Kathy Boudin, Radical Involved In Deadly Rockland Robbery, Has Died

ROCKLAND COUNTY, NY — Another member of the gang that killed three people during the infamous Brinks robbery in 1981 has died, rekindling sad and angry memories in Rockland County.

Kathy Boudin served more than two decades behind bars for her role in the deadly armored truck robbery and getaway attempt. The former Weather Underground radical was 78 and had spent the latter part of her life helping people who had been imprisoned, The Associated Press reported.

Boudin, who lived in New York City, died of cancer Sunday surrounded by family, including her life partner David Gilbert, who was paroled last year.

Boudin had been released on parole in 2003, a move that infuriated relatives and friends of the three men slain in the botched Brink's robbery.

Many in Rockland County thought 22 years behind bars for her and 40 years for him were not enough.

Gilbert's release was "a cruel and unjust slap in the face to the families of Sergeant Edward O'Grady, Officer Waverly 'Chipper' Brown and Brinks guard Peter Paige as well as the people of Rockland County," Rockland County Executive Ed Day said last year.

Although the Nyack Police Department no longer exists, every year a memorial service is held at 4 p.m. Oct. 20 at the site of two of the slayings — bringing together survivors of that day along with family members of the victims and hundreds of local, state, regional and national law enforcement officials. A scholarship named in honor of O'Grady and Brown is awarded annually to support Rockland County students seeking a career in law enforcement.

Hundreds of people met at Rockland County's memorial in 2021 for the 40th anniversary event, filled with not only sadness but frustration.

In 2010, Patch.com asked retired South Nyack-Grand View Police Chief Alan Colsey to reflect on the day of the robbery, when he captured part of the Brinks gang in Nyack as they were fleeing. SEE: Killer's Death Stirs Memories of a Deadly October Day in Rockland

Boudin kept a low profile after her release and continued to work on behalf of inmates and former inmates.

She was a model of how to live redemption and own responsibility for horrific mistakes without allowing them to entirely define her life, her son Chesa Boudin, the district attorney of San Francisco, told The Associated Press on Monday.

Kathy Boudin was the daughter of civil rights attorney Leonard Boudin and became a radical activist in the 1960s, joining the Weather Underground. The group helped define the radical anti-Vietnam War movement with its violent protests and bombings. Boudin was once seen fleeing naked from a 1970 explosion of a Greenwich Village townhouse police said was used by radicals as a bomb factory.

She and Gilbert joined members of the Black Liberation Army in what was a violent remnant of that left-wing extremism. The domestic terrorists stole $1.8 million from a Brinks armored truck at the Nanuet Mall on Oct. 20, 1981, killing Paige in a shootout. Nyack police tried to stop the robbers at the Route 59 entrance to the New York State Thruway shortly afterward. When the getaway truck was stopped at a roadblock, gunmen burst from the back with weapons firing. O'Grady and Brown were killed in the gunfight, and Detective Arthur Keenan was wounded.

Boudin, who had been in the truck’s passenger seat, was apprehended as she fled. Gilbert, also unarmed, was the driver.

She pleaded guilty in 1984 to murder and robbery, while maintaining that her role in the crimes was limited and that she was unarmed.

“I feel terrible about the lives that were lost as a result of this incident,” Boudin said in court, standing next to her father. “I have led a life committed to political principles. I believe I can be true to these principles in various ways without engaging in violent acts.”

Boudin and Gilbert were married after their arrests and later divorced in prison, but remained close and had been spending their days together since Gilbert's release, Chesa Boudin said.

Gilbert, who did not plead guilty, was sentenced to 75 years to life. She was sentenced to 20 years to life.

In prison, she developed a program on parenting behind bars and helped write a handbook for inmates whose children are in foster care. She earned a master’s degree and worked to help inmates with AIDS.

After her release, she founded a program that provides health care for people returning from incarceration and co-founded the Center for Justice at Columbia University, which seeks alternatives to mass incarceration.

Few of the robbers survive. Judith Clark was granted parole in 2019. Marilyn Jean Buck, who got away but was arrested in 1985 hiding in Westchester County, was released from a federal prison in Texas a month before dying of cancer in 2010. There's a separate effort to secure the release of the ringleader, Mutulu Shakur, 71, who is at a federal medical center in Kentucky with advanced-stage bone marrow cancer, and who was denied parole for the ninth time in 2021.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.