Kathy Boudin
Kathy Boudin was an American radical leftist who served 23 years in prison for felony murder based on her role in the 1981 Brink's robbery. Boudin was a founding member of the militant Weather Underground organization, which engaged in bombings of government buildings to express opposition to U.S. foreign policy and racism. The 1981 robbery resulted in the killing of two Nyack, New York police officers and one security guard, and serious injury to another security guard; Boudin was arrested attempting to flee after the getaway vehicle she occupied was stopped by police. She was released on parole in 2003. After earning a doctorate, Boudin became an adjunct professor at Columbia University.
Early life, family, and education
Kathy Boudin was born in Manhattan on May 19, 1943, into a Jewish family with a storied left-wing history. Boudin was raised in Greenwich Village, New York City. Her paternal grandparents had emigrated from Russia and Austria. Her great-uncle was Marxist theorist Louis B. Boudin. Her mother was poet Jean Boudin, whose sister Esther was married to radical journalist I.F. Stone. Her father, attorney Leonard Boudin, had represented clients such as Judith Coplon, the Cuban government, and Paul Robeson. A National Lawyers Guild attorney, Leonard Boudin was the law partner of Victor Rabinowitz, himself counsel to numerous left-wing organizations. Her brother, Michael Boudin, became a conservative lawyer and served as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.Kathy Boudin graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1965 as valedictorian. After college, she attended the Case Western Reserve University School of Law for less than a year.
Boudin met her romantic partner, David Gilbert, in the 1970s and gave birth to their son Chesa Boudin in 1980. When her son was 14 months old, she was arrested and subsequently convicted and incarcerated for felony murder based on her role in the 1981 Brink's robbery. Her son was raised by former Weatherman leaders Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.
Weather Underground
In 1969, Boudin became a founding member of the Weatherman faction of Students for a Democratic Society; in 1970, this faction became known as the Weather Underground Organization. In 1970, she and Cathy Wilkerson were the only survivors of the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion; a bomb that their comrades were constructing in anticipation of an attack on U.S. Army personnel that evening exploded prematurely, killing three militants and demolishing the building that they were using as a hideout and bomb factory. Boudin emerged from the wreckage naked and then disappeared. The WUO soon after renounced actions that sought to inflict human casualties. Boudin remained a fugitive for more than a decade, engaging in multiple bombings and other actions.In 1981, Boudin and several former members of the Weather Underground, along with current members of the May 19th Communist Organization and the Black Liberation Army, robbed a Brink's armored car at the Nanuet Mall in Nanuet, New York. Boudin was in the front seat of a U-Haul truck used as a switchcar getaway vehicle and also acted as a decoy. Responding police testified that when they spotted and pulled her over, Boudin feigned innocence and encouraged the two responding officers put their guns down, whereupon her accomplices leaped from the back of the truck with automatic weapons and shot officers Edward O'Grady and Waverly Brown, killing them both. In addition to killing O'Grady and Brown, the robbers had already seriously wounded guard Joseph Trombino, killed his partner Peter Paige, and injured two other police officers.
Guilty plea and incarceration
Boudin was arrested while attempting to flee the scene on foot. As part of a negotiated plea agreement to avoid three potential murder convictions that could have resulted in Boudin serving three consecutive 25-years-to-life sentences, she pleaded guilty to felony murder and robbery in exchange for an agreed-upon sentence of 20 years to life in prison.While incarcerated, Boudin published articles in the Harvard Educational Review, in Breaking the Rules: Women in Prison and Feminist Therapy by Judy Harden and Marcia Hill, and in Breaking the Walls of Silence: AIDS and Women in a New York State Maximum-Security Prison. She co-authored The Foster Care Handbook for Incarcerated Parents published by Bedford Hills in 1993. She also co-edited Parenting from inside/out: Voices of mothers in prison, jointly published by correctional institutions and the Osborne Association. Boudin also co-founded AIDS Committee for Education inside the prison in 1988 with other incarcerated women including Katrina Haslip and Judith Alice Clark to provide accurate education on living with HIV. During this time, she earned a master's in adult education from Vermont College, then the women's college of Norwich University.
Boudin also wrote and published poetry while incarcerated, publishing in books and journals including the PEN Center Prize Anthology Doing Time, Concrete Garden, and Aliens at the Border. She won an International PEN prize for her poetry in 1999.
Boudin and Roslyn D. Smith contributed the piece "Alive Behind the Labels: Women in Prison" to the 2003 anthology Sisterhood Is Forever: The Women's Anthology for a New Millennium, edited by Robin Morgan.
After almost 23 years' imprisonment, Boudin was granted parole on August 20, 2003, in her third parole hearing. She was released from the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility on September 18, 2003.
Life after prison
After her release from prison, Boudin accepted a job in the HIV/AIDS Clinic at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center, meeting the work provisions of parole that required active job prospects. Later, she founded the Coming Home Program at the Spencer Cox Center for Health at Mt. Sinai/St.Luke’s Hospital in Morningside Heights, which provides health care for people returning from incarceration.In May 2004 Boudin published an essay in the Fellowship of Reconciliation's publication Fellowship, expressing remorse for her participation in the Brink's robbery, which she described as "horrific." She received an EdD degree from Columbia University Teachers College in 2007.