A former Black Liberation Army member imprisoned for the 1973 murder of a state trooper told a parole official last week that he accepts blame for the crime but did not shoot the officer.
In his first account to authorities of the roadside gunbattle, Sundiata Acoli told a hearing officer that he was knocked unconscious while scuffling with Trooper Werner Foerster. When he awoke, he said, the shooting had ended, and he fled with his companions, fellow BLA members James Costan, who was mortally wounded, and Joanne Chesimard.
"I didn't actually shoot him (Foerster), but I take responsibility for it," Acoli, 67, told the State Parole Board official in a telephone interview Wednesday from the federal penitentiary in Allenwood, Pa. But Acoli also claimed the trooper had tried to pistol-whip him and that he grappled with Foerster "so he couldn't shoot me."
According to authorities, Foerster was shot four times, twice in the head by his own service weapon, after an early morning traffic stop. Chesimard and a second trooper, James Harper, were wounded. Acoli, born Clark Edward Squire, was convicted in 1974 of first-degree murder for killing Foerster. Chesimard, who also goes by Assata Shakur, was convicted three years later but escaped from prison and fled to Cuba, where she remains the State Police's most wanted fugitive.
Thirty years later, Acoli's parole case has stirred up old animosity between law enforcement authorities and supporters of civil-rights-era black militants. The State Parole Board has been flooded with hundreds of letters from around the world. Two dueling Web sites argue for and against his freedom.
Acoli has never given a statement to police and never testified in court, and there is no record of statements he made in his unsuccessful bid for parole a decade ago. Authorities believe Wednesday's interview, a tape of which was provided to The Star-Ledger, marks the first time Acoli has given his version of the shooting.
"I regret it," Acoli told the hearing officer. He also said, "I won't commit another crime."
But he offered no explanation of who fired the fatal shots. "You don't remember anything as far as how Trooper Foerster ended up getting shot, I believe it was four times?" the officer asked him. "Uh, right," Acoli said.
"You don't recall what happened to Trooper Foerster?"
"No."
Yesterday, State Police Sgt. Kevin Tormey called Acoli's account "a fairy tale."
"What he's trying to do is make himself look good in front of the parole board and reduce his involvement in the crime," said Tormey, a terrorism investigator who's been tracking Chesimard for 15 years.
Florence Morgan, one of Acoli's lawyers, would not comment on the parole interview because she had not heard it. But she said what mattered was that Acoli had reformed himself and was no longer a threat.
"Sundiata Acoli has been in prison more than three decades. He's 67 years old, and he's fully rehabilitated. He's gotten positive reports from his prison caseworker. Denial of parole would be the equivalent of a death sentence," Morgan said.
According to authorities, Harper pulled over a white two-door Pontiac sedan for a defective taillight near a New Jersey Turnpike entrance ramp in East Brunswick on May 2, 1973. Acoli was driving, with Chesimard and Costan his passengers. All three were members of the Black Liberation Army, an offshoot of the Black Panther Party that advocated armed revolution and the creation of a separate black state.
Foerster arrived as backup, and patted down Acoli while Harper questioned the others. Foerster found a gun clip on Acoli, shouted to Harper, and that's when authorities say Chesimard pulled out a gun and shot Harper.
In the ensuing gunfight, Harper shot Chesimard and Costan before running to a nearby State Police station for help.
Acoli, Chesimard and Costan got into their car and drove five miles south on the Turnpike, where Chesimard was arrested, and Costan was found dead, lying on top of Foerster's gun. Acoli fled into the woods, where he was caught more than 30 hours later.
In last week's interview, Acoli said that while frisking him, Foerster found his gun and ammunition clip.
"Then I guess he got mad, and he started trying to pistol-whip me. He started pistol-whipping me," Acoli said.
Acoli said he was knocked against the car and heard gunfire. He said he began wrestling with Foerster, who had his service weapon in one hand and Acoli's gun in the other. Acoli said Foerster fired once, but missed him.
"Both of us were just kind of facing each other, and I was holding both of his hands real tight," Acoli said. "We were mostly kind of just jostling around. . . . The main thing, I wanted to make sure I held his gun so he couldn't shoot me."
Then, Acoli said, Harper fired at him, grazing him in the head.
"It knocked me out. And when I came to, (Costan) was leaning against the car, and I took him and put him in the car, put Assata in the back seat and drove away."
After the interview, Acoli's hearing officer filled out a report that classified it as "unfavorable."
