination of my personal issues, wrong thinking, and the impact of years of isolation contributed to my moral failures.’’

Her release on parole in 2003, however, was opposed by relatives, friends and colleagues of those who died in the 1981 attempted robbery.

Born in Manhattan, Kathy Boudin was the daughter of Leonard Boudin, a leading radical lawyer who defended many of those accused of communist loyalties by the House UnAmerican Activities Committee. She attended Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania and in the 1960s became involved in the Weathermen (subsequently Weather Underground), a predominantly white middle-class group that grew out of the student protest movement against the Vietnam War.

The group took its name from a line in the Bob Dylan song Subterranean Homesick Blues – ‘‘You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows’’ – and set out to promote armed struggle in support of the Black Panthers and other militant groups, and to oppose the war in Vietnam by ‘‘Bringing the War Home’’.

In 1969 Kathy Boudin took part in the ‘‘Days of Rage’’ protests when students ran riot in a wealthy area of Chicago, smashing store windows and clashing with police. She and others were charged with conspiracy and riot, cases ultimately dismissed on grounds that evidence had been obtained unlawfully.

Wanted by the police, she holed up in a safe house in Greenwich Village. On March 6, 1970, she was having a shower there when comrades in the basement accidentally detonated a makeshift nail-bomb which ripped the front off the building, killing three members of the group instantly.

Emerging naked and bleeding from the building, Boudin fled before the police arrived. The only evidence of her presence was an appointment card from her dentist found in the debris. She spent much of the next 11 years in Mexico then lived underground in the US, taking cleaning jobs.

After March 1970 the Weather Underground took pains to avoid further casualties. They carried out about 24 bomb attacks at locations including the Pentagon, the US Capitol and NYPD HQ, but always struck at night, in empty offices, and gave advance warnings.

After Saigon fell in 1975, Weather Underground was deprived of its raison d’etre and by the end of the decade most members had given themselves up, though the majority were acquitted or never charged, because the FBI itself had violated laws while pursuing them.

Kathy Boudin, however, remained a fugitive, and in 1980 gave birth to a son by her partner David Gilbert, another former Weather Underground activist. The following year the couple agreed to act as getaway drivers for members of the Black Liberation Army (BLA), a group composed of street criminals and convicts radicalised in the aftermath of a 1970 prison uprising, in a planned armed robbery.

On October 20, 1981, they made their way to the Nanuet Mall in upstate New York, where they sat in a truck waiting for members of the BLA, who had attacked an armoured Brinks security van carrying US$1.6 million. The gunmen never gave the security guards a chance to hand over the cash, shooting one in cold blood and critically wounding a second.

The getaway truck sped from the scene with Boudin in the passenger seat and Gilbert at the wheel, but they were soon stopped by policemen. Boudin surrendered immediately, but when the police attempted to open the rear of the truck, the gunmen burst out shooting, killing two policemen.

Boudin pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 20 years-to-life. Gilbert, who made a political stand at the trial, received two life terms.

Boudin was released on parole in 2003. Afterwards she founded a programme that provides health care for people leaving jail and co-founded the Center for Justice at Columbia University, which seeks alternatives to prison. She took a doctorate at Columbia University Teachers College and taught at the Columbia School of Social Work.

She had married David Gilbert after her arrest, and although they divorced in prison they remained close and spent their time together after Gilbert was released in 2021 under a grant of clemency.

Their son, Chesa, had been adopted by two other radicals, though he kept in close contact with his biological parents in prison. He went on to be elected San Francisco district attorney in 2019.

‘‘A combination of my personal issues, wrong thinking, and the impact of years of isolation contributed to my moral failures.’’