Former Left-Wing Radical Set Free From Prison 37 Years After Bank Robbery That Left 3 Dead
A former left-wing radical convicted for her role as the getaway driver in a bungled 1981 Brinks bank robbery that left three men dead — a security guard and two police officers — has been paroled after serving nearly 38 years in prison.
Wednesday’s decision by the New York State Parole Board to free Judith Clark, who had affiliated herself with an offshoot of the Weather Underground and another group hoping to create a separate black nation within the United States, “is a cruel and unjust slap in the face” to the families of those killed, wrote Ed Day, the elected executive of Rockland County, where the crimes occurred, on his Facebook page.
“Certainly myself and my entire family are outraged and disgusted at this decision,” Michael Paige, the son of murdered Brinks security guard Peter Paige, told The Journal News. “Judith Clark deserves nothing else than to serve the entire rest of her life in prison.”
The 69-year-old Clark was 31 when she drove the vehicle used in the attempted heist of $1.6 million from a Brinks armored security vehicle on October 20, 1981, outside of the Nanuet Mall in the suburbs north of New York City, reports The New York Times.
A Brinks officer, Paige, was shot dead at the scene. Two Nyack police officers, Sgt. Edward O’Grady and Officer Waverly Brown, later were shot and killed at a roadblock set up to catch the thieves.
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Clark was convicted on all charges including the three murders in a trial where she represented herself, referring to the court proceedings as “fascist” and “racist” during jury selection, reports the Times.
But in 2016, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo commuted her 75-years-to-life sentence. He did not erase Clark’s conviction, but made her eligible for parole by reducing her sentence to 35 years to life, citing her “exceptional strides in self-development.”
The three-member parole board echoed that opinion, telling Clark in its 2-to-1 majority decision that it “considered your early serious discipline which occurred in 1985, your documented efforts to apologize to your victims and the community that can be traced back to 1992, and your disavowal of the political ideologies and methods you developed in your youth.”
The board did not dismiss Clark’s crimes.
“There are long suffering survivors of this crime who are the victims’ wives, children, family, first responders and the larger community of Rockland County,” the majority decision states. “You were wrong. Your behavior was criminal. Your callous disregard for the well-being of some, in favor of others, is a disgrace.”
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It went on: “However, this release decision is granted in keeping with applicable factors and principles including, but not limited to, your advanced age of 69, your original sentence of 75 years to life ordered in part by your unrepentant behavior and refusal of counsel, your 38 years of time served, the clemency granted to you in 2016, your good institutional record including programmatic achievements on your own behalf such as post-secondary education and pastoral studies, and your efforts on behalf of others including the founding of the AIDS counseling and education program, your decades of work in the nursery program mentoring new mothers, your efforts to secure the services of a college to serve the inmate population, and your many years training service dogs for veterans and law enforcement.”
The parole decision followed Clark’s second request for freedom after the governor reduced her sentence. More than 70 elected officials — among them 11 members of Congress, 11 state senators, the former Manhattan district attorney, and four former parole board commissioners — had lobbied for her release, citing in part the inherent intention of rehabilitation in prison, reports the Times.
In a 2017 interview, Clark said of her remorse and denounced revolutionary beliefs, “I had to grapple with what happened to my humanity.”
She is due to be released from the Bedford Hills Correctional Center by May 15.
Three others convicted for crimes related to the robbery and murders remain jailed, according to the Times. Two others died in prison. A sixth person, Kathy Boudin, was paroled in 2003 after serving 22 years in prison, and now teaches at Columbia University.