"Denies shooting of trooper," the officer wrote.
Next, the parole board will solicit comments from prosecutors, Harper and the family of Foerster. Acoli and his supporters will have a chance to respond. Then the case will go to a two-member panel that will travel to Allenwood to interview Acoli. Then the panel will decide whether he goes free.
Chesimard partner in trooper's murder wants freedom; Word that Acoli is eligible for a parole hearing spotlights an old bitterness
For 30 years, Sundiata Acoli has been known as the guy who didn't get away.
He has remained in prison for murdering a state trooper long after his Black Liberation Army partner, Joanne Chesimard, escaped and fled to Cuba, where she became the State Police's most wanted fugitive and an international symbol of militant black nationalism.
Now Acoli wants his freedom, too. In coming weeks, the state Parole Board will consider his request for release. News that he is eligible for a hearing has exposed old bitterness between two warring factions of the civil rights era: black revolutionaries and law enforcement. To police, Acoli, 67, who was born Clark Edward Squire, is a cop-killing terrorist who has no place in post-9/11 society.
"You're talking about someone who's part of a group that is not the least bit reluctant to send mayhem into the population," said former State Police Superintendent Clinton Pagano. "If there's a shred of truth in their wanting social change, then it would logically follow he'd be out with someone else trying to do the same thing again."
To his supporters, Acoli is a political prisoner who deserves freedom after three decades behind bars.
"It's awful what happened to that trooper and what happened to his family as a result, but I think justice has been served," said Bonnie Kerness, a prisoner advocate for the American Friends Service Committee in Newark who speaks regularly with Acoli. "This is 30 years. He's an old man. It's enough."
The Parole Board's impending decision promises to be among its most contentious. Since the agency announced last month that Acoli is eligible for a hearing early this year, its Trenton offices have been flooded with letters from supporters and opponents around the world.
Both sides of the campaign have Web sites, one called "Stop Sundiata" and another run by the Sundiata Acoli Freedom Campaign.
The Parole Board case, which will begin with preliminary hearings in late February, will not simply hinge upon the facts of the 1973 shooting. At issue is whether Acoli will commit another crime if released. The Parole Board is required to consider a wide range of factors, from his prison behavior and support in the community to statements from police and his victim's family.
Acoli's case history begins on May 2, 1973, with trooper James Harper pulling over a white two-door Pontiac sedan for a defective taillight near a New Jersey Turnpike entrance ramp in East Brunswick. Acoli was driving. Chesimard was in the front passenger seat, and James Costan was sitting in the back.
All three were members of the Black Liberation Army, an offshoot of the Black Panther Party that advocated armed revolution and the creation of a separate black state. All three had taken Muslim names. Chesimard became known as Assata Shakur, and Costan went by Zayd Malik Shakur.
Acoli, a former NASA engineer and civil rights activist, got out of the car and spoke briefly with Harper. Trooper Werner Foerster arrived for backup, and patted Acoli down while Harper began questioning Chesimard and Costan.
Foerster shouted that he'd found an automatic gun clip on Acoli. That's when authorities say Chesimard pulled out a gun and shot Harper in the left shoulder.
Harper retreated behind his troop car while Foerster and Acoli wrestled nearby, authorities said. Chesimard and Costan each got out of the car and began shooting. Harper returned fire, hitting them both.
Unable to see Foerster on the other side of his car, Harper ran to a State Police station 175 yards away and called for help.
Acoli, Chesimard and Costan got back into their car and took off down the Turnpike, pulling to the shoulder eight miles south. That's when other officers arrested Chesimard and found Costan, 32, dead, with Foerster's service weapon under his body.
Back at the shooting scene, Foerster, a 34-year-old Vietnam veteran with a wife and son, also lay dead with bullet wounds in his right arm, abdomen and head. The two shots to his head were delivered by his own gun, authorities said.
Supporters of Acoli and Chesimard argued that they were ambushed and shot with their hands in the air as part of law enforcement's targeting of black activists, including the FBI Cointelpro project to disrupt what the agency called "black nationalist hate groups."
Their separate trials drew white and black protesters to the Middlesex County Courthouse. Both were convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison.
State law at the time allowed for the possibility of parole.
In the first few years of his sentence, Acoli tried to escape a few times, according to authorities: twice from state prison in Trenton, and once from a federal penitentiary in Marion, Ill., where he had been transferred.
