NEW YORK, NY August 21, 2001 — In a getaway attempt in a U-haul truck two police officers were killed. The passenger in the truck, Kathy Boudin, the daughter of a prominent lawyer and a Bryn Mawr graduate, pleaded guilty to her role in the robbery, and was sentenced to 20 years to life. This week, she goes before the New York State parole. WNYC’s Andrea Bernstein has this report, which includes the first broadcast interview Ms. Boudin has granted since the robbery.

On the afternoon of October 20, 1981, Norma Hill, a Westchester business woman, was driving home from work, trying to get on the Thruway, when she was blocked by a U-haul truck.

and precisely at that moment the back of the u-haul opened up with a loud crack and out of the back jumped six men wearing ski hats…and they started shooting which seemed like an eternity and the bullets were coming in rapid succession

She watched two police officers fall to the ground, and then one of the men approached her small, tan, BMW.

he put his automatic rifle through the window into my face and said get out of the car

He commandeered the car, and she was left unhurt. But the shooting she witnessed blasted through the entire county, says Rockland County Sherrif James Kralick, who was chief of the patrol division at the time.

Kralick: This was small town America at its best, officer brown, sergeant ogrady were probably doing parking tickets during the day or helping some old lady find her lost dog or something like

Norma Hill says she often wondered by she had not died, when other people had. So for three years, she testified at hearing to put the assailants in jail. Most were sentenced to 75 years to life. But prosecutors believed Kathy Boudin had not been involved in the shootings. So they offered a plea bargain of 20 years to life. The sentencing judge said he saw no reason why Kathy Boudin should not be paroled after twenty years. Her attorney is Leonard Weinglass.

We took the plea because kathy was guilty, she was guilty to what she pled guilty to, she was part of a robbery, a robbery in which a brinks security guard, peter paige, was killed, she wasn’t present at that robbery, she was several miles away at a switchpont and she wasn’t armed and she didn’t have a gun…under the laws of ny state you are guilty of the consequences of your co-actors.

At the time of the robbery, Kathy Boudin had been living as a fugitive for more than a decade because of her association with the group Weather Underground . In the Bedford Hills Correctional Center, she struggles to explain what was on her mind that fall day almost twenty years ago.

Boudin: I took my son to the babysitter and assumed I would be back to pick him up later in the day its hard to imagine that and yet the way in which denial can work is that you literally can block out consequences I was planning to go above ground I felt it was a sign of commitment to be willing to help out that day

Boudin: I think that I was completely out of touch with what were ways to help communities and people I think it was completely wrong.

In prison, she worked with other mothers who had left children on the outside. When AIDS hit Bedford started an counseling and education program. It has since become a national model. She put together adult literacy programs, taught English as a second language, and helped put together private funding when the state stopped offering college programs in jail.

Boudin: When I grew up I really grew up in a family that did not believe in violence and I was very afraid of it so to have come a journey in which I found my self responsible for an act that left people dead my first response was oh my god I have to change how I live

In the course of that work, a strange thing happened. Norma Hill, the witness to the shooting whose testimony helped put Kathy Boudin in jail, came to work in the prison as an AIDS volunteer, in the very same program as Kathy Boudin. She asked for a visit, and sat with Kathy Boudin for 3 ½ hours.

Hill I was angry because she had disrupted my life and she had done something that left me with a feeling of guilt (PUT SOME OF THIS BACK) 25 and as we came to closure or what I thought was closure she looked at me and she said do you think that you could ever come and visit me again and I said I will have to think about it that was seven years ago and during that time I have spent 1000s of hours with Kathy Boudin.

In New York under Governor Pataki, the number of violent felons who are released on parole has dropped from 24 percent to 8 percent. Norma Hill thinks Kathy Boudin deserves to be one of that 8 percentMs. Boudin’s attorneys have presented a package to the parole board containing lettters in support of her parole application from the Bishop of Albany, a former parole commissioner, and over 100 AIDS workers and educators But But Sheriff Kralik does not think Kathy Boudin deserves release, and has gathered twenty THOUSAND signatures supporting his position.

We’re a forgiving nation we all want to forgive. It’s the good part of us. It’s the better angels of our nature so to speak, but the truth is in this particular case I can see no forgiveness if she redeems herself let her redeem herself to a higher authority and that would be good, but as long as the O’Grady’s don’t have Eddie and the browns don’t have Waverly, as long as the paiges don’t have peter I don’t believe the Boudins should have Kathy.

Kathy Boudin says she, also, can never forget the pain she caused.

people in general live their lives in the present and in the future to some degree but as a prisoner I along with say my peers here we live a lot of our lives looking back at the past and the past is always present. When I teach a class and I listen to the mothers tell their stories about having left their children and I’m trying to help them face the reality that they left their children I always remember that not only did I leave my own child, but my participation in a crime left other children without their parents. When I sit with women who are very sick if not dying of aids and I think about the fact that their lives are being cut so prematurely short and I feel bad about it and I feel terrible about it and then I think about the fact that I was in a crime that resulted in people dying and their lives were cut short.

Gregory Brown is the son of Officer Waverly Brown. He was 17 years old when his father was murdered. Now in law enforcement himself, he is the father of four children who will never meet their grandfather. He says that hole can never be filled. He is happy Kathy Boudin is doing good work in prison. But he doesn’t think she should be granted parole.

Greg Brown: there’s no such thing as paying your debt to society when you take a life, you can do whatever you want to do or say whatever you want to say or appear to be rehabbed or maybe have repented and feel remorse for some of the things you’ve done, and its caused you to change or motivated you to change, but you can never repay that debt, you can’t.

Kathy Boudin says she would like to meet the families of the slain police officers to say how sorry she is for the pain she caused. Sergeant Brown says he would not rule that out. This week, the parole board decides whether she has redeemed herself, or whether she should still be punished. For WNYC, I’m Andrea Bernstein.

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