Greenwich Village townhouse explosion

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The Greenwich Village townhouse explosion was the premature detonation of a bomb as it was being assembled by members of the American "urban guerilla" organization, the Weather Underground, in the basement of a townhouse at 18 West 11th Street in New York City's Greenwich Village. The three persons nearest the bomb were killed, two others in the house were slightly injured, and the four-story townhouse was reduced to rubble and caught fire.^[1] Shortly before noon on Friday, March 6, 1970, people in the townhouse were assembling anti-personnel weapons armed with roofing nails and packed with dynamite. Their plan was to set them off that evening at a dance for noncommissioned officers at the Fort Dix, New Jersey Army base, according to a narrative published decades later by one of their comrades.^[2] According to at least one other account by former Weatherman members, a bomb being worked on that day would have been set off in Butler Library at Columbia University.^[3] Instead, some of the dynamite exploded then and there.

Contents 1 Immediate aftermath 2 Investigation 3 The fate of the survivors 4 References

[edit] Immediate aftermath

Killed by the blasts were Theodore Gold, Diana Oughton, and Terry Robbins. Surviving in a stunned and bleeding state were Weather Underground members Kathy Boudin and Cathlyn Wilkerson, who were upstairs at the moment of the blasts. They were led out from the burning structure by a police officer and the off-duty New York City Housing Authority patrolman who had entered in search of survivors. The rescuers were treated at St. Vincent's Hospital for smoke inhalation.^[1] The building was owned by Wilkerson's father, a radio-station executive.^[4]

Boudin and Wilkerson and disappeared before they could be questioned. They had been free on bail on assault charges stemming from the "Days of Rage" riots in Chicago.^[4] A neighbor who rendered aid after the blast described them as "dazed and trembling" as they were led "staggering" from the wreckage, one clad only in blue jeans and the other naked. The neighbor brought them to her house, where they showered, borrowed some clothing and told a housekeeper they were going to a local drugstore, then got into a taxi and disappeared.^[5][6]

As the search for bodies continued days after the explosion, Wilkerson's parents made a televised appeal to their missing daughter to avoid needlessly risking the lives of searchers. They asked her to "let us know how many more people, if any, are still left in the ruins of our home", saying "more lives would be needlessly lost and only you have the key".^[4]

[edit] Investigation

The blasts were initially thought to be a series of natural gas explosions, but investigators quickly concluded from the extent of the damage that dynamite or some other powerful explosive was the cause. Gas lines broken by the blast fed an ensuing fire.^[4] According to the police investigator in charge, "The people in the house were obviously putting together the component parts of a bomb and they did something wrong."^[6]

An initial search turned up a 1916 37-mm. antitank shell.^[7] In the following days, a brick-by-brick search of the rubble uncovered 57 sticks of dynamite, four 12-inch (300 mm) pipe bombs packed with dynamite, and 30 blasting caps. The pipe bombs and several eight-stick packages of dynamite had fuses already attached. Also found were timing devices rigged from alarm clocks, maps of the tunnel network underneath Columbia University, and literature of the political protest organization, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), from which the Weatherman organization had split off.^[4][6][7] Police described the building as a "bomb factory", and said that at the time of the explosion dynamite was apparently being wrapped in tape with nails embedded to act as shrapnel.^[4][8]

The crime scene was gory. It took nine days of finding body parts to determine how many persons had died in the blast. Fingerprint records were required to identify the corpses of Theodore Gold, a leader of the 1968 Columbia University student protests, and Diana Oughton, the organizer of the 1969 SDS national convention. ^{[9] [10] [11] [8]} As to the identity of the third corpse, rumors circulated in radical circles that it was that of Terry Robbins, a leader of the 1968 Kent State University student rebellion and a founder of the Weathermen, who would be indicted the following month along with 11 others for organizing and inciting riots during the "Days of Rage".^[12] That May, this rumor was confirmed in a communique purportedly issued by the Weathermen. The message was a "declaration of war" by the organization which warned that it would "attack a symbol or institution of American injustice" within the next two weeks. This communique named Robbins as the third body and described Gold, Oughton, and Robbins as revolutionaries "no longer on the move".^[13]

[edit] The fate of the survivors

Neighbors positively identified Wilkerson as one of the two women who had been led out from the wreckage. Boudin was not positively identified as the second survivor until some weeks later.^[5] Both women were charged with illegal possession of dynamite in the townhouse blast. They forfeited their bail on the above mentioned Chicago assault charges by failing to appear in Chicago for trial ten days later.^[4] The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) placed them on its Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list, but they succeeded in avoiding capture for a decade. Wilkerson surrendered in 1980. Boudin was apprehended in 1981 for her role in the Brink's armored car robbery.

[edit] References