For the past decade, he has been in a federal penitentiary in Allenwood, Pa. Prison officials there said he refused requests from The Star-Ledger for an interview.
Harper, who still lives in New Jersey, did not return messages seeking comment.
Foerster's widow and son declined comment.
In 1993, Acoli sought parole and was denied.
In its written decision, the Parole Board cited Acoli's admitted attraction to the revolutionary atmosphere of the Black Liberation Army and the Black Panther Party, his description of himself as a prisoner of war, his contention that he killed Foerster in self-defense and his record of disciplinary charges.
Since then, Acoli has largely avoided trouble, recently earning a favorable progress report from a U.S. Bureau of Prisons case manager for his work ethic and educational pursuits.
His lawyers say he has two daughters and two grandchildren willing to take him in.
"There is no legal reason to hold him in. He is rehabbed," said lawyer Florence Morgan. "We're not disputing this was a serious crime. But to continue to use that as a basis for denying parole would mean it would never be granted.
"It is not the purpose of the Parole Board to deny someone otherwise eligible for parole based on hysteria or extraneous pressure."
"I understand there are people who don't want him paroled, but there's no evidence to support a denial," added Fayemi Shakur, a 27-year-old Newark resident who coordinates the Sundiata Acoli Freedom Campaign. "There's more evidence supporting his release."
State Police Sgt. Kevin Tormey, a terrorism investigator, said there's plenty of reason to keep Acoli in prison.
"The BLA had declared war on law enforcement," Tormey said. "They basically executed Foerster and took his life for their cause.
"He and trooper Harper didn't know they were at war when they stopped that car. Acoli has never expressed any remorse or admitted guilt."
Catch as catch can; State aims to put prison escapees living overseas back behind bars
March 22, 2004
The trail is old and long, but not quite cold.
In August 1970, murderer George Wright and armed robber George Brown walked off the dairy farm at Bayside State Prison in Leesburg and disappeared. The black militants surfaced two years later on a Delta Air Lines flight from Detroit to Miami, which they and three others hijacked at gunpoint to Algeria.
They are still on the lam, along with nearly 140 other fugitives who have escaped custody in New Jersey over the last 34 years.
Most walked away from halfway houses, though two dozen were serving prison sentences for crimes ranging from drug possession to murder when they fled. Now, prison officials are stepping up their efforts to apprehend five of the escapees who made it out of the country and are hiding overseas. It would be a first. New Jersey has never succeeded in extraditing a prison escapee from another country.
"If they're still here on this planet, we're going after them, we're going to get them, and that's that," says state Corrections Commissioner Devon Brown. The commissioner says he's committing whatever money and diplomatic efforts are necessary, and has sought help from the governor's office, the FBI, the U.S. Marshals Service, the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Attorney's Office in Newark.
The state's first target in its overseas crackdown is Manny Farina, who was 20 when he was jailed in 1986 for a string of assaults, burglaries and thefts in Essex County. Less than a year later, he bolted from a minimum- security unit of Albert C. Wagner Youth Correctional Facility in New Lisbon. He ended up in South America, where investigators say he bounced from country to country, ending up in Colombia. He recently was taken into custody there on drug charges.
"We've been tracking him for several years, and we are going to extradite him very shortly," said Debbe Faunce, the Department of Corrections' chief investigator.
Brown said he has agreed to spend about $15,000 to send Essex County prosecutors to Colombia to bring Farina back.
"What we're saying is, if it costs us to come after you, we'll bear that cost and there will be consequences for what you've done," Brown said.
The most notorious of the international outlaws is Joanne Chesimard. The State Police's most wanted fugitive, Chesimard was sent to prison for the 1973 murder of a state trooper, but escaped to Cuba, where she won political asylum. Law enforcement officials acknowledge that her return is virtually impossible under Fidel Castro.
Brown also wants to apprehend Zladko Mujadzic, who beat a man to death in Burlington County in 1976 at the age of 18. After five well-behaved years, Mujadzic was put on a beach cleanup detail. He walked away.
Mujadzic fled to the former Yugoslavia, where investigators believe he remains, perhaps in a psychiatric hospital. But they're not sure. They've placed alerts with Interpol, the international police agency. Nothing has panned out.
The job of hunting Department of Corrections fugitives falls to five investigators in the Special Investigations Division. As part of a newly created New York/New Jersey Regional Fugitive Task Force, the team receives help from federal and local agencies. Often, members of the State Police fugitive squad ride with them.
"We go after these people and we don't stop," said Supervising Investigator Ellis Allen.
Most of their time is spent chasing the hottest leads, which tend to be local. In what little downtime they have, they follow tips on the older cases, including those overseas.
Fugitives generally don't stray far. When they're caught, it's usually at the homes of girlfriends or mothers or neighborhood pals. Of the hundreds of people who flee every year, the vast majority walk away from halfway houses, the last stop before rejoining society. Most are caught within a day or two.
Often, the fugitives simply tire of the chase and turn themselves in. Sometimes they're dimed out by relatives sick of watching them sit on the couch all day. Others, unable to find legitimate work, return to crime and get caught. Some die.
But occasionally, they keep running. And in rare instances, they make it abroad.
State officials don't anticipate many problems returning Farina to New Jersey. Colombia's government makes it relatively easy to obtain a fugitive, officials say. France, however, has been known to resist extraditions, particularly those of murderers. That's where investigators say they believe Wright and Brown now reside.
Their marijuana-fueled 1972 hijacking, in which they forced federal agents dressed only in bathing suits to deliver $1 million in cash to their DC-8 airliner in Miami, is one of the most brazen on record.
Wright, 29 at the time of the hijacking, had been convicted of murder and armed robbery and was serving a 15- to 30-year sentence at the time of his escape. Brown, then 28, was serving three to five years for a 1967 armed robbery in Elizabeth when he fled. They met in prison.
Both were members of the Black Liberation Army, a loosely affiliated group of black militants who advocated armed resistance to racial oppression. They and their fellow hijackers were living together in Detroit, where they boarded the Miami-bound jet on July 31. For the hijacking, Wright disguised himself as a priest.
They released the 86 passengers unhurt after receiving the $1 million, then forced the crew to fly to Algiers, where they sought political asylum. Authorities there released them days later, but not before seizing the $1 million, which they returned to the United States.
Investigators in New Jersey are not sure how the hijackers made it to France, but in 1978, French authorities sentenced Brown and three others, including Wright's common-law wife, Joyce Tillerson, to short prison terms for air piracy. Attempts to extradite them to the United States failed, investigators say.
Wright was never prosecuted. Authorities believe both men still live in France. Tillerson recently died there.
FBI Special Agent R.J. Gallagher maintains a file on Wright at the bureau's office in Red Bank and helps the Department of Corrections track him. He says he stays motivated by keeping in touch with Walter Patterson's two grown daughters. The World War II veteran was 42 when he was shot to death in a holdup by Wright and an accomplice at a Wall Township gas station in 1962.
The daughters, Ann and Kaye Patterson, said in a statement last week that Wright's escape has left their psychological wounds unhealed.
"There is no statute of limitations on murder," they said. "There is also no statute of limitations on the heartache and emptiness the innocent victims live with forever."
...State officials don't anticipate many problems returning Farina to New Jersey. Colombia's government makes it relatively easy to obtain a fugitive, officials say. France, however, has been known to resist extraditions, particularly those of murderers. That's where investigators say they believe Wright and Brown now reside. Their marijuana-fueled 1972 hijacking, in which they forced federal agents dressed only in bathing suits to deliver $1 million in cash to their DC-8 airliner in Miami, is one of the most brazen on record. Wright, 29 at the time of the hijacking, had been convicted of murder and armed robbery and was serving a 15- to 30-year sentence at the time of his escape. Brown, then 28, was serving three to five years for a 1967 armed robbery in Elizabeth when he fled. They met in prison.
Both were members of the Black Liberation Army, a loosely affiliated group of black militants who advocated armed resistance to racial oppression. They and their fellow hijackers were living together in Detroit, where they boarded the Miami-bound jet on July 31. For the hijacking, Wright disguised himself as a priest. They released the 86 passengers unhurt after receiving the $1 million, then forced the crew to fly to Algiers, where they sought political asylum. Authorities there released them days later, but not before seizing the $1 million, which they returned to the United States.
Investigators in New Jersey are not sure how the hijackers made it to France, but in 1978, French authorities sentenced Brown and three others, including Wright's common-law wife, Joyce Tillerson, to short prison terms for air piracy. Attempts to extradite them to the United States failed, investigators say. Wright was never prosecuted. Authorities believe both men still live in France. Tillerson recently died there.
Some interesting things here. I didn't know the BLA had a hijacking under their belt.